Bonus points if they’re labelled gluten-free.
For what it’s worth, Monsanto’s patent on the first round of Roundup Ready seeds expires in 2015, so at some point very soon many of these issues are going to be moot.
??? Is this serious?
Incroyable. The research into improved water usage while holding to high yields is one of the single greatest areas of research in both the conventional and the ‘gmo’ research! It is utterly incredible to have such ignorance. You can read (from this site which is hostile to the corporations like Monstanto, which I have choses for this reason): http://12.000.scripts.mit.edu/mission2017/genetically-modified-crops/
There is great potential for the water efficiency under water stress conditions, and the work on this is the most important part of the seed research in the face of the climate change that is making swinging from drought to water abundance more rapid in cycle.
The complaint is not even serious, it shows gross ignorance.
This is a straw man, it is an exageratoin and relies on the argument from ignorance. there is no panacea, but there are the clear tools to address the known problems and a record that is despite the distortions and the scaremongering from the distortions and the half truths, a good record.
Indeed it is this sort of magical thinking with very non-concrete ideas and wishful thinking that is behind their thinking.
No, they will find new objections as there is not real rationality in the complaint it is the pure fear of change.
Okay, you’re not romanticizing the past. You’re inventing it out of whole cloth. Cycles of feast and famine have been the default everywhere on Earth since the dawn of civilization. The only exceptions are a few tiny places with abundant fish stocks or other outside inputs, which were largely a matter of happy accident.
Jane Goodall endorses Altered Genes; Twisted Truth, a new book about GMO.
I hope Dopers will review the book. I hope, though probably in vain, that no one disparages the book without reading it. (Nor objects to Goodall’s qualifications while ignoring several respected scientists who’ve endorsed the book.)
So Goodall (who is not a geneticist or someone with expertise in agriculture, and has already embarrassed herself by touting misleading and false information about supposed GMO harms) endorses a book by an even more unqualified GMO opponent (a former executive at Maharishi International University), who’s big into conspiracy theories and even further out in left field.
The Druker book, among other glaring faults, plays up the infamous Seralini study, which was retracted by the journal that published it.
Junk science, even that endorsed by a one-time big name in primate research, is still junk science.
Note: you can find a handful of “respected scientists” to endorse just about anything, including climate change denial, antivax nonsense etc. Contrast these outliers (who generally have little to no expertise in the field they’re expounding on) with the overwhelming scientific consensus based on solid evidence.
Well, the consensus of scientists who’ve endorsed the book is ovewhelming. So there.
What gets me is that we’re supposed to take Druker’s book seriously because, gee, Jane Goodall endorses it (never mind presenting the arguments in the book for discussion here).
For an even more impressive celebrity endorsement, how about Kary Mullis’ approval of books by AIDS denialists Peter Duesberg and Christine Maggiore (Mullis, a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, wrote an intro to Duesberg’s book and the foreword to Maggiore’s). Duesberg himself was* a respected expert in retroviruses, so hey, shouldn’t we be highly impressed that these big science guys concluded that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS?
*note use of past tense.
**Mullis also believes in astrology, and reported speaking to a glowing green raccoon (some sort of space alien, apparently. He was taking LSD at the time but didn’t think the drug was responsible for his vision).
***Maggiore was an HIV+ AIDS activist who didn’t think the virus caused her disease, which eventually killed her.
Don’t be silly. Big Pharma killed her to keep the truth from getting out.
FWIW, Jane Goodall is irrelevant to me. It just happens that I’d never heard of the book until just now, when I clicked on a news article mentioning her endorsement. I should have edited my post not to mention her.
But for heavens’ sake! Talk about lampooning the messenger and ignoring the message. :smack: The credentials of those endorsing the book make me think there’s more to it than crackpottery. I plan to order the book and read it, or at least study on-line reviews. I’d be happy to hear intelligent criticism here instead. But when criticism focuses on Goodall’s lack of credentials (or my laziness in not removing her from my post) I can only laugh at the response.
ETA: Yes, it was stupid for me to mention Goodall at all. I keep thinking this is a forum for discussing ideas, forgetting that it’s a forum for criticising each others’ skill at composing posts. 
Did Dr. Goodall publish a paper?
William Saletan just published an article in Slate that thoroughly examined and dismantled the arguments against GMOs. He also concludes that labeling is a useless smokescreen.
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ETA: Yes, it was stupid for me to mention Goodall at all. I keep thinking this is a forum for discussing ideas, forgetting that it’s a forum for criticising each others’ skill at composing posts. 
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As I already suggested, why not bring up the arguments in Druker’s book for discussion here? Although that might be difficult for you, as you acknowledge not reading the book or even any analyses of it, instead promoting it on the basis of Goodall’s endorsement (given both her poor grasp of the subject (see previous link) and lack of expertise in biotechnology/agriculture, that’s not worth much).
Druker’s book makes arguments that have been discussed here and in other GMO threads, including blaming eosinophilia-myalgia syndrome related to tryptophan supplementation on the GM manufacturing process (a very shaky claim) and citing sloppy research (i.e. Pusztai, Seralini) that has been debunked here and elsewhere.
You want to discuss these matters further, fine. But don’t pretend the only focus so far has been on Goodall and Druker’s scanty credentials.
Don’t be too hard on yourself–the dropping of Goodall’s name has convinced me to give up eating anything with DNA in it. 
If someone who didn’t know you said you were a thief and a cheat and once slapped the spit out of Barack Obama for biting your style at a rap battle, how much attention should we give that person? Should we do a detailed study of your whereabouts on the specific days in question and prove that you have a solid alibi for every single one of them? Should we then refute the person’s attempted refutations of your alibis? How deep do we need to go on this?
To be very clear: It takes much less time to create bullshit than it does to refute it. Assholes, idiots, the mentally ill, and the well-meaning ignorant can flood a market with books that would each take months to fully refute, because they aren’t bound to basic standards of evidence, care, or sanity, and can therefore run their mouths non-stop. There’s no end to it unless you accept basic standards of evidence and learn to ignore people and ideas which are simply not worth the effort.
That is an excellent article, which also points out that the GMO manufactroversy (or manufactured controversy if you prefer) is also undermining attempts to bring out new crops that offer health benefits (more nutrients, less fat, non-allergenic etc.). Instead of seeing these consumer benefits we seem to be mostly stuck on pest control/herbicide resistance, as the food industry runs scared about introducing beneficial plant varieties to market.
The issue is that you posted a link to a book and about the only thing you mentioned was: 1) it was anti-GMO; 2) it was endorsed by Goodall. Nothing about why the book is anti-GMO; no idea to discuss. What else could we debate? I’m certainly not reading the book on just that info any more than you’ll read a pro-GMO book just because it’s endorse by some minor celebrity scientist.
As a worried anti-GMO thinker, I was impressed by the pro-GMO Cosmos magazine published in 2014. It has largely persuaded me to view GMO as a positive contribution to mankind.
It would also require the withdrawal of all epoetin products, which means end stage kidney disease patients can go back to frequent blood transfusions with all the attendant risks of blood-borne disease and immunological reactions to blood, which used to shorten and make more miserable their existence. Epoetin can also help with anemia caused by some types of cancer treatment, but hey, can’t have that! Then there are monoclonal antibodies, used for preventing rejection of transplanted organs with fewer side effects than older drugs. They’re also used in cancer treatment, again with fewer side effects than older chemotherapy drugs.
Aside from periods of famine (to which farmers were also vulnerable), hunter-gatherers ate a diverse and nutritious diet and DID eat better than a lot of modern folks… largely because the widely consumed convenience foods are closer to those of premodern farming than hunting-gathering.
So no, the average modern industrialized citizen doesn’t eat better than the old hunter-gatherers. Keep in mind, too, that most study of HG’s has been on remnant populations inhabiting areas too marginal for farmers. Back when the best and most fertile and productive lands were occupied by HG’s their diets were probably healthier yet.
The advantage of farming is that you can feed more people from a given area, even if the diet isn’t as healthy, and 10 farmers beat 1 HG in any armed conflict with comparable weapons.