GMO Discussion Raised In the Worst Company in America Thread

A forum for discussing world news, ideas, concepts and possibly controversial topics including religion and politics. WARNING: may contain strong opinions or strong language. This does not mean anything goes though!
Forum rules
Please read the Forum rules and policies before posting.
Post Reply
User avatar
Seriously Unserious
Master Superior
Posts: 1418
Joined: Sun May 11, 2008 11:53 am
Location: Wandering around aimlessly in Lynchgate Woods
Contact:

GMO Discussion Raised In the Worst Company in America Thread

Post by Seriously Unserious »

Just so everyone gets the context of this, it was originally posted in Worst Company In America and this was my reply. This discussion of GMOs however is a new topic and should be in it's own thread, which Sofia pointed out to me so here it is.
Sophia wrote:
Seriously Unserious wrote:I've seen reports done by independent geneticists who are finding now that GMO foods can actually modify the DNA of any organism that ingests is, including round up ready crops that end up causing the organism that eats this food to produce roundup in its own body
I have previously asked that this thread not derail into a debate about GMO food, and I'll reiterate that request more strongly. The current scientific consensus is that GMO food is safe, so if you want to debate that, please do it somewhere other than this thread, as it's taking things into a whole different controversy that is too far off topic.
I understand that, but correct me if I'm wrong, isn't the thread titled "Worst Company In America"? so wouldn't that make discussions about companies and their products be actually on topic? The context of the mentioning of GMOs was simply as part of a discussion of why Monsanto is one of the worst companies in America/the World (the topic of this thread). How can that be discussed if we can't discuss one of their biggest products?

Since you brought up an article about GMOs I'll post this video also about GMOs which I was getting some of my info from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-IJikX1144

As you might have already guessed from my earlier posts in the Worst Company In America thread, I do not find GMOs to be proven safe, and there is a great deal of scientific evidence that they are not safe.
User avatar
Sophia
Concise and Honest
Posts: 4239
Joined: Thu Sep 12, 2002 9:50 pm
Location: Nowhere in particular
Contact:

Re: GMO Discussion Raised In the Worst Company in America Th

Post by Sophia »

Personally, I certainly agree that research into GMO foods is a good thing. I don't agree with anyone who makes the assertion that it isn't even necessary to do research. However, as the article I cited says, at the present time, the scientific consensus is that GMO food is safe. There are apparently ample studies backing that up; the Wikipedia article I linked in my original post has a lot of sources cited, and quotes from quite a few prestigious scientific organizations, so I won't bother to just copy and paste links, because they're right there if you're interested in following them up.

I'm not denying that there is evidence on the other side, too, but, at the moment, it's in the minority. The thing about the scientific consensus is, as you probably know, it can and will change over time. As new studies are performed and new evidence is gathered, the consensus of scientists may well shift. So, while I won't say that I think you're flat out wrong, or that your argument is without merit, because I don't know enough to really believe either-- I am personally pretty ambivalent about GMO-- I will say that at the moment the majority of scientific opinion is not on your side.
User avatar
Seriously Unserious
Master Superior
Posts: 1418
Joined: Sun May 11, 2008 11:53 am
Location: Wandering around aimlessly in Lynchgate Woods
Contact:

Re: GMO Discussion Raised In the Worst Company in America Th

Post by Seriously Unserious »

I will remind you that the scientific consensus was, at one time, that DDT was safe too, yet once proper research was done, and the evidence of using it and filling up our ecosystems with it for a few decades came it, the scientists who told us it was safe were proven wrong. I'm not saying that all GMOs will be like DDT or anything, but the risks of a similar mistake happening are just way too high. DDT is a chemical, it will break down and dilute over time, it will not spread and reproduce. GMOs, on the other hand, are living organisms, and like all living organisms, they will reproduce, spread and interbreed with (or drive into extinction) their natural equivalents. The danger here is that these organisms are not being tested to prove that they are safe to release into the environment, our home, and that they will not have an adverse effect on the rest of the organisms that live here. These organisms have the potential to trigger a mass extinction event and companies like Monsanto feel that it is not necessary to test them, just toss them out into our home, make billions and billions in profits and hope their own product doesn't kill us off.

If you watched the video I linked to above, you will note that the report he's quoting from shows genetic research into, for example, GMO corn which has a pesticide right in the corn, and that lab animals who ate the GMO corn had their genetics altered by to to produce pesticides in their own bodies, basically producing thier own poison to make themselves sick. Since most corn in the USA that is not specifically certified organic or states as non-GMO is GMO that doesn't make me too eager to eat corn products.

So, basically, the problem I have with GMOs are these:

1- they are made from unnatural combinations that could never occur naturally.
2- they mix genetic structures from many organisms and can cause allergies to foods that a person believes is safe to eat. In my case, I am allergic to dairy products so I use alternatives like rice milk, coconut milk and soy milk. Soy beans are another one of the most heavily GMO'ed foods around, and many of the GMO variants are spliced with nuts and/or peanuts, which I am allergic to, and which many people have a deadly allergy to. What effect does this have on one's allergies, does this mean once safe foods are now allergens? Can a person die from eating a GMO version of a safe food that was spliced with a food for which the person has a deadly allergy to? This leads me to my next major objection:
3- There is no labeling of GMO foods and no disclosure of what organisms have been spliced with what other organisms. So if the questions I raised in point 2 are valid, then one has no way of knowing if the next bite of food is going to be deadly poison or not, because that information is being withheld from us.
4- This is the biggest point, there has been little or no testing done on the effects of GMOs. Are they safe? I don't know, nobody does, yet they're being used, safety unknown. Monsanto's already published that they're policy is to just assume all GMOs produced by them are safe, no testing or proof needed according to Monsanto.
User avatar
Sophia
Concise and Honest
Posts: 4239
Joined: Thu Sep 12, 2002 9:50 pm
Location: Nowhere in particular
Contact:

Re: GMO Discussion Raised In the Worst Company in America Th

Post by Sophia »

I agree with the position that research needs to be done, and would certainly disagree with a claim that no research was necessary without testing.

I probably wouldn't put it past Monsanto to claim that their GMOs are all safe without even need to do any testing, but I'd appreciate a citation on that one. Monsanto's own website says:
http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/pages/food-safety.aspx wrote:Are foods and ingredients developed through biotechnology (or GMOs) safe to eat?

Yes. Plants and crops with GM traits have been tested more than any other crops—with no credible evidence of harm to humans or animals. As consumers ourselves, we place the highest priority on the safety of our products and conduct rigorous and comprehensive testing on each. In fact, seeds with GM traits have been tested more than any other crops in the history of agriculture – with no credible evidence of harm to humans or animals.
Their stated position on the utility and necessity of testing seems to be contrary to what you're claiming their stated position is. Monsanto website is likely not a reliable source for facts about GMOs, but I would presume it's a reliable source for their own stated public position on the issue.

Anyway, in general, to make the claim that there has been no (or almost no) research done on the safety of GMOs is false. Numerous studies have been done and put into peer-reviewed journals and have put forth enough research and evidence that organizations like the American Medical Association and the British Royal Society of Medicine have attested to their safety. A report put out by the European Commission (the executive body of the EU) said "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."

You're absolutely right the scientific consensus on a matter can and will change as new research is done, and new research should be done. Science is not about dogma, and we should never be 100% sure of anything. However, that said, the scientific consensus just didn't spring out of nowhere, and it (and the weight of research that went into forming that consensus) is not just immediately going to vanish. Certainly not because of a single Youtube video or the single research paper he's citing or any other one single source. We can discuss and debate new research, and that's interesting and a worthy pursuit. However, making hyperbolic claims with scant evidence do nothing but harm your cause.
User avatar
Seriously Unserious
Master Superior
Posts: 1418
Joined: Sun May 11, 2008 11:53 am
Location: Wandering around aimlessly in Lynchgate Woods
Contact:

Re: GMO Discussion Raised In the Worst Company in America Th

Post by Seriously Unserious »

If you watch the video, it shows a screenshot of their website stating "There is no need to test the safety of DNA introduced into GM crops" and then goes on to state "There is no need for, or value in testing the safety of GM foods in humans. So long as the introduced protein is determined safe, food from GM crops determined to be substantially equivalent is not expected to pose any health risks."

That was right on the Monsanto website. I did a search and couldn't find that statement so I'm assuming they took it down sometime after that video was shot.

I found a link to the abstract of the report Mike Adams was quoting from throughout his video, tittled Exogenous plant MIR168a specifically targets mammalian LDLRAP1: evidence of cross-kingdom regulation by microRNA.: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21931358
User avatar
Sophia
Concise and Honest
Posts: 4239
Joined: Thu Sep 12, 2002 9:50 pm
Location: Nowhere in particular
Contact:

Re: GMO Discussion Raised In the Worst Company in America Th

Post by Sophia »

You do yourself and everyone else against Monsanto's practices a disservice focusing on a claim you can't actually back up (and, until you produce a primary source, you can't) because when you can't back it up your whole argument-- and, by extension, the whole argument against Monsanto-- looks weaker. And I, personally, would rather not have the whole argument against Monsanto look weaker because they do engage in so many bad things, so please either produce an actual citation for this claim or stop making it.

Here's an article I found that I think is pretty interesting, and reinforces the existence of a broad scientific consensus:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... e-monsanto
User avatar
Seriously Unserious
Master Superior
Posts: 1418
Joined: Sun May 11, 2008 11:53 am
Location: Wandering around aimlessly in Lynchgate Woods
Contact:

Re: GMO Discussion Raised In the Worst Company in America Th

Post by Seriously Unserious »

Sophia wrote:You do yourself and everyone else against Monsanto's practices a disservice focusing on a claim you can't actually back up (and, until you produce a primary source, you can't)
:? HUH? I would think a video containing a screenshot of their website would be a primary source. That video was posted 2 years ago, obviously Monsanto could easily have changed their website since then, and most certainly has, many times over. A company the size of Monsanto isn't going to have a static web site that remains unchanging for years at a time.

Do a search using:

Code: Select all

monsanto "there is no need to test the safety of"
as your search terms, you'll find no shortage of different articles and websites citing that quote. That strongly indicates that it was indeed on Monsanto's web site in the past but was removed. Based on the number of articles siting that particular claim and the overall tone of them, I'd say Monsanto removed that claim only after taking heat for making it.

That was very easy to find, in fact, here's the search I just did, using those exact terms: https://ca.search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt ... args=0&b=1

Regardless, if a screenshot of what was on their website back in 2012 isn't enough for you and if you can't figure out that a the contents of a website can be changed in the 2 years since that screenshot was made, then there's no point in arguing this point any further. In fact, I'm getting the distinct impression that your nitpicking at any excuse to discredit what I'm saying and I won't take part in that.

So let's move on to new points.

That article raises some good points, but while he mentions how there are all these scientists and all these reports claiming GMOs are proven safe, I didn't see him cite a single one. He also claimed that all reports claiming that GMOs are not safe are flawed, and sites a single example of a flawed report. That report was not scientifically done and proves nothing one way or the other. ON the other hand, Mike Adams deals in specifics in his report, and the research he sites was done by teams of dozens of genetic engineers at independent labs on a project that was not funded by the corporations making GMOs or any of their parent/subsidiary organizations. I posted the link to the abstract of the report, which also has options to get the full thing.

Mike Adams, in covering that report, raises some very compelling questions into just how safe many GMOs really are. Rememver, DDT was "proven safe" by "scientific consensus" until that consensus was proven wrong when people, plants and animals started getting sing and dying from DDT poisoning. These are also the scientists that tell us a drug is safe and effective (the FDA in the USA for example) and then when people start getting sick and dying of that drug with few or no noticeable benefits from those taking the drug and have to retract that claim and approval. Many of these drugs eventually go on to become illegal narcotics, such as LSD, and heroin to name 2 examples.

The difference is these are artificial things, which will eventually be cleaned out of our environment when we stop using them. In other words, we can recover from such "oops" moments when the scientists make a mistake or are being corrupt. GMOs are living organisms, which bread and do their best to survive. Once released into the environment, they will continue to breed and survive so any of them that prove to be unsafe or even downright deadly, and "oops" moments here and there's no going back, it's not going to just go away like a bad chemical will. It will breed and spread and has the potential to become the worst disaster the human race has ever seen.

In this rush to market and rush to profits model, these GMOs are not being tested nearly as thoroughly or as impartially as we need them to be. The report I posed a link to shows just one of the very real risks of the rush to spread and sell GMOs before the are well and thoroughly proven safe. Also, given the track record of Monsanto, I do not trust them to come up with products that are safe, I do not trust any products that company comes up with, or any claims that company makes. Monsanto has established a track record of producing deadly products and lying, bullying and lobbying to keep them on the market for as long as possible for me to trust that company. Monsanto has long since worn out any credibility it may have once had as an organization.
User avatar
Chaos-Shaman
High Lord
Posts: 2642
Joined: Wed May 03, 2006 7:26 pm
Location: The Gates of Hell

Re: GMO Discussion Raised In the Worst Company in America Th

Post by Chaos-Shaman »

just a quick comment into this... DDT saved millions of lives, that's all we had at the time, and it still isn't as evil as some say it is. if we ever get another plague, I'd like to think the pros of such chemicals out weigh the cons. I think it's natural for man to play with nature, some things turn out good, then bad, some turn out good, some are just terrible. it can be easily argued that a sick population is money making too, just look at all the crap they have to sell to the sick, trillions of dollars going toward health. if its money they want... why bother with these things, there is more money in the sick. just an out of the box view....... there should always be an overview on everything we do but we shouldn't be afraid of playing with stuff, that's human nature.
keep your gor coin handy
User avatar
Sophia
Concise and Honest
Posts: 4239
Joined: Thu Sep 12, 2002 9:50 pm
Location: Nowhere in particular
Contact:

Re: GMO Discussion Raised In the Worst Company in America Th

Post by Sophia »

Seriously Unserious wrote:Regardless, if a screenshot of what was on their website back in 2012 isn't enough for you and if you can't figure out that a the contents of a website can be changed in the 2 years since that screenshot was made, then there's no point in arguing this point any further.
It's a screenshot that doesn't say when exactly it was taken, doesn't include an exact URL, and doesn't even include the entire page to establish context. And, of course, I'm quite aware that a website can change in 2 years-- in fact, that's the source of this difficulty to begin with. So, stop acting like I'm making some outrageous demand when I really just want something that can be reliably verified.

Rather than continue to pointlessly argue, because that really is not my goal at all, I'll just show you what a credible (at least, by Wikipedia's standards) citation looks like:
http://web.archive.org/web/201304022115 ... afety.aspx

There's definitely no point in letting this get overly heated or acrimonious, especially when I'm not exactly ardently advocating anything. I hope I'm not coming across as arguing a firm pro-GMO position (or, worse, pro-Monsanto, yuck) though, because that isn't my intent and it isn't my position. As I mentioned above, I'm actually rather ambivalent about GMO food and I think Monsanto is awful regardless because of their abusive business practices. I'm just trying to make sense of things.
Seriously Unserious wrote:Mike Adams, in covering that report, raises some very compelling questions into just how safe many GMOs really are.
For example, this. You linked to a scientific paper that Mike Adams used to raise some compelling questions. But then we have this article that purports to be an account of the entire ugly saga and says the paper cited there had nothing to do with GMOs at all and that the connection to GMOs was made by journalists and not scientists. It's hard to know what to believe in cases like this, so I just try not get lost in hyperbolic claims or media buzzwords and make some sense of this issue in my own mind by looking where the preponderance of evidence points.

The opinion of the scientific establishment (or the anti-GMO people, or Monsanto, or whoever) is certainly not going to change due to a debate on a forum about old dungeon crawling video games, anyway. :mrgreen:

(I'm not going to touch the DDT thing at all. It's up to you whether that's off topic for your thread or not.)
User avatar
Chaos-Shaman
High Lord
Posts: 2642
Joined: Wed May 03, 2006 7:26 pm
Location: The Gates of Hell

Re: GMO Discussion Raised In the Worst Company in America Th

Post by Chaos-Shaman »

(I'm not going to touch the DDT thing at all. It's up to you whether that's off topic for your thread or not.)
:)
I will remind you that the scientific consensus was, at one time, that DDT was safe too, yet once proper research was done, and the evidence of using it and filling up our ecosystems with it for a few decades came it, the scientists who told us it was safe were proven wrong. I'm not saying that all GMOs will be like DDT or anything, but the risks of a similar mistake happening are just way too high. DDT is a chemical, it will break down and dilute over time, it will not spread and reproduce. GMOs, on the other hand, are living organisms, and like all living organisms, they will reproduce, spread and interbreed with (or drive into extinction) their natural equivalents.
keep your gor coin handy
Post Reply