well, they are. Genes were modified in some way. There’s nothing inherently different about any of the ways to modify genes. Instead of shrieking and yelling about the method used to produce the altered organism, each altered organism should be carefully checked to ensure it is safe to eat, is humane (for altered animals), and is environmentally friendly. Regardless of the method used to generate it.
Well, thanks for being upfront about honing in on the NAS out of expediency.
It still doesn’t explain why you are 1) downplaying the NAS’ previously stated position on GM food safety, and more importantly 2) doggedly ignoring pro-GMO positions emanating from approximately 270 other scientific bodies around the world. Word salad aside, you still haven’t explained why they don’t count in your estimation. Are we only supposed to pay attention to international scientific groups when they take positions on climate change, but not on GMOs? Or is it that “expediency” thing again?
Keep hammering on the themes of Corporate Bad and Science Has Been Wrong Before. They’re classics in the world of woo and pseudoscience. Some people are impressed.
What “woo” or “pseudoscience” are you suggesting wolfpup is trying to promote here? AFAICT, he hasn’t alleged any problems at all with the current science on GMO:
Saying “it’s important to keep studying this subject scientifically because we don’t know everything about it yet” is not at all the same thing as saying "we don’t know everything about this subject yet and therefore it’s probably very DANGER DANGER DANGERous". The latter of those two positions is indeed anti/pseudoscientific, but what wolfpup is advocating here AFAICT is the former one.
What I have referred to repeatedly in this thread (and the one on GMO labeling) is the bankruptcy of woo/pseudoscience tactics to slam genetic modification (the pseudoscience itself has gotten some attention in this thread as well).
If you had been reading along, you would’ve noticed repeated emphasis on the “we can’t trust industry” angle, which ignores a large body of research conducted by non-industry funded sources and long-term safe and successful practical applications (referred to on this board by me and others repeatedly). It boils down to an attempt to paint the issue as The People vs. Monsanto (or other bogeyman du jour). Sorry to have to mention it again, but this is precisely the tactic used by antivaxers to condemn vaccines - saying we can’t trust Big Pharma, and ignoring all the non-Pharma funded research and clinical experience validating the safety and effectiveness of immunization.
The “science has been wrong before” meme is a favorite not just of anti-GMOers, but also climate change denialists, anti-fluoridationists, HIV/AIDS deniers and similar folk.
The same crowd just loves the shill gambit, which wolfpup has also heavily played. Don’t address what your opponents are saying, but instead insinuate they’re on the take and shouldn’t be trusted.
I am perfectly willing to engage with GMO opponents on the levels of facts and evidence, but these (and other) tactical evasions grow tiresome.
Actually, he has claimed safety is an issue (see the GD thread), but I don’t recall him citing a single study or concrete example.
Neither I nor anyone else supporting useful agricultural biotechnology applications has suggested we don’t need to continue research, enhance safety testing where applicable and work to lessen any detrimental environmental impacts, so I get the impression you are constructing a large and unwieldy strawman.
What I do not find helpful is the FUD-spreading from the anti-GMO side, which at best relies on arguments that are irrelevant and deceptive, and at worst (which is often) is dominated by appeals to junk science and outright falsehoods.
:rolleyes:
[QUOTE=Jackmannii]
you would’ve noticed repeated emphasis on the “we can’t trust industry” angle
[/quote]
But AFAICT, nowhere is wolfpup in any way suggesting that challenging the trustworthiness of “industry” invalidates or casts doubt on any actual scientific findings.
[QUOTE=Jackmannii]
Sorry to have to mention it again, but this is precisely the tactic used by antivaxers to condemn vaccines - saying we can’t trust Big Pharma, and ignoring all the non-Pharma funded research and clinical experience validating the safety and effectiveness of immunization.
[/quote]
Actually, it precisely isn’t. The antivaxers are appealing to the “we can’t trust Big Pharma” notion to insinuate that the scientific findings supporting vaccination are inherently wrong or suspect. But I don’t see wolfpup disputing any scientific findings about GMOs.
[QUOTE=Jackmannii]
The “science has been wrong before” meme is a favorite not just of anti-GMOers, but also climate change denialists, anti-fluoridationists, HIV/AIDS deniers and similar folk.
[/quote]
I don’t see why it should bother anyone to acknowledge that science has been wrong before, unless that uncontroversial fact is being misused to dishonestly support a false claim that science is wrong now.
Which, again, I don’t see wolfpup doing here.
[QUOTE=Jackmannii]
The same crowd just loves the shill gambit, which wolfpup has also heavily played. Don’t address what your opponents are saying, but instead insinuate they’re on the take and shouldn’t be trusted.
[/quote]
I can see that you’re (not unreasonably) upset about antiscientific rhetorical tactics applied to GMOs, but ISTM that as far as this thread is concerned you’ve built yourself a straw opponent.
Thank you, Kimstu, I think you’ve summarized it accurately.
This matter of the untrustworthiness of big business keeps coming up, and I think needs clarification. It says nothing about the science, but it says a lot about the risks to public policy.
When I say that the agriculture, biotech, chemical, and food industries can’t be trusted I say it because it’s manifestly true as is glaringly obvious from their track record and the track records of most big industries, especially the ones like tobacco or fossil fuels where public policy controversies have emerged and have raged fiercely. And what has happened in the past is that with billions if not hundreds of billions of dollars at stake, honest science has been subsumed in the public perception by politics and massive PR campaigns.
All I’m suggesting as I’ve said at least three times now is the need for prudent caution going forward in setting public policy, to ensure that policies align with sound science and not with the interests of industry. In point of fact I’ve said nothing different – or at least never intended to say anything different and don’t believe I have – than the same call for prudent caution that was stated by the National Academy of Sciences and by the international journal of toxicology that I quoted in the thread in GD. But for some reason Jackmanni chooses to interpret my comments differently than those of the cited papers, and has constructed some kind of strawman trying to label me as an anti-science crackpot despite the fact that I’ve always been the diametric opposite of that.
To answer one of the questions that Jackmannii asked – why am I fixated on the US National Academy and the equivalents in other major nations – the answer is twofold. First, from personal experience in other areas of science I’ve come to regard the NAS as a highly creditable, expert, and cautiously conservative source of public policy guidance and scientific consensus in areas where such consensus is possible – not surprising, since this is why they exist and why they’re funded. Second, with respect to the dozens or thousands or whatever the hell it is number of alleged cites that Jackmannii claims to have to support whatever case he is trying to make, I’m trying to avoid a “my cite versus your cite” kind of argument and trying to settle on a respected national resource that we can all agree is reputable and competent. And no such absolute, simple consensus has yet emerged there with respect to the future of GMOs.
Meanwhile the disturbing truth remains that it’s really appalling how many discreditable organizations have piled on to the profitable pro-GMO bandwagon – Heartland, AEI, CEI, the food, agriculture, and chemical industries and their lobbyists, and utterly fraudulent propagandizing filmmakers like Martin Durkin. As a matter of fact it’s almost predictable – find a scummy right-wing lobby group, and they’re most likely all over GMOs as God’s gift to mankind.
It’s a fact which I say again does not in itself put GMO safety in question, but as always when powerful lobbyists get involved, it puts sound public policy at risk, and it does mean that GMO advocacy is a position that has been badly tainted by the company it keeps. If I felt that this has discredited GMO and the science that supports it I would say so. I do not, and I have not. It’s simply a fact that should cause any reasonable person to be cautious and demand that public policy and public safety be guided by evidence from the most trusted and unimpeachable possible sources. Currently such sources are far from unequivocal, and they call for further research and continuing testing as biotechnology evolves, a prudent approach that everyone should agree with. And if everyone does, then perhaps Jackmannii will kindly cease trying to imply that I’m a crackpot equivalent to a global warming denier.
Which reminds me of another point:
It should be borne in mind that when it comes to climate change, vaccination, fluoridation, and HIV/AIDS, there isn’t a huge commercial incentive for persuading the public to accept them.
Climate scientists don’t stand to make billions of dollars from public acceptance of the reality of climate change. Doctors on average actually lose money on vaccine administration, and even pharmaceutical companies don’t make much from vaccines as compared to other drugs (and until quite recently, vaccines tended not to be profitable at all). There isn’t a fluoride manufacture industry making huge profits from water fluoridation, nor would it be massively profitable to pretend that AIDS is caused by HIV if it actually wasn’t.
So it takes an extra level of irrational woo to suspect that the science on those issues is somehow being “tainted” because “we can’t trust industry”. There isn’t really a logical motive for “industry” of any kind to try to force the scientific consensus onto an unwilling public on these issues.
But the same does not hold true in the case of GMOs. I’m not denying that anti-GMO partisans in general tend to be just as woo/crackpotty in their arguments as antivaxers, climate deniers, etc. And again, I don’t think the existence of a powerful industry with powerful incentives for promoting a product automatically discredits or “taints” scientific research on that product. But it does provide an additional reason for caution.
Sometimes, we can’t in fact trust industry: look at the tobacco companies and studies on smoking and cancer, for instance. That doesn’t mean we should automatically disbelieve anything industry tells us—and indeed, I don’t see wolfpup or anybody else here suggesting that we should disbelieve existing science on GMOs.
But a scientific consensus requires especially careful scrutiny on issues where huge business interests stand to make huge sums of money. There’s nothing “pseudoscience” or “FUD-factor” about acknowledging that simple fact.
Same old.
A reminder about the OP:
I have made the effort both to present quality science on the issue and to dissect some of the junk science promoted by anti-GMOers.
None of the anti-GMO/biotech-hesitant posters appearing in this discussion have bothered to do so.
So, to follow up on the OP, I’ll ask:
Got science?
By the way, it is true that individual physicians don’t make much money on vaccinating patients and vaccine sales are a small percentage of overall drug company income. It is also true that the vaccines are a $24 billion market and profits have risen from the darkest days when companies were dropping their vaccine units. So according to the Can’t Trust Industry logic, we should suspect and fear vaccines, right?
I guess what bugs me is that the anti-GMO crowd seems to be one and the same with the organic farming crowd, and seems to be as much engaging in a sort of reverse marketing campaign by questioning GMOs as they are legitimately questioning GMOs.
In other words, if it was more of a three-fold argument- GMO foods/crops vs. “conventional” foods/crops vs. organic foods/crops, then it would seem a whole lot less sketchy and shady to me.
Instead, we have the organic crowd calling out the GMO stuff in a very shrill voice, which makes sense, as they have the most to gain by doing so. Every person who eats conventional food who doesn’t give a rip about pesticides or fertilizers, but who is scared of anti-GMO propaganda becomes another consumer of their products.
It really seems to me that where you sit really depends on your views on science- if you don’t trust scientific studies, and prefer to believe in whatever woo that Whole Foods is pushing in their stores, then you’ll be anti-GMO. If you believe in science, then you won’t be too bothered by the GMO stuff.
And… wolfpup, wanting a guarantee of future safety is absurd. Reasonable precautions and solid science is about the best you can hope for, in ANY scientific endeavor, agricultural or not.
[QUOTE=Jackmannii]
None of the anti-GMO/biotech-hesitant posters
[/quote]
:rolleyes: Straw.
:rolleyes: Straw.
Like I said, nobody here is denying that “anti-GMO partisans in general tend to be just as woo/crackpotty in their arguments as antivaxers, climate deniers, etc.”
Another example of the junk science being promoted by the anti-GMO/GMO-hesitant/Just Asking Questions/Fear Monsatan crowd is Don Huber’s Mystery GMO Time Bomb Organism.
Is it a bacterium? A virus? A prion? Some other, novel form of life? Whatever it is, Huber has sat on his “discovery” of a pathogenic organism supposedly spawned by agricultural genetic engineering for years now, refusing to let other scientists examine and sequence it.
“The highlight of Huber’s presentations is his description of a new menace that is supposedly having devastating effects on plant, animal, and human health, causing, among other things, reproductive failure. But even after a number of years, he can’t describe whether it’s a virus, a fungus, or a prion; if it has DNA or not – he’s now taken to calling it an “entity.”…
To make matters worse, Huber has refused to share his data, the organism, or his methods for culturing the organism with the broader scientific community. He has published nothing about it that could be subject to peer review, and he’s not allowing other scientists access to the information they need to prove or disprove his hypothesis…
What bothered me most of all was the audience’s reaction. By the end of his talk, describing his fears for the health of the next generation, Huber had choked up and was almost crying. Many in the audience reacted the same way – scared silly, weeping in fear for the future. Huber is soft-spoken, grandfatherly – he exudes humility and engenders respect. He’s undoubtedly done some good, valuable work in his career. But don’t be mistaken – whatever has lead him here, his current path is deceptive, misleading, and irresponsible. Unless and until he can stick to the science and offer solid evidence for his extreme claims, he must be called to account for the way he is scaring people, and his tour of terror must end.”
Note that Huber’s speaking tours have been sponsored by organic, alt health and anti-GMO groups. Note also that criticism of him has not centered on who stands to gain financially by promoting his claims, but on the basis of lack of evidence, implausibility and refusal to let his work be reviewed by others.
Ironically, anti-GMOers praise Huber as a “Famous Scientist” and emphasize that he has a PhD(!). It somehow escapes them that better-known and equally or better-credentialed scientists think he’s full of it.
Anyone else got “science” demonstrating GMO health hazards that they’d like to discuss?
Andromeda Strain. :eek:
Well, for the record, I believe in science, I don’t shop at Whole Foods, I’m not anti-GMO, and I’m not too bothered by the GMO stuff – that is, not any more bothered that I am by all the other crap that the food industry has been doing, much of which they’ve been secretive or dishonest about, often in collusion with Congress and federal agencies. And also for the record, I’m not an “organic food” nut and never shop for it specifically. If I buy something labeled “organic”, which is rare, it’s usually just because it looks better than the other stuff.
And I agree with your last paragraph. Reasonable precautions and solid science is the best we can hope for. I suggest we go about ensuring that we have them.
Why, yes, as a matter of fact, now that you mention it.
But let’s be clear about what I’m saying, because you seem to make a specialty out of distorting it. You’re asking me to show you science demonstrating scary hazards that I just finished telling you don’t exist, as far as we know. But what I am going to show you – some of it for the second or third time – is that reputable organizations are calling for prudent caution going forward in this endeavor. And I’ve already cited the reasons that this is so important to do – because the totality of the agribusiness, chemical businesses, and food production businesses is absolutely vast and their reputation for self-serving dishonesty, as I’ve continually been able to show, is reprehensible. And it’s truly astonishing to see the remarkable consistency with which disreputable lobbyists shilling for this industry, like the Heartland Institute, American Enterprise Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute, and many others, are staunchly on the pro-GMO bandwagon.
And it’s not even just GMOs. Food additives have been and to some degree continue to be a problem. Thanks to lobbying, additives like Olestra, BVO (brominated vegetable oil), azodicarbonamide, synthetic hormones (rBGH and rBST) and many others have all been FDA approved yet they are banned in many other countries, all for good reason. It’s no coincidence that there are food standards, including GMO regulations, throughout the industrialized world, but GMO regulations are almost completely lacking in the US, the one major country that has extraordinarily powerful commercial lobbyists.
Cutting to the chase. I agree that all types of genetic modification including those arising from traditional breeding all carry some element of theoretical risk. It’s not a simple dichotomy between GMO and non-GMO, but some methodologies pose significantly greater risks and unknowns. For instance, the National Academy of Sciences rates both biolistic and agrobacterium transfers of rDNA from distantly related species to be at the highest level of risk of unintended genetic effects, on a par with chemical mutagenesis. Conversely, simple selection breeding is at the very lowest level of risk.
So it’s just simply foolish to take the approach that biotechnologies that the NAS places at the very top of the risk chart should be dismissed as not worth worrying about. Which is why their last report on the matter made the following key recommendations pertaining to GMO safety – and I understand that a new report is forthcoming and I’ll be happy to acknowledge new information when it’s out. These are just the first sentences to give the flavor of what they’re saying, the full text is at the link:
-
The committee recommends that compositional changes that result from all genetic modification in food, including genetic engineering, undergo an appropriate safety assessment.
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The committee recommends that the appropriate federal agencies determine if evaluation of new GM foods for potential adverse health effects from both intended and unintended compositional changes is warranted by elevated concern.
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For those foods warranting further evaluation, the committee recommends that a safety assessment should be conducted prior to commercialization and continued evaluation postmarket where safety concerns are present.
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The committee recommends the development and employment of standardized sampling methodologies, validation procedures, and performance-based techniques for targeted analyses and profiling of GM food performed in the manner outlined in the flow chart shown in Figure 7-1.
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When warranted by changes such as altered levels of naturally occurring components above those found in the product’s unmodified counterpart, population-specific vulnerabilities, or unexplained clusters of adverse health effects, the committee recommends improving the tracking of potential health consequences from commercially available foods that are genetically modified, including those that are genetically engineered
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A significant research effort should be made to support analytical methods technology, bioinformatics, and epidemiology and dietary survey tools to detect health changes in the population that could result from genetic modification and, specifically, genetic engineering of food.
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Research also is needed to determine the relevance to human health of dietary constituents that arise from or are altered by genetic modification.
Executive Summary | Safety of Genetically Engineered Foods: Approaches to Assessing Unintended Health Effects | The National Academies Press
This is much in line with the recommendations of the Journal of Toxicological Sciences paper which for completeness I’ll quote here again. And all of this needs to be understood in the context of a vast and powerful industry which, fundamentally, does not want to do any of these things and will not do them unless forced by government action.
The level of safety of current BD foods to consumers appears to be equivalent to that of traditional foods. Verified records of adverse health effects are absent, although the current passive reporting system would probably not detect minor or rare adverse effects, nor can it detect a moderate increase in common effects such as diarrhea. However, this is no guarantee that all future genetic modifications will have such apparently benign and predictable results …
… A significant limitation may occur in the future if transgenic technology results in more substantial and complex changes in a foodstuff. Methods have not yet been developed by which whole foods (as compared with single chemical components) can be fully evaluated for safety. Progress also needs to be made in developing definitive methods for the identification and characterization of protein allergens, and this is currently a major focus of research. Improved methods of profiling plant and microbial metabolites, proteins, and gene expression may be helpful in detecting unexpected changes in BD organisms and in establishing substantial equivalence.
Nope. I (as well as the OP) was asking for any good science showing evidence of harm from GMO foods. Any demonstrated harm. Allergies, sterility, tumors, extra fingers and toes, susceptibility to alien abductions…anything at all.
Again - you have no science to present. Instead, like a broken record we have you c&ping a 2004 position statement from a single organization that has previously come out in support of the safety and usefulness of agricultural genetic modification (and whose precautionary advice most would find reasonable. It’s not as if regulation and safety testing aren’t already in place, though we might argue about how much is necessary and whether scrutiny should also apply to “conventionally hybridized” crops which get a free pass, but have (rarely) been linked to significant health problems). And again, you are refusing to acknowledge similar conclusions from the approximately 270 other such organizations around the world, while sputtering about how Industry Bad and labeling those with well-founded beliefs different from yours as corporate shills.
Do you really think that repeating this claptrap over and over makes it any more valid?
While on the subject of dubious and dishonest tactics (which I’d love to stop discussing, except that no GMO opponents/JAQers are willing to talk about the science), there’s “X country(ies) have banned GMOs, which means there’s got to be something fishy about them”.
Except that these bans are not science-based. And it’s worth noting that many countries that have such bans in place also permit sales of meat from animals fed GM grain (the horror).
Once more - got science?*
*recognizing that for some, all the evidence in the world will not be convincing.
If the advice is reasonable, then why are you so upset about wolfpup’s quoting it?
[QUOTE=Jackmannii]
While on the subject of dubious and dishonest tactics (which I’d love to stop discussing
[/quote]
Actually, you seem to be so eager to keep on denouncing dubious and dishonest tactics (which in itself is an admirable position) that you don’t even notice when the poster you’re arguing with isn’t actually using such tactics (which is somewhat less admirable of you).
I think just 3 options is a bit myopic. Let’s consider…
[A] GMO factory farming
** conventional factory farming
[C] organic factory farming
[D] conventional small farms
[E] organic small farms
[F] backyard gardening
[G] urban gardening
etc. etc.
Frankly, I’m still not convinced that [D] is a good plan for our long-term survival, let alone [A] or **.
I don’t fit into your classification. I’m a huge fan of science as a tool for discovering truth. Both of my parents have PhDs (one in Physics, one in Biology) and they taught me about patiently collecting data in carefully controlled experiments (unlike TV and movie “science” where you just put a drop of something into a test tube and BING the computer tells you the answer). But one of the biggest truths we’ve learned by using the scientific method is that humans have been on this planet for about 200,000 years and we evolved as gregarious, nomadic, hunter-gatherers. It’s only in the last 5% of our history that we’ve started screwing around with our food supply, and only in the last .1% that we’ve applied the scientific method to try to figure out what the down side of this “experiment” might be. What really scares me is that this experiment has no control group.
FWIW, I’m convinced that AGW is real, evolution is real, the moon landing actually happened, 911 wasn’t an inside job, Earth is not the center of the universe, and there’s no solid evidence that GMOs are harmful when eaten. But that doesn’t convince me that screwing around even more with a system that is already screwed up is a wise decision for the long term.
Apples and oranges, though? I mean, I agree with you that the whole system of a global industrial-corporate food industry is a comparatively new departure in human sustenance history. But that’s not about genetically modified organisms per se.
Nor does it imply that, even if “screwing around with” traditional methods of food production is bad in some way overall, the production of GMOs is necessarily worse than other forms of “screwing around with” food.
Furthermore, it’s only fair to note that traditional methods of food production themselves have hardly been uniformly successful and reliable throughout history. Famines, anyone?
The syllogistic fallacy is yours. Applying a different word to the same process does not make the process different. Appling a term like “broad class of natural things” is no guarantee that all “natural” genetic modification will be safe.
“Genetic Enginnering” is the purposeful application of natural processes. It could be regarded as analogous to natural food components, that stuff that exists in foods that is poisonous or attractive or has no effect on other organisms.