PCBs were known to be hazardous. It was assumed that the companies that employed them would not spill them wherever they pleased.
DDT is hardly ‘proven to be hazardous to human health’. Sucks for birds, however.
Agent Orange is bad for human health. Yes. Monsanto didn’t invent the stuff, however.
Not that any of this matters, the chemical industry of Monsanto was sold off decades ago.
Yeah. Sure. Monsanto ranks #206 on the Fortune 500 and somehow has the power to control the FDA, the EPA and all the state environmental agencies. Sure.
Conspiracy theory. How about you start by proving that there is an actual health risk instead of Conspiracy Theory nonsense.
That was a big old spray and pray of conspiracy nonsense.
Because Europeans can be a stupid and panicky as Americans sometimes. This is the same EU that will be banning Silly Putty soon.
“Super-resistant weeds” due to overuse of herbicides have been a problem well before introduction of GM crops (see history of atrazine use as one example).
I don’t doubt that use of Roundup-Ready crops has speeded development of Roundup resistance, and that plans to introduce other herbicide-tolerant crops will increase resistance to those chemicals. Farmers have to avoid relying on quick fixes and use other good agricultural practices to limit resistance development. But the battle against weeds and bugs is an ongoing one that will not be eliminated if we avoid genetic modification techniques; properly applied, those techniques will help us at least keep pace with resistance, and potentially overcome it.
By the way, European scientists haven’t all succumbed to the anti-GMO frenzy. Europe’s Food Safety Authority has been heavily critical of the flawed Seralini study that purported to show increased tumor development in rats given GM feed. And British scientists are working with Canadian counterparts to develop high anthocyanin tomatoes to market as noted earlier.
When they made the ruling, however, the understanding of GMOs and their potential was very much in it’s infancy. Now that it’s been banned for awhile, they aren’t in a hurry to reverse the ban because it would harm European economic interests.
But that’s an entirely different topic altogether.
I haven’t addressed this side of things so far for a couple of reasons: first, because this thread was more focused on health and safety, and also because I am less qualified to speak on the ecological and business end of the topic than I am on the molecular and cell biology issues. However, way back at the start of the thread, I did say that there are legitimate questions and discussions to be had surrounding the use of GMOs. In particular, I think we need to be careful about environmental impact - foreign genes making it out into the wild and impacting the communities out there. This sort of thing needs to be addressed on a case-by-case basis. For instance, a modified potato gene is more likely to make it into wild relatives in the Americas than it is in, say, Ireland, where there are no wild relatives.
You will also not hear me defending Monsanto. Not because I think they’ve made dangerous products - they haven’t - but because they’ve pulled some incredibly boneheaded and shortsighted business moves that have gotten themselves, and by extension, in the public mind, the entire technology badly demonized.
As I said, genetic modification is a tool, and what matters is what you choose to do with the tool. Monsanto seems to be intent on using it as a hammer to beat up and rob anyone that stands in their way (though I do think the issues are a bit more complex than that), and while one could argue about whether or not that’s good for business in the short term, it’s clear that they’ve really poisoned a big chunk of the public mind against GMOs, which sucks.
Sure, it’s entirely possible there is little distinction - I’ve repeatedly told you I don’t have a good answer to this question.
But that doesn’t really address the limits of our knowledge regarding these changes and the usage of phrases like “GM foods are safe”.
My point is that making blanket statements that they are “safe” is exceeding our knowledge.
It’s possible the old methods have introduced problems and it’s possible they haven’t and it’s possible new methods will introduced problems and it’s possible they won’t - but we don’t even know if a test plan is adequate due to our lack of knowledge regarding diet and gene expression.
You’re off by a century, DDT is safe for humans but environmental impacts were unclear; Agent Orange was only ever made on commission from the US government, and we learned about the toxicity of PCBs back in the 1930s, almost immediately after they hit the market. Keep in mind that this was before the EPA existed, and there was little regulation. If you want to claim that Monsanto considered any of this safe past the point that the rest of the world did, or (more meaningfully) that scientists on Monsanto’s payroll somehow got different results than independent reviewers, then I’d like to see some evidence.
Of course, if you knew the first thing about the available research, you would realize that this is a complete non-sequitur. Even if scientists on Monsanto’s payroll were all corrupt and biased, there’s still independent review. Like, this metareview compiled by the European Union, reviewing studies funded by the European Union. You know, that group that you claimed is against GMOs and banned them. What did they have to say? Ah.
The main conclusion to be drawn from the efforts of more than 130 research projects, covering a period of more than 25 years of research, and involving more than 500 independent research groups, is that biotechnology, and in particular GMOs, are not per se more risky than e.g. conventional plant breeding technologies.
Whoopsie! :rolleyes:
But here’s the thing. There’s no reason not to trust studies associated with big agribusiness. Why? Because their results are, by and large, the same! Financial conflict of interest shows absolutely no correlation to significantly improved results! This is exactly what you’d expect if, you know, the system worked! And while the study did find a correlation between those with professional affiliations, there’s a reason for this. To take it from Kevin Folta at University of Florida:
I think the other factor is that industry recruits independent experts to independently reproduce findings. They show in house that x+y=z. They then hand the test to a university, that finds x+y=z. If the test fails in-house, then it does not go for independent verification. That will skew statistics too, because the outcomes of the university-based tests have already been demonstrated. The reason the results frequently agree is because they are frequently correct.
Well, it’s a damn shame we’re not talking about regulations here! It’s also a damn shame you provide zero evidence for your hefty claim. Especially given that, you know, Monsanto is about 1/8th of the size of Exxon-Mobil. How are they doing on their campaign against climate science? Sure, on a regulatory front they’ve convinced a lot of stupid politicians, but on the scientific front? The thing we’re examining here? The actual evidence in peer-review? Fuck-all. They’ve gotten nowhere with 8 times the funding of Monsanto.
:rolleyes:
Look, buddy, we don’t believe that GMOs are safe because the government said so. I mean, christ, did you even read the thread? No, we believe they’re safe because the massive preponderance of evidence available in the peer-reviewed literature, including numerous large meta-reviews, all come to this exact conclusion. The evidence that it’s safe is overwhelming; the evidence that it’s unsafe is virtually non-existent.
Oh, by the way: fluoridated water has very real positive health benefits among members of the population who do not or cannot practice good dental hygiene and absolutely no documented negative effects at the concentrations used. Learn something about dose-threshold toxin response, will you?
And this “Mr. Government says it’s safe but they’re always lying therefore it’s unsafe” mentality is just fucking stupid. It didn’t get old, it was born dying of old age. You’ve essentially said "I don’t trust corporations or the government, therefore the vast amount of available peer-reviewed literature on the subject, the long-term safety studies, the examinations of biological mechanisms, the metareviews that try to summarize the entire field are all meaningless. That is absurd. You do realize that just because an “evil” corporation and the government think something is good doesn’t make it bad, right? Like, if Monsanto and the government both came out in favor of antibiotics, it wouldn’t mean that antibiotics are unsafe or bad for you? Seriously. This stupid fallacious attitude towards the government is just downright dumb.
Because the governments in Europe banned them before the glut of extensive research was performed, and now see no reason to unban them due to the way it would cut into various parts of the European agricultural industry. Or they, like you and so many other people, are simply misinformed and clueless. It’s certainly not because there’s good evidence showing GMOs to be harmful. Because that doesn’t actually exist.
I’llsay. The main article it cites is a pretty bad paper with a lot of misleading claims and assumptions. HuffPo is generally less “rational news source” and more “hardline organic source”, with the same biases and lack of analysis you’d expect. Taking GMO (or medical/health) information from them is like taking Climate Change information from WUWT - if it isn’t flat-out lies, it’s usually going to be distorted in one way or another.
Well, here’s a good hint: tobacco science never had a large consensus. They had a handful of hand-picked shills who were willing to sacrifice their careers for cushy jobs pushing bad science. Climate denialism never had a large consensus. They had a handful of people who basically failed on the whole line, either due to industry influence or just because they couldn’t get past their own biases. AIDS denialism never had a consensus. They had a handful of people with personal or professional biases. GMO safety? There is a massive consensus, and metareview after metareview shows it. It’s the former, not the latter.
Did you ever respond to my point that using “safe” they way you’re using it is a gigantic equivocation fallacy that attempts to use “safe” in the most hair-splitting way possible? And that we’re talking about a reasonable approximation of “safe”, you know, the way we use “safe” in everyday parlance? Yeah, I don’t know for sure that my TV won’t explode. I still think it’s safe though.
Not sure if I responded to it but I understand your point.
I think there is a continuum of safety levels of products and I think we know more about the dangers related to TV’s than we do about the effects of new gm food products.
New allergens have been identified recently and more will be in the future - so how can we accurately describe the level of safety when we lack much information?
The best example was actually detected early with testing, as pointed before, it is thanks to that testing how we can say that the safety levels of this are higher than with many other products.
You have a shrinking point with the repeated complaints about safety, but in practice the safety levels you are talking about are already here and constantly being checked. The “lack of information” is not at the levels you assume. Like Xeno with the turtle he has a shrinking infinite point made to prevent Achilles from getting the turtle, but in practice Achilles gets the turtle anyhow.
For practical reasons GMOs will continue to be used. The evidence to claim that it is unsafe is not there or was misleading to begin with. After the explanations and caveats it is OK to report that this is safe to use.
At this point we’re just going around in circles. None of these are things that haven’t been addressed already in this thread. The fact is that for any given object, we can only test for dangers we think of. In labeling something “safe”, what most of us generally mean is “this object has been tested on most or all scientifically plausible vectors by which it could cause harm and has not shown any such harm”. Obviously, these vectors could change over time for GMOs, as our understanding grows. But you know what? It could change for literally everything else. It could be that the radiation from TVs and computer screens give us skin cancer.
But that’s not a valid reason to call someone out over referring to them as safe! Because you know, like I know, like everyone else knows, that when we call something safe, we don’t mean “we have absolutely proven, 100%, beyond any reasonable doubt, that this object cannot possibly cause any significant problems”. Because if we held things to that standard, the list of things that would pass would be empty. Because that standard is impossible to fulfill. Yes, we lack knowledge. However, using that lack of knowledge to completely stymie scientific advancement is asinine.
Also, with regards to your claim that we know more about the safety of TVs: what do you base that on? The gigantic list of safety studies on TVs? :rolleyes: The degree to which GMOs have been investigated is astounding. We know more about the safety of GMO food than we know about the safety of non-GMO food. This is why people are looking at how you’re using words like “safe” and saying, “hey, hang on a minute, that’s not right!”.
Regarding the “safe” term:
I believe it is qualitatively different than the TV example because we are stirring the pot in an area that we know there are implications and we also know that we do not understand all of those implications.
That is a key difference.
I’ve never ever claimed we need to be 100% certain.
Just that there are enough unknowns about gm foods that we can’t make blanket statements like “they are safe”.
We actually don’t know there are any implications. Some people and groups keep saying there are based on no evidence. We have tested everything we can think of for 20-30 years. “There might be a problem we don’t know about sometime down the road” is not a reason to consider something unsafe by default.
Except that’s exactly how safety of every product currently works. We test for what we know. If we find something in the future, we begin testing for that, too.
Of course they know, that’s why they test for allergens and toxins, etc.
The plant/crop will not have the same makeup of toxins/allergens/proteins that it previously had due to the changes, and those changes can be negative for humans when consumed.
Furthermore, scientists are discovering new allergens and cross reactions all the time which means their previous tests must not have been complete.
Here’s what the Food Policy Research Center at U of Minnesota (funded by USDA) says: http://www.foodpolicy.umn.edu/policy-summaries-and-analyses/genetically-engineered-foods/
“Summary of Findings:
Safety of GE foods is evaluated through the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s voluntary consultation process.
The FDA can take action if food, including GE food, presents a demonstrable safety risk post-market.
GE safety studies focus on toxicity, adverse nutritional changes, allergenicity and horizontal gene transfer.
Scientific studies testing whole GE food show some mixed results so statements about all GE foods being safe or unsafe are unwarranted.
Whole-food feeding studies for GE safety assessment are tricky, as plant varieties are diverse in chemical composition and the effect of the introduced genes or changes caused by them are hard to tease out.
Strong agreement exists for better testing protocols, especially for allergenicity and whole-food feeding trials.”
I’m going to emphasize this bit which supports my position:
“Scientific studies testing whole GE food show some mixed results so statements about all GE foods being safe or unsafe are unwarranted.”
Hey, let’s see what the experts say about testing for allergic reactions:
“Experts in this area have called for the development of animal testing models to predict the allergencity of foods.”
In other words “Current testing may not be as effective as we’d [this particular study’s authors] like. We should develop more sensitive testing.”
While I can’t disagree that better testing is always good, I don’t consider this study to say that we should label GMOs or ban GMOs because it provides no evidence saying that they are unsafe, only that they think better testing is warranted.
That is an incredibly meaningless statement and brings nothing to the table. Since we can’t say, according to this study, that GMOs are safe and we also can’t say that they are unsafe, then we must just say that they “are.” Which is ludicrous.
We have tests, studies, and metastudies of the GMOs that have been put to market for upto 20 years and we haven’t found anything harming about them, despite a whole lot of wishful thinking. Unless you can show with evidence that there is something causing more danger than our traditional crops, I will stay with “GMOs are safe.”
Really? We understand all of the implications of cathode ray tubes? We understand all of the implications of LCDs? In case you’re wondering, all I’m doing is taking your assertion here:
…and applying it. The nice thing about this claim, here, is that you can move the goalposts forever. I’d appreciate it if you fixed them a little bit. If you provided a point where you don’t think there are too many unknowns. Because the list of unknowns for any given subject is potentially infinite. Like I said, with the TV example, how do we know that the light radiation given off by them doesn’t exacerbate cancer? How do we know that unleaded gasoline doesn’t cause autism? There are infinite unknowns about everything we come into contact with. As said previously:
Because any other definition is worthless.
Yes, but so could any mutation, natural or otherwise. You have done nothing to establish a higher risk for GMOs than for other foods.
Yes, but this applies equally to GMOs and to non-GMO food, so therefore it is completely meaningless. Please stop making arguments that apply to all food and acting as though they were meaningful when talking about GMOs. They aren’t.
I’d find this a lot more believable were it not for the many metareviews with hundreds to thousands of papers that all came to the conclusion that statements about GE foods being safe are absolutely warranted. I don’t know what these guys were examining that came up with negative results. For all I know, it could be the Seralini paper, or the Carman paper, or some similarly awful piece.