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Solkanar512 posted:Syngenta and Bayer are also big players, though not as big as Monsanto. Public GMO's exist. I believe the best example is Rainbow papaya, which I think is owned and was developed by the University of Hawaii. They are out there, they just don't have the acreage of the typical glypohsate/Bt varieties.
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Nov 9, 2013 02:04
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CommieGIR posted:
No, you don't understand. The fact that everyone who knows anything about the topic says it's safe proves that it's unsafe.  A lot of this paranoia would be removed if GMOs weren't mainly developed by the private sector, who are known for not having our best interests in mind.
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Nov 9, 2013 18:46
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CommieGIR posted:From my latest argument with someone about GMOs. Apparently this is just a conspiracy. So it's the mirror image of right wing refusal to acknowledge global warming. Is there any research into what causes people to think like this? Is it echo chambers or a mental disorder or flouride or what?
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Nov 9, 2013 18:53
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CottonWolf posted:
Yes, because government developed policies have been so well received recently.
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Nov 9, 2013 18:57
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computer parts posted:Yes, because government developed policies have been so well received recently. I don't know about that. My intuition is that, over here in Europe at least, people would be much more trusting of GMOs funded by charities or the state and developed in universities where all the safety data is properly published and available to everyone rather than the alternative. Besides, you'd think that the private sector would be pretty loath to develop GMOs that are predominantly to help solve nutritional issues in the developing world anyway. Where's the money in that? And someone needs to be making them.
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Nov 9, 2013 19:17
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CottonWolf posted:A lot of this paranoia would be removed if GMOs weren't mainly developed by the private sector, who are known for not having our best interests in mind. This has been confirmed false: the terminator gene was developed under direction by the US government (specifically, the USDA's Agricultural Research Service) and never used in commercial products, yet people are still afraid of it and think it was developed by the private corporations so they could make profit off of it. CottonWolf posted:I don't know about that. My intuition is that, over here in Europe at least, people would be much more trusting of GMOs funded by charities or the state and developed in universities where all the safety data is properly published and available to everyone rather than the alternative. Besides, you'd think that the private sector would be pretty loath to develop GMOs that are predominantly to help solve nutritional issues in the developing world anyway. Where's the money in that? And someone needs to be making them. Well over in Europe the same laws that are in place to restrict GMO development and use by private companies are also hampering research and development by public universities and the like.
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Nov 9, 2013 19:37
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A recent Colbert Report had another segment which was basically scaremongering about GMOs in the service of comedy, and it was mostly all the same fluff about Frankenfoods and evil corporations. But there was a mention of a study which showed GMOs caused health problems in rats. Apparently this study: http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/09/gmo-corn-rat-tumor. Now the article actually goes into a lot of the reasons why the study was flawed, but it also suggests that the results at least merit further looking into. Is there anything at all here, or is the study just total garbage?
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Nov 9, 2013 19:38
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Install Windows posted:Well over in Europe the same laws that are in place to restrict GMO development and use by private companies are also hampering research and development by public universities and the like. In fairness, even if they weren't, I strongly suspect that governments would be loath to give money to universities for the development of GM crops when such huge proportions of the electorate are vehemently against them anyway.
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Nov 9, 2013 19:43
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Billy Idle posted:Now the article actually goes into a lot of the reasons why the study was flawed, but it also suggests that the results at least merit further looking into. Is there anything at all here, or is the study just total garbage? It's about the Séralini study, so yes, complete and total garbage. Suffice to say that it was such a tremendous pile of poo poo that even if every single rat in an experimental group got cancer, that would still be statistically indistinguishable from "GM corn has no effect on cancer rates".
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Nov 9, 2013 19:56
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Technogeek posted:It's about the Séralini study, so yes, complete and total garbage. Ah, thanks. Yet another reason you shouldn't get your news from The Colbert Report.
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Nov 9, 2013 20:27
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Billy Idle posted:A recent Colbert Report had another segment which was basically scaremongering about GMOs in the service of comedy, and it was mostly all the same fluff about Frankenfoods and evil corporations. But there was a mention of a study which showed GMOs caused health problems in rats. Apparently this study: http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/09/gmo-corn-rat-tumor. Read through the paper briefly. Really outside my field, but the biggest thing that stands out is: quote:Control male animals survived on average 624 ± 21 days, whilst females lived for 701 ± 20, during the experiment, plus in each case 5 weeks of age at the beginning and 3 weeks of stabilization period. After mean survival time had elapsed, any deaths that occurred were considered to be largely due to aging. I don't know if this is standard, but from my understanding of what was written, they ran the experiments to all of the rat's deaths, and then after the rats died, used the data from the control group (average lifespan) to come up with one of the parameters that they used to analyze the data. I'm used to train/development/test splits which aren't exactly applicable to animal studies, but it's been repeatedly emphasized to me that you do not use the test results to do anything - i.e., to decide what you're going to analyze, to do any sort of parameter tuning, or anything besides reporting the test results and then analyzing what those results mean. Granted, you will gently caress this up, and results from the test data will eventually sneak into your experiments, at the very least, because at some point you'll have worked with the test set enough to begin to be able to characterize it (which is why, ideally you experiment with the development set results a lot before you start using the test set). And that could influence your decisions. But you do not parameter tune based on the test results.
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Nov 9, 2013 21:07
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Anosmoman posted:So it's the mirror image of right wing refusal to acknowledge global warming. Is there any research into what causes people to think like this? Is it echo chambers or a mental disorder or flouride or what? Basically, at least from my perspective and I could be wrong, its a lack of teaching skepticism and rational thinking, combined with failing science education.
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Nov 11, 2013 04:07
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CommieGIR posted:
If it's so good, why is it banned in the EU? computer parts posted:Yes, because government developed policies have been so well received recently.
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Nov 11, 2013 04:58
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HootTheOwl posted:If it's so good, why is it banned in the EU?  The EU ban was more a political doing than a scientific one. Overblown reports of GMO's causing cancer and other delightful hyped up media firestorms caused backlash, so politicians did something about it.Wouldn't be the first time something perfectly okay was banned because of public backlash. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_genetically_modified_organisms_in_the_European_Union CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 05:06 on Nov 11, 2013 |
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Nov 11, 2013 05:04
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CommieGIR posted:
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Nov 11, 2013 05:17
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 Sarcasm impaired, sorry.
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Nov 11, 2013 05:21
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HootTheOwl posted:If it's so good, why is it banned in the EU? Can't speak for certain but they have different priorities. It is not like it is cut and dried there either, there is still significant play in the issue. The argument I like is that Europe places a greater importance on heritage varieties and "cultural goods". A farm can mean a lot more than just inputs and outputs and I can buy a certain attachment to a picturesque rural countryside. GMO's don't really fit with that definition, as well as a bunch of other practices. I've heard it called the "quaint tax", whereby farmers in Europe are subsidized to look "cute" rather than be as productive as they should be. That of course is only considering production within Europe, not imports/exports. Anything involving international trade in agriculture is a clusterfuck though, with a bunch of ulterior motives, so please excuse me if I avoid the topic. There are reasons they can have besides just safety for keeping them out of the country but safety is the ticket which sets up the best trade barrier. One can never prove with absolute certainty that something is safe and studies with moving goalposts can take a conveniently very long time. The same musical chairs of protectionism exist in other sectors as well, such as with Mad Cow Disease. It is plausible that same scenario extends to GMO's. It does not help either that the supply chain can be really sloppy with GMO contamination. Also, anytime you say you are "free" of something can be leveraged as a trade advantage. Even if you are lying through your teeth, if you can't be caught it does not exist, hence "shoot, shovel and shut-up". I feel subsequent arguments are a bit more silly. E: Oh damnit, I've been played. 
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Nov 11, 2013 05:37
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Here's a piece of poo poo article that I've seen pop-up on facebook three times in the past week: http://eatlocalgrown.com/article/11944-banned-foods.html 1.3 million facebook shares. Mercola is such a goddamn dick
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Nov 11, 2013 06:15
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Aren't the US and EU negotiating a free trade treaty? European/Russian GMO bans are a populist cover for agriculture protectionism. It isn't like these countries are offering superior/alternate applications of the technology; Monsanto is a villain that lets them avoid making US farm subsidies a WTO issue.
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Nov 11, 2013 07:12
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whatis posted:Here's a piece of poo poo article that I've seen pop-up on facebook three times in the past week: I love how willing people are to appeal to authority when it suits their purpose, even if they see authority as a primary deceptive agent when it doesn't. See also: "Wake Up America! Your dinner is banned in 30 countries!" deepshock fucked around with this message at 13:10 on Nov 28, 2013 |
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Nov 28, 2013 13:03
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I'm going to try reading the whole thread today, when I have more time. If anything I write has been debunked or discussed In The thread I apologize. I'm a third year biology student that decided to start an organic farm in south America with my wife. Food production in the world relies too much on fossil fuels. Everything from the glyphosate farmers use, the tractors and machinery to till the land, the ovens used to dry the grain, and transporting it to the far reaches of the globe mean that modern farming practices use (according to Pollan) 10 calories of petroleum and other fossil fuels to grow 1 calorie of food, 1/3 which is wasted. We are also consuming too much meat. I dont think modern farmin methods are sustainable. I imagine the leading trend of the 21st century is a ruralization of sorts, because more people are going to have to grow crops without fossil fuels in order to not starve. This means no fossil fuel- derived herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides, no reliable way of shipping massive amounts of crops over long distances. I am fortunate in that the area and country I chose to buy land has not been intensively farmed,, has no water scarcity problems, and has no overpopulation problems. I don't imagine the system we currently have will collapse spectacularly in my lifetime, but during my childrens lifetimes I like to imagine they will have a good farm, and good knowledge of how to grow sufficient food. While writing this I thought of what would happen once oil scarcity becomes a reality, whether governments will ration fuel evenly to all sectors of heir economies, or whether a few branches would get most of it. And I came to the conclusion that they will most likely use it to fuel their militaries. I don't want my children or my children's children to be in the US during the 21st century. white sauce fucked around with this message at 15:18 on Nov 28, 2013 |
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Nov 28, 2013 15:15
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deepshock posted:
The worst part of this argument is the fact that they don't even bother to research why its banned, and rather ironically there is little to no scientific rationale for the bans, most of them were more to bolster local competitors, and in many cases the scientific authority in the country had cleared and vouched for GMO.
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Nov 28, 2013 15:33
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Tight Booty Shorts posted:I'm going to try reading the whole thread today, when I have more time. If anything I write has been debunked or discussed In The thread I apologize. I'm a third year biology student that decided to start an organic farm in south America with my wife. Food production in the world relies too much on fossil fuels. Everything from the glyphosate farmers use, the tractors and machinery to till the land, the ovens used to dry the grain, and transporting it to the far reaches of the globe mean that modern farming practices use (according to Pollan) 10 calories of petroleum and other fossil fuels to grow 1 calorie of food, 1/3 which is wasted. We are also consuming too much meat. I dont think modern farmin methods are sustainable. It is true that the amount of fossil energy that goes into modern agriculture is unsustainable but I doubt that the tractor is going anywhere. It will probably be easier to decouple the farm from fossil fuels easier than it is to encourage a massive shift back into manual labour. Right now, more of the energy budget is consumed by transporting and processing food than is involved in actually growing it. If that portion was significantly cut back, it may be possible to attain better energy parity. Also, bio-fuels as of now is little more than a different sort of subsidy, at least in North America. Nothing we have as of yet in the northern hemisphere can compete with sugar cane, for which the math both economically and environmentally checks out. As well, the technology involved in bio-fuels is only getting better. As such, I feel that producers in countries in more tropical locals have a very distinct environmental advantage over large parts of the world, at least when it comes to sourcing their energy for food. I do not know if I completely agree with an idea of ruralization though. Considering global climate change and the projected loss of arable land, the trend will be towards further intensification of current farmlands. There is not enough for everyone to get their own piece and the hit to efficiency of scale may not be worth it. People will be less concentrated in cities but people will still remain concentrated, unless we plow under every natural space left in the world. The cities, more than anything, need to change from a massive drain of resources to something more neutral. I would like to see the rise of urban gardens in major centres, as what happened in Cuba. Killing the concrete jungle in all its forms would have the greatest impact against all these problems. As it stands, I have a huge issue with the sociological implications with measures of organic production. Even without considering global climate change, a return to purely organic approaches renders our current population unsustainable. Yes, there are too many people and we should reduce our population but the question now is, who starves? Likely, starvation will not make up the bulk of the butchers bill, it will be war. I do not think countries like the US are going to have a problem, they can probably solve all climate change problems with a gun. If peace matters, we have to find a way to keep food production level with population. I would agree our current system is unsustainable but its reasons for existing stem from socioeconomic problems, of which many nations are addressing poorly if at all. There are lots of things in agriculture we can improve but we can't fix the world from a field. Sprawling cities, the culture of the car, the desire for yet more cheap meat and pollution are facets I can't change out here. As it stands, the culture surrounding glyphosate and those approaches are on their way out. It is not like there are thousands of great weed killers out there, glyphosate was a one in a million and there is not something else like it in the pipeline as far as I know. We are at the end of the first generation of genetically modified foods. http://www.monsanto.com/products/pages/rna-interference-in-plants.aspx Prepare yourselves for small interfering RNA, as well as probably a bunch of other weird things.
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Nov 29, 2013 14:40
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Hypha posted:Prepare yourselves for small interfering RNA, as well as probably a bunch of other weird things. Viruses are pieces of DNA/RNA that engage in natural selection, I don't see any possible danger in releasing customized RNA into the wild.
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Nov 30, 2013 03:56
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One of the studies linking GMO maize to cancer in rats has been withdrawn. http://io9.com/controversial-study-...Ffull+%28io9%29
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Nov 30, 2013 04:04
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McDowell posted:Viruses are pieces of DNA/RNA that engage in natural selection, I don't see any possible danger in releasing customized RNA into the wild. It's not really possible to "release RNA into the wild". RNAses are ubiquitous, this is why RNA is such a pain in the rear end to work with.
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Nov 30, 2013 05:46
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McDowell posted:Viruses are pieces of DNA/RNA that engage in natural selection, I don't see any possible danger in releasing customized RNA into the wild. I did not imply that. I think the process is pretty cool if they can get it to work.
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Nov 30, 2013 11:16
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McDowell posted:Viruses are pieces of DNA/RNA that engage in natural selection, I don't see any possible danger in releasing customized RNA into the wild. Hey, see the scientific ignorance thing in the title? Please don't engage in it. Viruses are highly specialized pieces of DNA/RNA that have developed protein capsules and other robust defenses against wild RNAases and other digestive enzymes, originating from both prokaryotic and eukaryotic organisms, to retain their genetic integrity. A piece of RNA deliberately designed to not possess these defenses, that hasn't been participating in an evolutionary arms race for billions of years or artificially given the fruits of that arms race, would be torn to shreds in microseconds outside of its intended environment. Edit: And even if we did give these RNAs defenses, as we probably will have to do eventually for some applications, it's a long road between there and virulence, filled with competitors that will easily outcompete a "virus" that is explicitly designed to be nonvirulent. Even then, if such an RNA piece were to attain virulence, it would almost certainly be through selection for techniques that other viruses already use because they work. At that point, what's the difference between the designed RNA and an already existing virus? Very little! You might as well be worried about our mRNAs deciding they'd like to murder us all as worry about this. Jazerus fucked around with this message at 21:52 on Nov 30, 2013 |
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Nov 30, 2013 21:34
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Jazerus posted:Hey, see the scientific ignorance thing in the title? Please don't engage in it. It's true. My post was a kneejerk. Sorry about that. But there is the possibility that a virus could infect a modified organism and wind up acquiring some of the tailored genes/proteins.
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Nov 30, 2013 21:50
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McDowell posted:It's true. My post was a kneejerk. Sorry about that. Viruses already use RNA interference quite well. They don't need our tailored versions which would be targeting genes that viruses couldn't give less of a poo poo about. When we start designing molecular attacks better than nature does, then it's time to start worrying about viruses stealing and retargeting those attacks. That is a very long way off. I'm not trying to be a jerk here, but this is a common fallacy that people without a seriously detailed understanding of biology fall into all the time. The assumption of human superiority over nature that developed because of our mechanical technology does not transfer to biological technology at all. We're tiny little babies in this field and our best efforts are like a Lego tower versus the Empire State Building of nature. Viruses are not about to start copying baby's first RNA interference gene. Edit: I realize that "but they could acquire the modified sequences!!" is a really common thing for people to freak out about with regard to hypothetical designed viruses and that sort of thing, but there is never an explanation for why this would even inherently be a bad thing, unless the designed virus or whatever was already doing something nefarious to begin with. I mean really, even if a virus did acquire a sequence we were using for inducing enhanced crop yield or whatever, who cares? Jazerus fucked around with this message at 19:04 on Dec 1, 2013 |
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Nov 30, 2013 22:17
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V. Illych L. posted:OK, energy is by no means my specialty, so it is very conceivable that I'll gently caress something up here. If I do, please arrest me, it is not intentional.
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Dec 1, 2013 04:15
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ANIME AKBAR posted:This was a few pages back but I think it needs to be said that the article lists deaths per tera-kilowatt-hour, not terawatt hour (dumb). So your comparison is off by a factor of 1,000, but even so your point still stands IMO. (didn't see anyone else catch this). Either way, the China Syndrome, Chernobyl, and mass overreaction to Three Mile Island has unnecessarily damaged nuclear's reputation. Its annoying because as Climate Change becomes clearer and clearer, nuclear is still our best option to escape Coal and Natural Gas.
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Dec 1, 2013 04:17
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A small interfering RNA system is also nice cause the chance for off-target effects is incredibly small and even if there is one, it will be a lot easier to catch. Also, there is no way in hell that RNA can pollute the environment or bio-accumulate, it already is everywhere and most likely will be destroyed if it cannot get to its target. The problem is ensuring that it hits it's targets effectively. That has been the major issue from a medical standpoint as far as I know, siRNA was supposed to be incredibly useful in medicine but it wasn't working out. The issues impeding medicine however has little influence on plants and many of these "failed" medical technologies are being grabbed by ag-biotech. Exactly what they are doing and how the technology will be utilized, I do not know but I would feel a lot safer if all pesticides were replaced with a genetic approach.
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Dec 1, 2013 06:10
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ANIME AKBAR posted:This was a few pages back but I think it needs to be said that the article lists deaths per tera-kilowatt-hour, not terawatt hour (dumb). So your comparison is off by a factor of 1,000, but even so your point still stands IMO. (didn't see anyone else catch this). http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es3051197 Peer reviewed study of how many unnecessary deaths would have happened if we'd built fossil fuel plants in place of existing nuclear power ones. Tl;dr: 1.8 million give or take. To paraphrase Churchill: nuclear power is the worst well-scalable power source except for all the other ones.
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Dec 3, 2013 10:50
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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blowfish posted:http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es3051197 When you can build even a single reactor that can replace three or four coal plants, each consuming a massive amount of fossil fuels, nuclear is the next best thing. Fusion would be great, but we're not quite there yet.
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Dec 3, 2013 14:44
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CommieGIR posted:When you can build even a single reactor that can replace three or four coal plants, each consuming a massive amount of fossil fuels, nuclear is the next best thing. Fusion would be great, but we're not quite there yet. Edit: Whoops, misread what you were saying.
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Dec 3, 2013 15:21
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Had a conversation with a bio grad student that turned to Monsanto. She said they employed field workers who were regularly exposed to carcinogens... and, well, you can imagine how well googling "Monsanto carcinogen" went. My gut tells me bullshit. Those google results all seem to be citing bullshit. What, if anything, am I missing?
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Dec 18, 2013 07:16
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DACK FAYDEN posted:Had a conversation with a bio grad student that turned to Monsanto. She said they employed field workers who were regularly exposed to carcinogens... and, well, you can imagine how well googling "Monsanto carcinogen" went. Well, for one thing, Monsanto doesn't really employ field workers. (She's probably referring to studies that suggest glyphosate is a carcinogen. Also, everything is a carcinogen.)
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Dec 18, 2013 09:02
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DACK FAYDEN posted:Had a conversation with a bio grad student that turned to Monsanto. She said they employed field workers who were regularly exposed to carcinogens... and, well, you can imagine how well googling "Monsanto carcinogen" went. Agricultural chemicals can be nasty, especially some of the stuff you can use doing research. I know I've been exposed to carcinogens out in the field but I knew the risks of what I was working with and I mitigated the risk as much as I could. Is this the case of a trained person being accidentally exposed or are they having workers entering freshly sprayed fields who don't know what they are working with? Is this the sign of negligence on the part of the pesticide operators? It is hard to say what exactly is going on but my first thought is a safety issue rather than evil Monsanto; workers who do not like wearing gloves and the full coveralls in the heat over some kind of company hush policy.
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Dec 18, 2013 09:03
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Hypha posted:Agricultural chemicals can be nasty, especially some of the stuff you can use doing research. I know I've been exposed to carcinogens out in the field but I knew the risks of what I was working with and I mitigated the risk as much as I could. Is this the case of a trained person being accidentally exposed or are they having workers entering freshly sprayed fields who don't know what they are working with? Is this the sign of negligence on the part of the pesticide operators? It is hard to say what exactly is going on but my first thought is a safety issue rather than evil Monsanto; workers who do not like wearing gloves and the full coveralls in the heat over some kind of company hush policy. Yeah. This would be yet another case of "Monsanto are being assholes/irresponsible/generally evil, to a similar extent as every other big agribusiness nobody complains about"
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Dec 18, 2013 10:20
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