Why I want to be a Westerner - Page 8

On July 01 2012 21:36 Kukaracha wrote:


Are you mad because I provided you with an unsourced statement, like you claimed it should be? The rest wasn't directed towards you.

On July 01 2012 21:34 Kukaracha wrote:


Demonstrate that there is a consensus among the scientific community that states that A)GMOs are inherently safe, B)current GMO technology is safe or that C)benefits outweight the risks and D)no change can be made so far.

And I stress the term consensus.
I don't know how you can do this, but it's the position you seem to defend.

On July 01 2012 21:54 Heh_ wrote:
A) Nothing is absolutely safe. The water that you're drinking now, the authorities can't claim that it has 0 pathogenic organisms inside. It passes inspection if the water quality is above a certain threshold. Same with GM crops. There are two main risks: pesticide usage and potential for allergy. For the first, the risk is minimized by proper farm management practices and quality control along the supply chain. Tests are regularly conducted for pesticide levels, presence of pests and parasites, etc. Non-GM crops are also subject to the same risks. For the second, there is the chance that the gene introduced may produce a protein that causes an allergic reaction in some. Possible, but exceedingly rare if caution is taken (many allergens are known). Article: http://jxb.oxfordjournals.org/content/54/386/1317.full

Although the biotech industry confidently asserted that gene transfer from GM foods was not possible, the only human feeding study on GM foods later proved that it does take place. The genetic material in soybeans that make them herbicide tolerant transferred into the DNA of human gut bacteria and continued to function. That means that long after we stop eating a GM crop, its foreign GM proteins may be produced inside our intestines. It is also possible that the foreign genes might end up inside our own DNA, within the cells of our own organs and tissues.

The idea that a major part of our DNA is "garbage" ignored the fact that a key feature of biological organisms is optimal energy expenditure. To carry enormous amounts of unnecessary molecules is contrary to this fundamental energy saving feature of biological organisms. Increasing evidence are now indicating many important functions of this DNA, including various regulatory roles.

This means that this so-called non-coding DNA influences the behavior of the genes, the "coding DNA", in important ways. Still there is very little knowledge about the relationship between non-coding DNA and the DNA of genes.

This adds to other factors making it impossible to foresee and control the effect of artificial insertion of foreign genes.

On July 01 2012 21:54 Heh_ wrote:
B) Testing is performed before releasing to the public. If any adverse reactions were detected, the product will obviously not be released. You could argue the case that there could be long-term consequences; true, but drugs are released after trials that span a few years. It could be argued that there hasn't been an increase in whatever disease due to consumption of GM food, 18 years after it was released to the market. Yes, some drugs get recalled. But drugs are radically different from uncontaminated food.

On July 01 2012 21:54 Heh_ wrote:
C) GM food is one of the ways to boost crop yields. Faster growth, less wastage due to pests, even supplementing vital nutrients to undernourished people (golden rice). These are huge potential benefits. Some risks are overstated, like the risk of cross-contamination of non-GM plots (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18227452) and food safety (see above).

On July 01 2012 21:54 Heh_ wrote:
D) No change to what? Using non-GM technology? Food production has stagnated while food demand has steadily increased. There is a shortage of arable land, together with pressure for biofuel crops. The potential food crisis of the 1980s was averted by the Green Revolution, but demand has caught up, and a second Green Revolution is required.

And yet, the world’s biggest ever agricultural study – the work of 400 scientists and 60 governments, headed by Dr Bob Watson, now Chief Scientist at Department of the Environment, Food and Agriculture – concluded that GM was not the simple answer to poverty. In truth, it could even do more harm than good.

For a start there is the inconvenient truth that it is far from clear that genetic modification does increase yields. The biotech industry cites evidence to support its insistence that it does, but other studies actually show a decrease. One, at the University of Nebraska, for example, revealed that five different GM soyas produced an average of 6.7 per cent less than their closest unmodified relatives, and ten per cent less than the most productive conventional soyas available at the time.

The results suggest two factors are responsible. First, it takes time to modify a plant and, in the meantime, better and higher yielding conventional ones are being developed. And second, the fact that GM plants did worse than their nearest unmodified relatives suggests that the very process of modification lessens productivity.

Of course, it may well be that biotechnology eventually overcomes these obstacles to produce unambiguously higher yielding crops. But even that will not necessarily answer world hunger. For increasing food production, though sorely needed, does not of itself solve hunger. India now has both a grain surplus, and hundreds of millions of hungry people, because the poor cannot afford to buy the food they need.

Any realistic hunger-beating strategy has to help poor people earn more – or grow more food for themselves, for many of the world’s hungry are themselves small farmers. GM seeds are more expensive than conventional ones, and so they can’t afford them and they tend to be bought by richer farmers instead. If they were to succeed in increasing yields the rich are likely to use their increased economic power to drive the poor off their land. This happened during the Green Revolution, which greatly increased yields but often led to greater hunger.

On July 01 2012 21:54 Heh_ wrote:
E) One more point about "new things popping up". In the case of GM food, you're in contol of what's "popping up". You can't control natural mutation to unmodified parts of the genome. A mutation that boosts yields (and thus be selected for) may also produce a deadly toxin, and this can happen in both GM and non-GM crops.

On July 01 2012 11:45 DeepElemBlues wrote:
Yeah, meat is pretty awesome and we just love the hell out of it here in the West.



Yes. Everything is bigger, most importantly the amount of good meat available and boobs.

On July 01 2012 21:55 lefix wrote:
I don't know why you would want to go to the us and even list bread as one of the reasons.
they don't even have real bread there. when i was living in the usa my parents sent me german bread for my birthday and it was like the best present ever. i missed bread so much. :D



vs

On July 02 2012 06:48 serge wrote:
Yes, let's assume that GM-organism DNA being incorporated into inactive DNA of gut bacteria is somehow worse than non-GM organism DNA being incorporated into inactive DNA of gut bacteria.

Fucking IDIOT.