[onoway]

video takes about 13 seconds to get going..

The WTO declared the moratorium on GMO seed illegal but France has been sticking to its resolve. Meanwhile, Canada and the US scurry blindly towards the cliff like rats following the Pied Piper of Monsanto...

[beatrix45]

Here in Canada GMO grain can only be fed to animals. I think the same thing is true the states. If you look at the actual stuff on the market, the gene splicing is very primitive. They just want to poison the pests. It isn't exactly amazing that some of these early efforts might harm humans. As the technology progresses, I think these problems will be worked out.

[Quantumcat]

If people aren't allowed to do free science, they'll never be able to develop anything really good. Imagine what American bridge would be like today had the Convention Chart Committee (or whatever they're called) had been formed prior to Culbertson? Bridge would probably be extinct (in America - thriving everywhere else). What if Jenner had been forbidden from playing around with cowpox, and the smallpox vaccine was never invented? Every good thing science has gven us, was possible only because scientists were allowed free rein to experiment.

[hrothgar]

 Quantumcat, on 2012-September-23, 17:23, said:

What if Jenner had been forbidden from playing around with cowpox, and the smallpox vaccine was never invented?

The Chinese were inoculating against smallpox centuries before Jenner

[SteveMoe]

Let's await the peer review of the recent experiments - not sure they are of the quality and scale necessary for firm decision. Uncertainy in the face of political force shoud be met with fact not emotion.

[onoway]

 beatrix45, on 2012-September-23, 15:44, said:

Here in Canada GMO grain can only be fed to animals. I think the same thing is true the states. If you look at the actual stuff on the market, the gene splicing is very primitive. They just want to poison the pests. It isn't exactly amazing that some of these early efforts might harm humans. As the technology progresses, I think these problems will be worked out.

Unfortunately that is simply not true. Corn ends up in all sorts of unexpected places in the forms of sugars and starches in processed foods, not just cake mixes and cereals or coatings but all sorts of things. Soy also. And now most of the corn and soybeans grown for agribusinesses are GM and so I believe is most canola which of course is probably the most common oil in use for food in North America. Most decidedly GM canola seed is marketed to farmers here. Farmers were fighting having to grow GM flax but they lost that fight last year.

Since the seed companies also do the buying, anyone who doesn't buy their seed doesn't have access to the big markets.If it had not been legal to sell GM flax the farmers would not have to grow it. Also, farmers are not allowed to save seed from harvest for the next year but must buy the seed from the companies for whatever the companies choose to sell it to them for, and are hostage to the price the companies will then pay them for the crop. Many of these seeds are modified so they will not set viable seed anyway, so there is another question as to what that actually means in terms of nutritional value.

There was a study some time ago done in Scotland feeding rats with GM food and they found that the GM food diet changed the bacteria in the gut. They didnt know what that would mean over time.I don't remember how long the study ran. However, someone forwarded me this link http://inspiringscie...cause-diabetes/ which may be something that needs to be looked at.

The problem is more than the video shows. In the States, GM corn was designed to thwart the cornborer. What has happened there now, is that the cornborer has become immune to the poison in the corn which was supposed to destroy it, in the same way that bacteria is becoming resistant to antibiotics, or indeed superrats to some rat poisons. It's unlikely that humans can evolve as quickly as insects do to handle the chemical residues in the food.

One whole area of India has been declared a GM free zone after an absolutely disastrous attempt to change over to GM food production. Dr Vandana Shiva documented what happened there in her Melbourne Peace Prize acceptance speech.

The BBC did a documentary on GM soy and found there were all sorts of health problems associated with the farmers growing the GM soybeans for Monsanto in Brazil. You can find that on You Tube.

The problem is that Monsanto has played fast and loose with the truth. Roundup has been touted as harmless, and we are told it becomes inert when it hits the soil, which apparently is not true. One study done in Ontario by a group of scientists from Europe, found strong enough correlation between Roundup use and prostate cancer and spontaneous abortions among other things that they called for a world ban on it.

It's difficult to study something that the people will not allow you to access, as noted in the beginning of the video. All of the crop is sold back to their companies by contract. Monsanto has already taken people to court for supposedly violating this. It appears that someone skimmed some off to enable these scientists to run their studies.

The point is that unless there is impartial study of GM foods, it's like taking a drug company's word that something is safe that has only been studied in rats for three weeks. Drug companies have to undergo much more rigorous testing of products and they STILL come out with things that they have to recall after disasters such as thalidomide or more recently arthritis drugs which caused strokes or antidepressant drugs which cause some people to become violently aggressive.

We just don't know enough about the effect of GM food over the long haul. The point is for an informed public to have a choice.

Monsanto has been working very hard to prevent both.

[semeai]

 Quantumcat, on 2012-September-23, 17:23, said:

If people aren't allowed to do free science [. . .]

There's a difference between free practice of science and the regulations one places on corporations that are involved with science for profit and are bringing a product to market.

That said, being opposed to GMO in theory seems crazy. Being opposed to specific implementations or uses and/or requiring extensive testing before a product comes to market need not be crazy. What the scientists in the video were saying (as opposed to what the producers of the video were implying) hewed toward the latter.

 SteveMoe, on 2012-September-23, 19:43, said:

Let's await the peer review of the recent experiments - not sure they are of the quality and scale necessary for firm decision. Uncertainy in the face of political force shoud be met with fact not emotion.

I agree, the way the video was put together was somewhat off-putting.

[semeai]

Here's the paper.