Thanks for the answers. Again, none of this that you’re saying is specific to GMO food.
If a food is found to have any problem regarding health, it’s not going to be brought to market, so we already have a situation that’s above and beyond your proposal. So the net is that you propose increased long-term testing, on all foods, not just GM. Is that right?
That kind of gets to the heart of the question.
Given our limited understanding of epigenetics and how different foods impact gene expression, how is it possible to be confident it will be detected?
This was my “proposal”:
“I don’t think any reasonable proposal can be made without properly understanding the risk level, and it’s my opinion that, especially w.r.t. epigenetics, the risk is not fully understood.”
Which was followed with some limited specific opinions.
As stated many times, my primary involvement in this thread is to counter blanket statements like “GM foods are safe” because there is simply too much unknown about the complex interplay of diet and gene expression to make that claim, especially for new gm foods and especially for long term side effects.
I assume you mean non-GM foods, like hybrids.
I wrote a pretty open and honest response to you in point #4.
Pretty much the summary is: I don’t know
I never claimed to know that.
I’ve stated multiple times it’s worth investigating.
You seem to be coming back to this despite my previous answers, is there something unclear about it?
Here’s a question for the we-need-more-testing-but-we-can’t-or-won’t-say-how-much crowd:
It has been suggested that veggies and fruits high in anthocyanins (anti-oxidant compounds) may have health benefits.
A genetic engineering project to create a high-anthocyanin tomato is ongoing, and it’s expected that following various tests (presumably including safety testing), the first such tomato could be available to consumers in two years.
Meantime, Oregon State University researchers using conventional breeding techniques have produced a high-anthocyanin tomato (“Indigo Rose”), which is already available to home growers (I have seedlings growing under lights at home). I have not heard of any safety testing proposed or completed on this tomato.
Is it rational to require years of testing on the GM high-anthocyanin tomato and not on the conventionally bred plant? Isn’t the change basically the same in both? What about epigenetics - what if we eat the “Indigo Rose” tomato and a mysterious process ensues that turns us into newts?
We’ll be a sorry bunch of amphibians then.*
*I’m considering building a pond in the back yard, just in case.
Well, what about these statements?
The GMO foods on the market now appear to be as safe as common conventional foods.
There is no reason to think that the gene-splicing kind of genetic modification (GMO) presents greater risk than foods whose genes were modified by more old-fashioned techniques.
Therefore, there is no reason to treat GMO foods any differently from other foods.
Got any issue with those?
For short term issues, seems reasonable.
For long term issues, nobody knows.
Given our lack of knowledge of epigenetics, our comparisons are somewhat limited.
It’s entirely possible the GMO foods on the market have increased some form of cancer by some percent but we don’t have the science to be able to know that.
It’s also entirely possible the GMO foods on the market have reduced some form of cancer.
It’s possible the types of changes typically made to gm foods tend to result in toxins to humans more frequently than other methods (I don’t really know, data would be nice in this regard).
Either way, the knowledge about long term impact of changes doesn’t or barely exists today.
As I said before, I will investigate to see if I find support for GM changes being riskier in any way than non-GM changes.
It’s a valid question, but I haven’t really investigated, so I can’t answer.
Until I look into the previous point, I can’t agree with this. Maybe GM foods should be treated same as hybrids, not sure.
Questions for you:
Given that scientists don’t even understand which types of epigenetic changes are linked to disease, but there is clear evidence that there are some links, why do you feel we will know whether future gm foods (or hybrids) are problematic?
How can we accurately claim “future gm foods are safe” if we don’t even know what to look for during testing? Sure, we know some things to look for, but we can also see the clear signs of our lack of knowledge (epigenetics). (and yes, this same logic can be applied to hybrid, but again I just haven’t looked into whether the two can be considered categorically different or not).
So, what are your thoughts on golden rice?
I would be happy to answer that question if I thought the poster was asking in good faith.
But based on this sequence:
you: “should allergy cause banning?”
me: “allergy should cause labeling, cancer should cause banning”
you: “evasive, didn’t answer question”
Why would I expect any exchange with you to be productive?
If you explain yourself regarding that exchange I would be happy to respond to further questions.
I’m not the only poster interested in your answer to whether golden rice should be grown and distributed.
So you can hardly use my “lack of good faith” as an excuse for not responding.
If the subject is just too uncomfortable for you to discuss, I understand. 
I remain patiently willing to try to understand why you think “allergy=label” doesn’t answer “allergy=ban?”.
We may not know for sure, but that’s the same as it is for conventionally-modified crops. That’s the point - there is no distinction you can draw.
Gene splicing is a technique. The products created with that technique can be harmless, or they may not be.
Older methods of genetic modifications are also techniques. Its products can be harmless, or they may not be.
No, you’re just adding an unnecessary word. Here, lemme correct it.
Here’s the logic:
1 - Our diet impacts gene expression.
2 - A food is part of our diet.
3 - Therefore a food can impact gene expression
Wow! Interesting! It’s almost as though your argument is completely meaningless! And until we have good evidence that there’s more reason to be afraid of GMOs than, you know, normal food (a fear which has not borne itself out in any of the massive amounts of testing that has been done so far), there’s no reason whatsoever to single them out like this.
The whole epigenetics argument is silly. It’s the logical equivalent of the old creationist “God of the gaps” argument, where they point to a gap in our knowledge that science has not yet filled and declare “Ah ha! GOD must have done that, since so-called ‘science’ cannot explain it!” You’re doing the same thing here. You’ve stumbled upon a new area of research which, unsurprisingly, is as yet poorly understood and declared “Ah ha! GMOs could be using this method to silently kill people, and ‘science’ cannot prove it’s not!” The problem is, you could use this argument on literally anything. My laptop is emitting low levels of radiation, and radiation is known to affect DNA. So we cannot prove that my laptop is not causing epigenetic changes that will give me cancer in 20 years! Let’s ban computers! It’s snowing! Our bodies adapt to temperature changes - what if the cold weather is causing vague, unspecified epigenetic changes that will kill me in 30 years?! Let’s ban cold! And so on, and so on.
Is it possible that GMOs could be causing unknown epigenetic changes with unknown yet vaguely scary consequences? Of course. But “possible” is a very, very low bar to set. There aren’t very many things that aren’t possible at all. It’s possible that there is a race of invisible aliens monitoring our every moves that are getting fed up with reality TV and will destroy the planet if we show one more series of Survivor. We can’t prove they’re not there, after all! Best cancel all reality television just to be safe, or at least until we’ve researched the problem more thoroughly.
So, let’s examine this epigenetics stuff a little more rationally, like thinking beings, and see if there are rational, reasonable reasons to be concerned instead of whipping out the useless “possible” test. Epigenetics - and for the record, my PhD work is tangentially related to epigenetic mechanisms in fruit flies, so while I’m not an expert, I do know something about the subject - is simply a method of gene regulation. Genes get upregulated and downregulated by certain signals. Now, we’ve known about gene regulation for a very very very long time. Our bodies are constantly adjusting and adapting our cellular environment according to a whole host of external signals. The only thing that’s different about epigenetic modifications is that they have the slightly interesting ability to be passed on through time, even from one generation to another. That’s it. So I can turn off a gene in my own body, and pass on that state to my daughter, so she also has it turned off in her body. That’s epigenetics.
So first, why are we discussing epigenetics at all? Surely all forms of genetic regulation are just as potentially problematic. To be clear, we’re talking about something along the lines of a tumor suppressor gene being shut off, or a protooncogene being turned on, which could, in theory, increase your chances of getting cancer later in life. You don’t need epigenetics to do this. Good ol’ fashioned genetic regulation of any flavor could do that job. The only obvious reason to be talking about epigenetics changes is, as I said, because it’s a new field, with lots of scary holes through which to drive fear and uncertainty.
But does it even make sense to worry about our foods causing these sorts of genetic changes? Perhaps. We know that there are dietary influences that can increase (or decrease) cancer rates. Eating too much iron if you have hemochromatosis can cause heart or liver cancer, while diets rich in antioxidents are thought to be somewhat protective. I’m not aware of any epigenetic links between food and cancer, but they might be out there. I’d be surprised, because it seems like a very silly thing for the body to do: “dude just ate some chocolate! Let’s fire up some liver cancer!” but disease doesn’t always make sense.
So the real question, as always, is this: is there any realistic reason to believe that GMOs are more prone to this sort of problem than any other food out there? I certainly can’t think of any, and GMO opponents have never presented any arguments that I find at all compelling. It always boils down to “oh, they’re just so different, and that scares me!” I reiterate a point I made before: we’re not just grabbing random genes and shoving them into our food, hoping that they do cool shit. We know precisely what changes we’re looking to make, and what those changes are supposed to do.
Look: we eat dozens and dozens of species of organisms in a typical diet. Each species has tens of thousands of proteins in it. We’re exposing ourselves on a daily basis to somewhere on the order of hundreds of thousands to millions of different proteins. Now, we take one protein from species A - where we’ve worked with it for years and learned all about it - and put it into species B, and somehow, this tiny blip in the ocean of different proteins is supposed to do all sorts of nasty, unspecified stuff that will kill us all. It’s just ridiculous on the face of it.
Yes, we need to test. Yes, we should be careful. Yes, we should monitor, watch for problems, and investigate anything that looks suspicious. But to say that this technology should be banned, or given scary warnings, or feared, simply because we cannot be 100% certain ahead of time that it will never ever cause any problems of any kind whatsoever - just like every single other invention and technology in the history of the planet - is just silly and childish.
Hammer, meet nailhead.
Well, but we don’t have all the data and don’t know what will happen in the future.
Epigenetics could make things worse, or make them better.
There should be labels, or warnings, or bannings. Or maybe not. We just can’t say with any precision.
More testing is called for. I don’t know how much is enough, because I’m just relying on my own mind here, but certainly more than we’re doing now, because things could change.
I just don’t agree with people making definitive statements of safety, even if they haven’t made them, because it’s wrong.
In cases of fear, uncertainty and doubt, extra paragraphs are reassuring.
And don’t call me Shirley.
Or like I said, Achilles gets the turtle anyhow. The opponents of GMOs trying to make the gaps infinite are only good for a **limited **intellectual exercises, but in practice things like the golden rice will be used after all the testing that was done.
Monsanto, a company that has produced some of the most infamous poisons of the 21st century, DDT, Agent Orange, and PCBs, all proven to be extremely hazardous to human health, and all considered safe by Monsanto’s “scientists”.
Yeah, like hell I’m going to trust GMO foods. Monsanto has ungodly lobbying power which it uses to circumvent regulations. In theory the system should prevent this, but the system itself is corrupt to its core.
Keep drinking the government approved koolaid my friends, the same government that approves of this so called “war on drugs”, fluorinated water, privatized health care system, and unjust wars in the middle east.
This “Mr. Government says its safe so it must be safe” mentality is getting old, really old.
Most GMO foods are strictly regulated or outright banned in Europe, gee, I wonder why?
Ignorance mostly. That was easy. Because the evidence is there also to convince the experts in Europe that what the EU is doing so far is bananas.
http://www.euractiv.com/science-policymaking/chief-eu-scientist-backs-damning-news-530693
They are polite there, but in reality “contested” means debunked.
We’re sorry - this is Great Debates. You want Conspiracy Theories, down the hall and on the left.
I freely admit I don’t know jack about this stuff. But it seems that most of the posts here are just looking at food safety, without looking at the collateral damage. I’m pretty sure the government wouldn’t allow the sale of food that contains poison, or will make my kids look like a plant. But what about the side effects that have nothing to do with the food itself?
If Monsanto makes corn that is resistant to pests, and is harmless to humans, great. But according to easily found articles like this, that’s not all it’s doing. It’s making corn that is resistant to weedkiller, so farmers can use more RoundUp or whatever, and the result is great for the corn, but the collateral damage is the rise of super-resistant weeds that no longer respond to normal amounts of weedkiller, which I guess will force farmers to use GMO seed if they don’t want to kill their corn along with the weeds. I’ve also seen articles about detrimental effects to beneficial insects.
The article I cited is over a year old, and it noted some dissent among scientists. I have no way of knowing whether the guys against GMOs are hippie wackos, or the guys for it are akin to the scientists hired by tobacco companies to say cigarettes aren’t addictive or carcinogenic. But I’d like to see more discussion on the side effects.
Easier method: Europe’s regulatory bodies tend to follow the precautionary principle. If there is a potential of harm they decline to allow use.