Really. You don’t recognize answers from essentially the same playbook as the supporters of bitcoin in the other threads… you included? 
Every organism since the first one is ‘genetically modified’. That’s what evolution tends to do.
This post doesn’t make any sense.
They have found exactly that in their testing, which is why not all foods get approved.
When they make a change, they run a complete chemical analysis and check for a change in the level of known allergens and toxins in that plant.
Anything that is outside some boundaries of known safety levels are then tested on rats and chickens for 90 days.
Sometimes foods don’t pass this testing (one example is the nut/soybean combo with allergens).
Were you unaware of this info?
I don’t see the similarity.
Here what is being claimed is that our current testing methods of GM foods are exhaustive enough that no problems will get through.
Not sure how that claim relates to bitcoins - but I would be interested in your further explanations in that thread (as long as you don’t use the word “dimwit” or “revolutionary”).
The testing that GMO foods go through almost certainly makes them safer than fatty red meat. So we should pull red meat from the shelves before GMO food.
So you think it’s almost impossible for some issue to get past the current level of testing for each new change?
I think that focusing on absolute safety is unwarranted and a waste of resources.
I haven’t seen anyone here say that it’s impossible for “some issue” to arise someday.
Let’s say (for the sake of argument) that a future genetically modified grain/vegetable/meat enters the commercial market and (unlike any such food introduced over the past 20 years) proves to cause an allergy or other health problem. Would that mean that “GMOs are unsafe” and should be banned?
If so, should we ban all new drugs on the theory that an unexpected problem will eventually slip through safety testing and harm will ensue (you can count on that being a recurring problem)?
Also, 90-day rat/chicken feed tests are not the only sort of testing that GM food undergoes. Take the case of golden (vitamin A-enriched) GM rice, which has been in development and testing for about 20 years:
“1.In-depth investigation and understanding of the endosperm carotenoid biosynthetic pathway modification, which accurately explains the source of the golden colour of Golden Rice.
2.Less than 10 transgenic events (from about 2000 created) were carefully selected to be able to fulfil regulatory requirements regarding the genetic structure.
3.Gene expression profiling of thousands of genes was carried out, showing no unexpected changes or gross perturbances in the expression profile as compared to the parent material.
4.Allergenic potential has been ruled out at the prediction level using bioinformatic analysis of transgene proteins. The report is available online at Allergenonline.
5.High digestibility of the transgenic proteins in simulated gastric fluid has been demonstrated, further substantiating the claim of lack of allergenic potential.
6.It has been shown that Golden Rice diverts only a minuscule amount of carbon into carotenoids, so that changes in compositional analysis are minimal.
7.Various taste trials have been conducted which have not detected taste differences to the parent material.
8.Tests have been conducted to determine β-carotene bioavailability and bioconversion to retinol (the most significant source of Vitamin A) by feeding deuterium-labelled Golden Rice to adults in USA as well as to a small group of children in China. Both trials were highly successful in showing that the human intestine is indeed capable of extracting β-carotene out of Golden Rice in a highly efficient manner .”
Should we disregard all this evidence and hold up the project even longer (contributing to many more cases of preventable blindness in Third World countries) because there’s no 100% certainty that an “issue” might come up one day?
About the golden rice.
I do think it is indeed bad to see many over here and in the developing world opposing to the introduction of golden rice, but IMHO there is a reason in the background that is not being discussed much, the early green revolution made possible by people like Norman Borlaug was made possible thanks to one very important factor: Borlaug gave his seeds away freely to all who asked.
I would say that if there is ever a need to start offering subsidies to the likes of Monsanto a case like this one is. Monsanto has plans to offer the rice for free but only for very poor farmers, there is a cutoff level where Monsanto then asks for money. Well, if they are not going to be as humanitarian as Borlaug at least then I think some help should go to the corporations for their expenses in developing the new crop in exchange for Monsanto and others to relax their no replanting policies.
Aside: This to me looks really uglier than the DRM in recorded media. Some critics like to point out that it only allows for products to be Defective by Design, while in the media world we are just talking about not having the freedom to modify or reuse the content you purchased, in the developing world the demands by Monsanto means only dependency and no flexibility for other countries to develop derivative crops more suitable to their local conditions or needs.
I do not agree with the reported reasons why other countries are opposing to the deployment, but I do think that one big way to dissolve that opposition is to look at the past, the early old fashion genetically modified wheat crops from Borlaug were adopted quickly thanks to being free and for having no restrictions to further experimentation by the countries adopting the crops. It makes business sense to make countries pay and do the regulations what Monsanto is asking for the use of the golden rice, but that does not make humanitarian sense IMHO.
I objected to the phrase “any GM food available to consumers is safe”.
That’s what my involvement in the discussion is about: is testing so exhaustive that we can make such a blanket statement?
I personally don’t think so.
The unknown will always be unknown. It is literally impossible to test for every possible harm that could possibly be done to every possible human being. This was part of the problem with the Starlink corn I mentioned earlier. The protein in the modified corn failed one of the safety tests (to be specific, it took just slightly too long to digest in an artificial stomach, which is a concern because there’s some indication that there’s a correlation between slowly-digested proteins and developing allergies, though the correlation is weak enough that this is almost certainly not a problem here). The FDA demanded that the makers of the corn prove that it couldn’t provoke an allergy. In anyone. Which is clearly impossible.
The question is not “can we be absolutely certain that there is no possibility of harm ever anywhere to anyone?” because the answer to that will always, always be “no”. There’s not a product that was ever produced by anyone in the history of humanity that could pass that test. The only reasonable test that can be done is “do we have good reason to believe that we’ve checked for every possible problem that we can think of that is likely to arise, and are we satisfied that there’s no reason for concern?” By any such reasonable standard, GMOs are every bit as safe as every other foodstuff out there.
You say this as if each GM change is the same as every other one.
They are not all the same and new ones are being created all the time.
This isn’t just 1 process that can be tested and cleared, it’s a unique event for each new gene/plant combo change.
And every new construct is required to undergo the same testing before approval.
Like I mentioned earlier, the demand for arbitrarily high levels of safety from GM foods is an unfair double standard. They are safe to the extent that if you close your eyes and pick up any random item at the grocery store, the non-GM risks you face (e.coli or salmonella, heavy metal poisoning, improper storage temperatures, pesticide residues, etc.) empirically outweigh the GM risks by several orders of magnitude.
In any case, it is possible to consider each crop individually given that there are only seven crops in the US that are available to the consumer. Canola, corn, cotton, papaya, soybeans, squash & sugar beets. Apart from squash, every other crop has an 80%+ market share. That we’ve not been able to find any problems with GM crops despite such mind bogglingly widespread use means there’s no reason to think they are not as safe as conventional crops.
Why is it unfair?
If a company wants to make money by altering a plant to give it certain attributes and then sell it to the consumer, the burden is rightfully on them to make damn sure they don’t introduce any negative side effects.
If they don’t want to spend the money to be certain, then they shouldn’t be in that business.
I don’t feel compelled to accept any part of the risk.
You’re just making stuff up. You don’t know which risks are greater because you don’t know what each new modification is.
You still don’t seem to understand: each modification is a new event and the side effects are unknown until tested, and even then, depending on the techniques used, the testing may not be adequate.
There can be short term effects and long term effects. If, hypothetically, there was a small increase in some cancer due to a GM food, do you really think it would have been figured out already?
This stuff is complex, the scientists are still doing studies to understand possible impacts, etc.
My comparison to climate change denialism and creationism was deliberate because the same tactics are being used; spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt through an appeal to ignorance.
At a certain point, we know certain things. We know evolution is real and we know the planet is warming and we know the GMO foods available on the market today are safe, just like we know the earth revolves around the sun and that things are made from atoms. We’ve far exceeded the standard burdens of proof in all of these instances and the debate should move on from these foundational truths and into areas where there is genuine room for debate.
The only reason why these issues are still perceived to be controversial is not because the science isn’t there, it’s because of politically motivated attacks that want to keep the issues in the spotlight.
It changes nothing, except perhaps the straw in that argument. Nobody ever argued that side effects can’t happen. The argument is that GM foods are safe. Nothing more.
Electric car batteries *can *cause cancer.
So do you also believe that, say, electric cars should be labelled with a warning on the dash saying “The American Cancer Society requires that all passengers be made aware that the air the are breathing has been in proximity to high voltage rechargeable batteries”?
After all, it’s perfectly true. Right? And labelling doesn’t make people think it might be dangerous. Right? And if air in electric cars doesn’t cause cancer, well that’s up to the manufacturers to educate the public on. Right?
I notice that you avoided answering this question, despite quoting from the post that it was in.
Would you care to give it a go now?
Seriously? You can’t think of single other question that remains when assessing safety? Perhaps you shouldn’t be debating this topic.
The safety of a process or object is not predicated on whether it’s *possible *for it to cause harm. It is predicted upon the *likelihood *of it causing harm and the severityof that harm.
It’s *possible *for electric car batteries to fall on somebody’s foot, causing bruising, which dislodges and causes a stroke that in turn causes the person to make an error in their work as a nuclear engineer which in turn results in a global thermonuclear war.
If you think that’s impossible, please explain why you think that?
And if you don’t, then you must agree that electric cars should carry warning labels that their use may result in a thermonuclear Armageddon. Right?
You can’t have it both ways. You can’t demand that GM food be labelled because it’s possible for a side effect to get past testing that might kill an individual, while at the same time declaring that electric cars are safe even though it’s possible that they could cause a nuclear war that will kill billions.
Of course in the real world where sensible people live, we don’t evaluate safety based upon arguments from ignorance and extreme scenarios. We base it upon evidence and the established likelihood of risk calculated based on extensive trials.
In that world, GM food are safe. Despite >25 years of widespread use, there is no evidence that GM food is unsafe. To the extent that anything can ever be declared safe, then GM food is safe.
Simple question RaftPeople, can you name 5 food products that you consider to be safe, and explain how they are safer than GM foods? When answering, bare in mind that even pure water has results in around one death/year, which is infinitely higher than the zero deaths/20 years caused by GM foods.
If you can’t name 5 food products that are safe, then your standard of safety is clearly absurd an not the standard usage or the usage in this thread.
Electric car companies want to make money by altering a car to give it certain attributes and then sell it to the consumer. Therefore the burden is rightfully on them to make damn sure they don’t introduce any negative side effects.
If they don’t want to spend the money to be certain, then they shouldn’t be in the electric car business.
You don’t feel compelled to accept any part of the risk.
Therefore you support banning electric cars. Correct?
After all, Toyota has never spent the money to establish that the Prius is perfectly safe. And we know that it’s *possible *for Prius batteries to cause cancer.
So why should we be compelled to accept any part of that risk?
Can you please state clearly whether you support banning electric cars? And if the answer is no, can you explain why?
I just want to point out that you completely ignored all of the points I made in my post addressing your concerns, instead choosing to shift the goalpost from how much testing is required to “prove” something is safe to a new concern about how each GMO is different.
Another point to make is that in many cases (yes, not necessarily all cases), the new introduced protein is one that we’ve already been eating for years. In the case of the Bt pesticide, for instance, the toxin has been used for many many years as a pesticide, long before anyone thought to have it expressed within the plant itself. It has a long record of safety for the general public (partly, as I understand it, because it’s only active in a basic environment, like the insect gut, and completely inert in an acidic environment, like the mammalian gut). So it’s not like we’re just blindly grabbing stuff at random and shoving it into your food. We already know a lot about the genes being used and how they affect humans. I agree, of course, that testing should still be done and care should be exercised.