# Are GMO's Necessarily Bad? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 17, 2014, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-gmos-necessarily-bad/707461 "2014-12-17T01:27:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2014, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-gmos-necessarily-bad/707461/41 "2014-12-18T18:35:35Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > Let me go on record as not supporting starvation. > [@CurtC](#): > > You’re calling for people to starve to death as a proper response to overpopulation? > > Let’s work on … First let’s work on our reading skills. ---
**Author:** ![CurtC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ce73a5/32.png) [@CurtC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CurtC)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2014, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-gmos-necessarily-bad/707461/42 "2014-12-18T19:00:46Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > First let’s work on our reading skills. Yeah, but after you said that sentence, you directly contradicted it by saying that we shouldn’t be working on ways to feed more people because that leads to higher populations. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2014, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-gmos-necessarily-bad/707461/43 "2014-12-18T19:24:00Z")
> [@CurtC](#): > > Yeah, but after you said that sentence, you directly contradicted it by saying that we shouldn’t be working on ways to feed more people because that leads to higher populations. Blatantly false. And illogical unless you somehow imagine that the never-born can “starve.” And on the larger point, fight your ignorance by reading **sbunny8** ’s excellent #34 … or take it to the Pit. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2014, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-gmos-necessarily-bad/707461/44 "2014-12-18T19:36:21Z")
What’s the economics term for this - the motivation pyramid. Something is a motivator until it reaches the “saturation point”, then as long as there is enough, it ceases to be. Food is a motivator until there’s a guaranteed adequate supply, and then it ceases to be. People don’t decide to have children based on enough food or not, beyond a few extreme third world countries. Motivations for population growth are complex, but the earlier discussion nailed it. In a more primitive society, children are your pension plan and only some survive to adulthood so make a few spares. As society becomes more industrialized, children have less value for the work they can do (a 6 year old can weed the crop or watch the flock) and actually start to cost - but will survive. When a society converts from subsistence agriculture to cash for labour, the workers might actually save for old age or accumulate other wealth for that purpose. Most of the first world is on the way to a populatin implosion, with Russia and Japan leading the way. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2014, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-gmos-necessarily-bad/707461/45 "2014-12-18T19:49:21Z")
Evidently “Let me go on record as not supporting starvation” seemed too ambiguous. 😕 :smack: Let me rephrase my views. _ **Population is too high.** __ **Incentives to lower birth rates would be good.** _ If this is still unclear, I give up. Population, already too high, is being driven higher by dangerous technologies. The justification of these technologies follows a vicious cycle: “We need to improve the technologies, however great their drawbacks and dangers, to support our increasing population. And the population increase is being driven by those very technologies.” And I’m the one accused of being illogical. :eek: I don’t have a silver bullet to offer. China was able to reduce population growth without “encouraging starvation.” To turn a blind eye and rely on optimism (“Maybe population will peak at 11 billion, merely ten times the estimate of long-term sustainability. Maybe fears about GMO’s, extinctions, habitat destruction, ocean acidity, climate change will turn out wrong”) is not the prudent way forward. To accuse those skeptical of Monsanto’s business model of seeking starvation is so ill-founded and nasty, I hope such responses are taken to the Pit. ---
**Author:** ![Deeg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/deeg/32/2955_2.png) [@Deeg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Deeg)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2014, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-gmos-necessarily-bad/707461/46 "2014-12-18T19:58:54Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > Blatantly false. And illogical unless you somehow imagine that the never-born can “starve.” As a point of reference I understood your post in the same way as CurtC; i.e. it appears to have a contradiction. Help us understand. You think overpopulation is a problem which has been caused (in part) by GMO crops. Then you say “_But the idea that we should pursue any technology that helps us increase an already over-bloated population is misconceived._”. Given the context it appears you are saying pursuing GMO is misconceived because it supports population growth, correct? If, then, we stop GMO won’t that lead to some starvation? How else would it stop supporting population growth? ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2014, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-gmos-necessarily-bad/707461/47 "2014-12-18T20:04:57Z")
> [@filmstar-en](#): > > The hue and cry over infertile Terminator seed was because it would give Big Ag companies a monopoly over the supply of their patented seed sensitive to their patented herbicide. And this is different from allowing seed sellers a patented monopoly over their conventionally bred seed because??? Hybrid seed of that type seldom breeds true if you save and replant it; you typically wind up with inferior characteristics in succeeding generations. And again, it’s quite easy to break that “monopoly” by purchasing open-pollinated seed that has been saved quite legally for generations. The downside is that seed does not have hybrid vigor and is susceptible to a wide range of diseases, which is why farmers turn to Big Ag’s varieties. > [@](#): > > The nightmare was of major US corporations holding the food producing parts of the world to ransom. Monsanto spooked the global market for seeds from the start and it became a serious political issue for many countries. This is not a U.S.-vs.-the-world issue, seeing as how GM crops have been popular and beneficial in (for example) India, and in Europe both Great Britain and Spain have shown support for selected GM varieties. Also, in the case of golden rice, there is no heavy-handed corporate control, but rather seed made available inexpensively and with farmers permitted to save it for replanting. > [@sbunny8](#): > > Even IF it turns out that GMOs are 100% beneficial and harmless, with no unintended consequences, the mere fact that it promotes population growth should be enough of a reason to dislike it. Absolutely. Feeding starving people just encourages them to breed. :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![CurtC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ce73a5/32.png) [@CurtC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CurtC)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2014, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-gmos-necessarily-bad/707461/48 "2014-12-18T20:08:52Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > Population, already too high, is being driven higher by dangerous technologies. This is what I was talking about. How could population be driven higher by increasing the food supply, unless you’re talking about how it’s preventing people from starving to death? ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2014, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-gmos-necessarily-bad/707461/49 "2014-12-18T20:17:44Z")
We need awareness of the important issues and how to approach them. I continue to focus on the stupidity of the vicious cycle. I don’t pretend to have a “silver bullet” to offer, but birth limiting practices like China’s might be good. Society has stupidly developed a need for high-tech agriculture and outlawing that immediately would increase hunger. All I’d ask is to have _more intelligent priorities at the margins_, seeking population reduction rather than ever higher and higher farm yields, regardless of the costs to habitat, genetic diversity, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2014, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-gmos-necessarily-bad/707461/50 "2014-12-18T21:57:55Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **septimus** : > > And BTW, fighting ignorance about the G.M. 8,000 years ago, studies have shown that the ancient hunter-gatherer diet was healthier than the mixed-farming diet, past or present. Healthier for whom? It might have been healthy for the adult hunter-gatherer, but it sure wasn’t very healthy for the babies abandoned in the wilderness because the tribe didn’t have enough resources to support them. > [@](#): > > Quoth **sbunny8** : > > Imagine you have ten mice in a cage. Every day you put in enough food for ten mice. Come back in a year, how many mice will there be? Ten. Keep putting in enough food for ten mice and the actual population will hover around ten mice. But suppose you are a malicious, cruel, sadistic bastard who actually wants to see lots of starvation. What strategy would maximize your cruelty? Gradually increase the food in the cage to feed 20 mice, then 40, then 80, then 160, then 320, until the mice are so overcrowded that they are wallowing in their own filth, and then abruptly go back to only giving them enough food for 10 mice. Watch 310 mice die of starvation almost overnight. And just how do you suppose that the mouse population is staying stable at 10 mice? There are still plenty of extra mice being born. The surplus are just starving. Natural population control is cruel. It’s only recently that we humans have come up with non-cruel methods of population control, like making birth control available and educating people about its use. ---
**Author:** ![sbunny8](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@sbunny8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sbunny8)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2014, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-gmos-necessarily-bad/707461/51 "2014-12-18T21:59:00Z")
Let’s try another example. You have ten rabbits living in your back yard, munching on the grass and eating the weeds. You decide to start buying them bags of Purina Rabbit Chow and you put out one bag per week. Pretty soon there are 20 rabbits. So you start putting out 3 bags per week. In a few months, you have 40 rabbits. So you start putting out a bag a day. A month later, there’s 80 rabbits. (This is not a perfect analogy. In real life, the rabbits would be free to leave the yard, but the yard represents planet Earth so leaving isn’t an option.) Now, let’s assume that you are NOT a sadistic bastard who enjoys making animals suffer. What strategy might you follow? #1 You could continue putting a bag a day into the yard, until one day (inevitably) you have a heart attack and die, leaving 80 rabbits with no Purina Rabbit Chow at all. Suddenly all 80 rabbits will face starvation. If you’re lucky, maybe 10 of them will survive by going back to eating grass and weeds. But more likely they’ll all just die. #2 You could gradually start reducing the amount of food you put out each day. Instead of seven 12-pound bags per week (total of 84 pounds), cut back to just 83 pounds per week. Then 82 pounds the week after that. Then 81 pounds. Six months later, you’d look in the back yard and see 50 rabbits. No mass starvation, no food riots, just 50 rabbits munching happily. In another year, you’d be down to just 4 pound of Rabbit Chow per week, then 3, then 2 then 1 then none. The rabbits can go back to eating grass and weeds. And then you can die of a heart attack and the rabbits will survive without you. Putting out more and more and more food doesn’t cure starvation. It creates the conditions that make starvation more likely to happen later, by increasing the population beyond the carrying capacity of their environment. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2014, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-gmos-necessarily-bad/707461/52 "2014-12-18T22:01:50Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > Exactly. But… > > Depends on the variety of the base for the original hybrid - if a few fields of crops were crossed to produce this new variety, that’s better that “all of these seeds are descendants of a single plant from a single GMO modification of a single seed.” Either I misunderstand you or you misunderstand how genetic modification works. GMO crops are not a single hybrid. There are dozens of varieties of glyphosate-resistant soybeans, corn, cotton, canola, etc; dozens of different hybrids of insect-resistant corn, etc. True, they all have one or maybe two genes that are genetically modified, but everything else in the plant is from traditional breeding. The different hybrids have different lengths to maturity, different resistance to heat or cold, different drought tolerances – whatever the breeders can select for. Here’s a list ofa single seed company’s [new soybeans for 2015.](http://www.aganytime.com/asgrow/products/Pages/Asgrow-Class-of-15.aspx) There are 25 different varieties with varying characteristics such as susceptability to soybean cyst nematode, white mold resistance, plant height and others. That’s in addition to all the other varieties that remain in production, of course. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2014, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-gmos-necessarily-bad/707461/53 "2014-12-18T22:04:03Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > We need awareness of the important issues and how to approach them. I continue to focus on the stupidity of the vicious cycle. > > I don’t pretend to have a “silver bullet” to offer, but birth limiting practices like China’s might be good. Society has stupidly developed a need for high-tech agriculture and outlawing that immediately would increase hunger. All I’d ask is to have _more intelligent priorities at the margins_, seeking population reduction rather than ever higher and higher farm yields, regardless of the costs to habitat, genetic diversity, etc. Considering that fertility rates have dropped to near replacement levels, if not below, all over east Asia, southeast Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, the southern tier of India, and the more progressive Muslim countries (to say nothing of Europe, North America and the former Soviet Union), why in hell would we need 'birth limiting practices like China’s?" The vast majority of countries which have reduced fertility to replacement level or below, didn’t need extreme coercion to do it. This is not directed at you, but in my experience people who praise the Chinese one-child policy are usually unaware of how fertility rates have _naturally_ dropped in so many other countries. There’s a good argument to be made the Chinese model, as high as its human cost was, was entirely superfluous and unnecessary. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2014, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-gmos-necessarily-bad/707461/54 "2014-12-18T22:06:05Z")
> [@sbunny8](#): > > Let’s try another example. You have ten rabbits living in your back yard, munching on the grass and eating the weeds. You decide to start buying them bags of Purina Rabbit Chow and you put out one bag per week. Pretty soon there are 20 rabbits. So you start putting out 3 bags per week. In a few months, you have 40 rabbits. So you start putting out a bag a day. A month later, there’s 80 rabbits. (This is not a perfect analogy. In real life, the rabbits would be free to leave the yard, but the yard represents planet Earth so leaving isn’t an option.) Now, let’s assume that you are NOT a sadistic bastard who enjoys making animals suffer. What strategy might you follow? > > #1 You could continue putting a bag a day into the yard, until one day (inevitably) you have a heart attack and die, leaving 80 rabbits with no Purina Rabbit Chow at all. Suddenly all 80 rabbits will face starvation. If you’re lucky, maybe 10 of them will survive by going back to eating grass and weeds. But more likely they’ll all just die. > > #2 You could gradually start reducing the amount of food you put out each day. Instead of seven 12-pound bags per week (total of 84 pounds), cut back to just 83 pounds per week. Then 82 pounds the week after that. Then 81 pounds. Six months later, you’d look in the back yard and see 50 rabbits. No mass starvation, no food riots, just 50 rabbits munching happily. In another year, you’d be down to just 4 pound of Rabbit Chow per week, then 3, then 2 then 1 then none. The rabbits can go back to eating grass and weeds. And then you can die of a heart attack and the rabbits will survive without you. > > Putting out more and more and more food doesn’t cure starvation. It creates the conditions that make starvation more likely to happen later, by increasing the population beyond the carrying capacity of their environment. The human carrying capacity of the environment, left to itself, is extremely low, and certainly not enough to sustain civilization. That’s why we invented agriculture. Human civilization _depends_ on the manipulation of nature, in every realm from agriculture to antibiotics. Why is this a bad thing? ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2014, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-gmos-necessarily-bad/707461/55 "2014-12-18T22:09:16Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > Absolutely. Feeding starving people just encourages them to breed. :dubious: I’m pretty sure actually, there is a positive correlation between malnutrition and fertility rate, if you do a cross-national comparison. (Yes, _extremely_ malnourished people won’t breed at all- think of anorexic women who don’t ovulate, etc.- but at anything above that level, yes, you tend to get quite high birth rates, as a cultural phenomenon). ---
**Author:** ![sbunny8](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@sbunny8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sbunny8)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2014, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-gmos-necessarily-bad/707461/56 "2014-12-18T22:15:37Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > And just how do you suppose that the mouse population is staying stable at 10 mice? There are still plenty of extra mice being born. Female mice in crowded cages produce fewer litters. Also, they tend to eat their babies when food is scarce. But you don’t see emaciated adult mice. Anyway, that’s how mice do it. Humans, on the other hand, have developed other options, like contraception. > [@Chronos](#): > > Natural population control is cruel. I’d say it’s not as cruel as giving them tons of food and then suddenly taking it away, which is what will eventually happen when you use non-sustainable methods. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2014, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-gmos-necessarily-bad/707461/57 "2014-12-18T22:21:05Z")
I enjoy seeing well-off Westerners talking (with their mouths full) about the need to cut back food supplies so that those Third Worlders aren’t encouraged to breed. It’s for their own good, you know. And they don’t require GMO produce, when they can just go down to Whole Foods like the rest of us and buy healthful organic food. > [@sbunny8](#): > > Let’s try another example. You have ten rabbits living in your back yard, munching on the grass and eating the weeds. But first, eating all my crops and ornamental plants. Solution: shoot the rabbits and invite the neighbors over for hassenpfeffer. Works for me. ---
**Author:** ![Deeg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/deeg/32/2955_2.png) [@Deeg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Deeg)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2014, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-gmos-necessarily-bad/707461/58 "2014-12-18T22:27:25Z")
> [@sbunny8](#): > > Female mice in crowded cages produce fewer litters. Also, they tend to eat their babies when food is scarce. I don’t get this statement at all. Are you suggesting that third-world mothers eat their babies to help control the population? ---
**Author:** ![CurtC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ce73a5/32.png) [@CurtC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CurtC)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2014, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-gmos-necessarily-bad/707461/59 "2014-12-18T22:32:32Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > And just how do you suppose that the mouse population is staying stable at 10 mice? There are still plenty of extra mice being born. The surplus are just starving. Therefore the most humane thing to do is to make sure that enough people starve to death _today_ so that 50 years from now there will be fewer people starve to death. Don’t you see - if we prevent starvation today, it just makes the future problem worse! As long as it’s not _my_ family, of course. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2014, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-gmos-necessarily-bad/707461/60 "2014-12-18T23:14:26Z")
> [@Deeg](#): > > I don’t get this statement at all. Are you suggesting that third-world mothers eat their babies to help control the population? [It’s not a new idea.](http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-gmos-necessarily-bad/707461.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-gmos-necessarily-bad/707461.md?page=4)