GMO's How much do we really know?

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I never accused of saying that, I just wanted to point that out. And as far as immunities go, it isn't bad for our health normally, since the code is mostly taken from other eatable plants. It's mostly making them less appealing to the bugs and making them more resistant to certain diseases. An example that has been tested was making tomatoes immune to some tomatoplant affecting disease by using code from a chicorei plant (hope this is how this plant is called in English, don't really know). So the desired effect isn't bad. It's the side effects of what the combination of that piece of DNA with the rest of the DNA of the target plant will give that worries me.

The researchers know of some codes what they do on their own, but this isn't the only thing DNA does. The total effect is mostly greater than the sum of the parts. DNA parts don't only produce their own effect but also work together to produce other effects and it is this part that hasn't been studied enough and where we still lack alot of knowledge.

 

But everything should be labeled, that's the point I'm making. If you think there's nothing to worry about, that's fine, yet free market works through being able to chose. If have certain demands on a product, I want to have a reliable standard of labeling, which makes me able to chose. I know that in some countries, it is too late anyway, and they just have to accept the facts as they are. But I do not want that situation. If someone does not care about, that's fine. And yes, it is a marketing ploy. They offer what the consumer wants. It's a fundamental principle of a free market. That does not mean, one has an utopic romantic picture of nature, I fancy myself to have none, if one wants to have certain standards involved.

They put big labels "From this country" (mostly the country one lives in), like it would imply some "quality", on everything anyway. If someone is ready to pay for beef, which didn't have that huge amount of hormons and anabolica fed, my good consumer right to have a equivalent label guaranteed (with controls that they do not cheat). And really, they messed many times up with food-production, why should anyone don't be free to have demands.

And not that it does not involve also economical risks. Think about the BSE-hysteria. They systematically had to kill herds of cows, which caused a lot of financial damage, even ruined livelyhoods. No wonder, all involved parties got more careful.

 

I think some of what I wanted brought out has been missed. For instance this quote from the magazine article.

These crops of GM altered foods are spreading through nature etc and contaminating unaltered crops. This in itself should raise a flag of concern for our generation. Huge corporations are dominating our food sources, and eventually there will be no unaltered food sources.

 

Ummm, there already are no unaltered food sources. All the food you eat guess what, had been modifed and crossbred and altered for hundreds of years. Eat corn, sorry it ain't like that naturally. We have altered every food source on the planet. Accept that as an absolute fact. Not argueing that we shouldn't be careful, just don't get an idealistic view of "normal" food.

 

Jschild.. I assume you are saying you wouldn't mind being killed now, because everyone dies eventually. Or that you won't miss your foot, because it could have been your leg.

Yes, foods are altered over breeding. But as I said, you can't breed tomatoes and squid, and the crux of what we are saying you have said yourself...'over hundreds of years'

These things have been a slow eventual process (unless there has been very strong human interference), and there has been time to notice the effects of this come into play. Not so with GMO.

 

Manus, apparently you didn't read my post. I clearly said that we should be careful. But you say we had hundreds of years to notice these changes but guess what? Until recently no one was looking for the effects our changes made. People just grew the food and ate it, they didn't do studies to see if they caused cancer or created more allegies or anything like that. The procedure was even more blind than now. The chances that any GM foods will cause health problems is very very small. Again, not saying that we shouldn't study them for long term health effects or label them. Then again, if it means the diference between people starving to death because their soil is too poor to grow normal wheat and them being able to eat thanks to a GM modified wheat that can grow in very poor soil I'll let the people eat. In contries that can afford a choice we should have everything labeled though.

 

Jschild, I notice you said we should be careful, but you obviusly have a lot less care about these things than some of us, this is what I was reffering to.

Sorry, but I think you may be misinformed. Allthough we didn't have government or corportaion backed scientific teams researching these things back then, we didn't need to. The average person concerned themselves about these things. It was common knowledge which things we're needed to be avoided, and the fact is that there weren't as many things that did need to be avoided, becasue man wasn't interfering with artificial means, like chemicals and GMO.

There are books on herbology which the average farmer's wife owned in far more detail than most biologists would be aware of these days, and the food was generally safer. People knew what to avoid so they avoided it, it became removed from public consumption and so there was no need to avoid it. There is a lot less harm crossing or selectively growing a couple of different strains of corn, than there is crossing trans-genic species (or even a tomatoe and chicorey plant) by artificial means, means that could in no way occure without our interference, and the plants were just that, the plants, plants our digestive system had become attuned to over long periods of time. You mix some unnatural combinations in there, ones which react and mutate in uncertain ways, and our systems cannot handle them. Also, as I said before, people were not using the high level of poisonous, toxic chemicals to be used in their food production process, so there was no need to test these things.

Look, I'm not just spouting all this out of unwarrented ignorant fear, I've read reports and analysis, I've looked up some f the chemicals and processes used, and it is a danger.

But it is totally unethical as well. You tell me you don't have a problem with the scenario Kitiara was talking about, or even with a plant that has been designed to self-destruct even if it doesn't contaminate other crops, and I will be surprised. It's wrong, and it is equally as wrong to lie to the public about what you are selling them. As I said before, even if you feel that some people's concerns are unwarrented, I still think that they should be told the truth.

Besides, the reasons you have cited are not the true cause for starvation, that is a political thing if anything, those countries have plenty of resources, they are just appropriated and misused by the ones in charge. I also read of a situation in a country near ethiopia. The soil was fine, just it wouldn't retain any water because the trees were all being cut down as saplings, because the government spent all the peoples money on weapons, and they had nothing else.

These are the situations to be adressed. Building some hyper-resistant food which may end up causing more harm than good is not the answer. Just look around us at what happens to the local environment, and all the species, humans included, that depend on it, when a new species is introduced into a climate or eco-system that has not adapted to contain it (especialy one which is more resillient than it's neighbours). If anything, this will only make matters worse.

 

GE if anything is a far more accurate procedure than random mutations. Your common wheat has a 6n genotype. Pretty dodgy to me, yet people are worried about one extra gene that inhibits some specific pathway in bacteria. Speaking of microbes, bacteria and viruses mutate very rapidly and quite happily by themselves *and* are everywhere. Antibiotics facilitate this, yet we still take them. Like I said, way too much paranoia. Smoking and saturated fats are the big dangers, worry about those.

@ Kitiara,

Sounds like a bad sci-fi movie, doesn't it? Aside from the obvious legal minefield, the worst I could see happening here is a takeover of some farmer's section due to the higher weather and disease resistances of the offending GM crop. Flavr-savr tomatoes are not likely to drastically affect the ecosystem. However, strong regulations obviously need to be set so companies don't go releasing these things as they like. Contamination of non-GE crops is a big issue.

 

Tassadar, I don't think I speak only for myself when I say that I don't smoke, nor do I eat much food with saturated fats. Nor do I take anti-biotics. I would rather be full of bacteria, as are we all, than full of drugs.

Besides, wheat can only mutate so far, it cannot mutate into cuttlefish, which I believe, has been experimented with. And it is not accurate, only the gene itself is known, not how it reacts with the rest of the plant, nor how that will affect people or animals who eat it, nor the effects upon the eco-system at large- it is a new, introduced species. Almost all other events of this have been disastrous.

It is not paranoia if it is true.

It is illogical to say that you shouldn't worry about one thing because something else bad may happen to you, especially when those bad things are no longer a concern to the individuals of which we are speaking.

Besdides you are missing the point. It is unethical to lie about this. People should know.

I also think it is unethical to design a living being to die after a year, a fraction of its normal life-span, simply for profit.

 

Well, actually, no. Monsanto has financial problems now, not only because of the GM-plants. But no one wants them. Where some farmers plant it, neighbouring farmes are afraid the GM-plants pollute theirs and make their plants unsellable. And in most countries, there's simply no market for GM-food. And as far as I know, in other countries it came to riots because of the involved surprises with GM-food. Or at least, financial problems associated with it, which came as some surprise for the planters.

Not to say, that I understood the details, but one of the GM-modifications in some crops alters the ability of reseed of crops. That means, farmers have to buy more new crops to reseed. And the reseed-ability is one of the advantages of crops, afik.

 

Concerning the reseeding, look at my post some up. That was something they already did before GMing. For years the "Boerenbond" in our country sells grain (and maybe other plants) to farmers without the ability of reseeding. And since the farmers don't have much choice but to buy from them, they are forced to spend lots of money on them.

But it's true that this non-ethical tactic can be implemented on a much larger scale and on a larger gamma of products because of GMing.

 

That is not the same thing as the gene-splicing techniques used to make genetically-altered food. I read an article about this over a year ago - which covered splicing brazil nut genes into crops like corn. This caused a problem - the altered crops started producing the toxins which cause anaphylaxis (a deadly condition) in sensitive people. It's bad enough that you have to read every label - but now they're making previously safe foods toxic? And you don't even know which ones those are? How many of the food sensitivities we're seeing show up in unprecedented numbers these days are due to this tampering? Count me as against it.

 

No, the foods that cause allergies are NOT all known. New ones crop up every year. To those that are sensitive, these foods ARE toxic. And it's not fun watching a loved one nearly die from exposure to something they previously could eat, but some moron decided to "improve" it.

 

@ Manus
I agree, the interface between the scientific community and the general public needs to improve. It is unfair on consumers to have GMOs shoved on supermarket shelves and not know what has been altered and what might happen. It is also true that the interaction of the new gene with the transgenic organism is not completely known. Certainly there could be potential complications. Death by GMO. Companies definitely need to take more responsibility when they release their products. Don't know where the one-year life span human being came from though - probably belongs in the cloning thread.

@ Sojourner
Genetic polymorphisms are a valid point. Drugs get withdrawn from clinical trials because of this. The proportion of the population who have problems may be small, but nevertheless this is quite serious and needs to be brought up.

To summarise, the release of GM crops into the field (disease/environmental resistance, improved taste, etc) is definitely a calculated risk, just like Edward Jenner trying out his cowpox vaccine. GM crops are not going to end world famine. That's just something you write at the top of your grant application to secure next year's funding. They are not *VITAL*, and therefore do not need to be made. However, from a scientific point of view there is a lot to learn from GE crops, but they should remain in the lab. I may not be too concerned about consuming GM crops, but the next guy might be. And the farmer next door definitely will be.

My stance is different on medically related GM products (milk, bananas, etc). These *are* very important and the benefits outweigh the risks.

 

Add to that list now corn, soy, apples, peaches, pears, strawberries, etc. Do you realise the peanut allergy was virtually unheard of decades ago? You have to ask what's changed to cause that. And now the fruit is causing trouble!

 

If you only knew how much paperwork and rules and laws and registrations and approvals and on and on we have to prove and test and apply to the government just to work with genetically altered food here in Denmark.

To be honest I understand the fear of long term effects, but we are not putting poison, vira and bacterias in the food, so nomatter what comes in your stomach, the worst I can imagine would happen is that your body despite all our testing your body finds in hard to digest and you'll have to eat an extra meal the following day.

Allergies could probably also be caused by, living in too sterile invironments, or put populary, we eat to little dirt...

 

@ Nobleman

That's right, we are getting far too *clean* for our own good, to the point where our immune systems attack anything foreign, even things that are not a threat to the host.

Dangerous food allergies are different though, some people are unable to metabolise certain compounds in food (liver enzyme polymorphisms) and this causes severe reactions in the body.

Paperwork is bollocks. It wastes time that could be better used on doing research. We are going to be ruled by lawyers in the future.