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Two things on your argument are flawed :
- first you assume that GMO would be a direct cause for disease where you could say for 100% disease = GMO. Except that it doesn't work with cancer. Things can favorise cancer without it being the only cause or the only factor.
- Also no long term study has been done yet (that's the point of this one) which is also important when you do cancer research. For instance this particular 2 year rat study would be something like 20 years in human years. It's a long time. Like a lot of things that were considered safe and weren't in the long term. Take asbestos for instance. 20 years ago saying that it was unsafe would have made people laugh at you. Does it mean that GMO does it? No! Does it mean it needs more long term studies? Why not? Why refuse to be safe?
Also please don't mention "incoming food problem we need gmo". There's a lot of other different factors to it (the FAO has emitted a report on it which is quite interesting), and also it's a total other discussion that isn't related to its intrinsic safety (it's a straw man argument).
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3rd thread to be opened about GMO studies, last 2 were closed...
What can we conclude from this? Not much, it seems. The study provides insufficient data, although the innovative approach calls for more investigation
Taken from the article itself. Why are you posting this ffs? Theres nothing to discuss really.
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You know what I love about science? It's not partisan. It doesn't seek to prove an argument, it seeks to find the truth. You make an experiment that other people can replicate and produce objective results that enhance our understanding of the world.
Oh, if only it were so. What I described above is what science SHOULD be; oftentimes, that's not how it really works. Because science had (past tense) this reputation of an impartial arbiter and our best tool for finding the truth, unscrupulous parties have sought to abuse this reputation to advance their own agendas. A great example of this at work was mentioned by ZeaL on the first page of this thread; global warming. The global warming alarmists make "scientific" models predicting future warming and assume strongly positive feedback effects in their predictive models (which is a very strong assumption that guarantees alarming results), while the oil companies commission their own "scientific studies" whose conclusions were most likely determined at the outset as well.
What to make of this? Scientific studies cannot be trusted blindly, especially if you have reason to suspect they are politically motivated. There's a very strong possibility that the data and/or methodology will have been structured in bad faith, and the results will be interpreted in the most convenient way possible, seeking to prove a particular point rather than to find out the truth in the most objective way possible; a collection of half-truths that end up being wildly misleading.
What is presented in this study as impartial evidence that GM food is inherently carcinogenic in nature, looks like anything but impartial to me. In this highly political issue, the best way forward is to proceed with a healthy dose of skepticism, ideally diving as much as you can into the actual science yourself in order to have an informed opinion, and keeping an open mind for any future developments and evidence. My own understanding is that there's no reason to believe that GM food should be any more (or less) carcinogenic than non-GM food; the only exception to this that I can think of would be if the GM foods have a greater or smaller concentration of particular chemical elements that have radioactive isotopes, such as Carbon-14 or Potassium-40.
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On September 27 2012 04:43 DeepElemBlues wrote:Show nested quote +Aside from the fact you have no idea who got sick for those 300 trillions of GM serving, do you really think the agro business care about Africa? No one got sick. That's the point. No one. Who cares whether the agro business "really cares" about Africa or not? What does that have to do with raising crop yields to meet increased population? Absolutely nothing? Yes, it has absolutely zero relevance. Pointing out that the agro business doesn't raise crops out of the goodness of their hearts is entirely irrelevant. People are either going to get fed or they're going to starve to death. That is what is relevant. Why would you think that whether agro business cares or not has anything to do with anything? You going to complain about literally every business in existence because they don't "care" personally about you?
Don't bring up feeding Africa to shove GMOs down everyone's throat then.
Have you looked at all alternatives? At how does production match to the actual demographic increase, with all the waste going on. I bet you are also saying that any alternative to full out Oil and Gas is doomed to fail, be it energy savings or renewable energy, because Exxon experts have said so?
I don't care about convincing you, democracy and alternative opinions are there to "keep them honest" and hopefully advance toward a better solution, not the necessarily the one preferred by a given business.
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I think GMOs are the future. We selectively breed plants to make new plants that can serve a different, maybe better purpose. Same with animals. Same with humans, to an extent (selecting a fit mate, sperm and egg donors) GM is just an application of technology to that process. It carries risks, but so does any use of technology. Key is not to go full Luddite and go around smashing and condemning technology because of risks, which blind you to what will eventually be massive benefits.
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On September 27 2012 03:23 WhiteDog wrote:Show nested quote +On September 27 2012 02:29 harlock78 wrote:What to make of this? 1) Lobbyists are zealously trying to discard this study. I would appreciate that people show the same scientific skepticism with studies just as bad and statistically insignificant showing GMOs are safe. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S02786915110063992) Said study has been published in the Journal of Food and Chemical Toxicology, which is definitely peer reviewed contrary to what some people seem to think, and even has a decent impact factor (impact factor=3). Curious how some journalists (typically in forbes or other pro big corporations newspaper) are eager to dismiss it. If it is fraudulent, it will be retracted. In any case, more higher quality studies will be conducted. 3) Why does Monsanto put restrictive end user agreements that limit independent research? from Wikipedia + Show Spoiler +The value of current independent studies is considered by some to be problematic because, due to restrictive end-user agreements, independent researchers cannot obtain GM plants to study. Cornell University's Elson Shields, the spokesperson for a group of scientists who oppose this practice, submitted a statement to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) protesting that "as a result of restrictive access, no truly independent research can be legally conducted on many critical questions regarding the technology".[294] Scientific American noted that several studies that were initially approved by seed companies were later blocked from publication when they returned "unflattering" results. While recognising that seed companies' intellectual property rights need to be protected, Scientific American calls the practice dangerous and has called for the restrictions on research in the end-user agreements to be lifted immediately and for the EPA to require, as a condition of approval, that independent researchers have unfettered access to GM products for testing.[295] In February 2009, the American Seed Trade Association (ASTA) agreed that they "would allow researchers greater freedom to study the effects of GM food crops." This agreement left many scientists optimistic about the future, but there is little optimism as to whether this agreement has the ability to "alter what has been a research environment rife with obstruction and suspicion."[294] Also http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/science_and_impacts/impacts_genetic_engineering/suppressing-research.html4) Finally I can't believe in the so called US free market people would argue against labeling GMOs. Organic food is the de facto label, but it is not enough. This post basically says it all. What is shocking is that most studies on the effect of GMO and the likes are just poor overall (short amount of time, small number of experimentation) and made by labs that are more or less linked to the group that made the product in the first place. I don't understand how people can think such studies are more "scientific" that the study discussed in this thread. Let's wait for other studies maybe ? But the real problem behind GMO is that it makes a lot of farmer completly dependant to crop that are made by one and only industry, especially in under-developped countries.
You understand that there can only be one industry making "crops", kinda from the definition of industry.
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On September 27 2012 03:31 Bellygareth wrote:
I don't get the "general opinion" that it has no value. It has a new approach and show some difference between groups with and without OGM food. It might not be perfect, but it has some results that people are way too fast to contradict and call the authors biased.
However the analysis done by the GMO producers themselves which are the one that are currently done in the industry are considered unbiased ?
I think it's normal to call for doubt here and conduct more studies (which is also the conclusion of the study's authors btw). The fact that people generally seem to dismiss it entirely in the name of science baffles me a bit. Science says that if experiments do not prove 100% the theory, and do not undisprove it, then you need to keep testing. It's not what happening when people say "stop testing, GMO". The correct answer should be "GMO are safe, let me do more experiments to show it".
Also peer review should be done on this study for sure, but as for now it's mostly been journalist comments and a few fast comments by other scientists. It's not a proper peer review, which usually also let's the possibility for argumentation to the authors. It's not the case here. I think a 2 year study could use more than a few day analysis before being called "trash".
Edit: for whitedog: I believe as I wrote here that the industrials have to conduct the tests themselves in most cases and provide the results to the FDA (for USA). It's standard procedure not only for GMOs, but also for drugs. In France it's the same I believe.
The industry-backed studies are often as worthless as this one. Plus this study was not about GMO, it was about specific product. Whatever it says about that product has absolutely no bearing on GMOs in general. As for why in case of lack of studies to show that GMOs are harmful I am defaulting to a position that they are ok ? Because there is no apparent mechanism for them to be harmful. They are just normal food with possibly some additional proteins. So unless the additional proteins themselves are harmful the better guess seems to be that they are safe.
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On September 27 2012 03:58 harlock78 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 27 2012 02:38 zalz wrote:
I love Monsanto.
I think they are one of the most exciting companies in the world, doing really amazing research.
But the left has got a hard-on for them and GM-food in general, so hatred for inovation will continue.
The facts are simple. We are going to make nature our bitch, and Monsanto is leading the charge in that frontier. Such a shame that the EU has such restrictions on GM-food. We are going to be lagging behind because of government, whilst America is letting inovation free and will reap the largest fruits (pun intended). If GMOs were introduced in a well controlled and responsible manner, most would be fine with it. GMOs and nuclear power are similar in a way. Lots of promises and lots of potential issues. GMOs are not a 1 dimensional issue. Don't forget that beside health, there are many other problems from environmental diversity destruction, patent and dependence issues etc... You can just dismiss any potential risk hoping that progress and science will fix it. Then you d better hope that a disaster will not occur before science can resolve the side problems it created itself (nuclear proliferation, global warming ...). Last thought. You can say: based on our understanding of molecular biology, GMOs should be safe. But you cannot say GMOs have been proved to be safe (most of these studies are bunk). The best you can say is there is no short term adverse effect. However that often assumes a coding gene in total isolation from the surrounding complex organism. If you introduce some cockroach gene into a tomato that supposedly protects from some parasite, you hope that the gene will just code that protein, not affect anything else, and that the protein itself has no adverse effect other than what you think it does. Hybridizing two breeds that have been part of our consumption in our evolutionary history is not the same thing as introducing genes from completely different species into another.
For a long time we have been doing much more than artificial selection. In creating new foods we are for a long time using radiation to create random mutations. Those are not considered GMOs and are basically everywhere. We already started doing much more than what you describe long time ago.
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GMOs use genetics, not some weird growth chemicals or some crap. Its not like weed killer or some rather. Its helping specific genes be expressed, no different than breeding. Its just done faster. I can't believe this thread is permitted to stay open. Anyone with a mild education in biochemistry or genetics knows that.
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On September 26 2012 21:52 NeonFox wrote:
This was already brought up and the study was defined as non conclusive and biased. I don't trust Monsanto and don't like their business practice but this study is bullshit.
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On September 27 2012 05:15 Zooper31 wrote:3rd thread to be opened about GMO studies, last 2 were closed... Show nested quote +What can we conclude from this? Not much, it seems. The study provides insufficient data, although the innovative approach calls for more investigation Taken from the article itself. Why are you posting this ffs? Theres nothing to discuss really.
Information. To share my personal conclusion.
I don't see how my OP is strongly biaised now. I'm skeptical about GMOs and their necessity (which is not evident, believe me (see India's green revolution, and the ressource management field), but if they're proven safe after serious studies, hey, no problem. However, what can I say when highlighted research on the matter can be that poor on both sides?
I also dislike Monsanto's complete lack of ethics and monopolist attitude, but I have nothing against the technology.
On September 27 2012 09:47 Souldrinkah wrote:Show nested quote +On September 26 2012 21:52 NeonFox wrote:
This was already brought up and the study was defined as non conclusive and biased. I don't trust Monsanto and don't like their business practice but this study is bullshit.
Read the OP, it's the least you could do before answering a thread.
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EPT
