
GMO safety debate is over - okket
http://allianceforscience.cornell.edu/blog/mark-lynas/gmo-safety-debate-over
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FYI in Ireland where I live GM foods are present in animal feed (or at least
they are in the layers pellets I feed my chickens, so I'd guess they're in
pretty much all commercially-reared animal products), and therefore there is
GM material in the human food chain. It's the same in the UK
[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3461226/Most-
superma...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3461226/Most-supermarket-
meat-tainted-GM-UK-animals-routinely-given-modified-feed-shoppers-told.html)
Maybe there's so much less as to make the US/UK comparison valid, but it's not
true to say GM foods are "virtually unknown" in the UK

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okket
GMOs are everywhere, they are just not called that way

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutagenesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutagenesis)

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circlefavshape
Meh. GMOs has a specific commonly-understood meaning. Pretending that it means
something else is just silly

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okket
So GMOs are good if their mutations are random and bad if they are on purpose?

One could also argue that directed mutation GMOs are safer. Because unlike
random mutations, on purpose mutations are thoroughly checked afterwards.

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nikolay
Well, mutations on purpose did not pass thousands of years of testing in the
environment, also, pairing with pesticides is a problem, too, specifically,
glyphosate.

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dragonwriter
Glyphosate is an herbicide, not a pesticide.

And mutations that are random but rapidly through modern non-"GMO" breeding
techniques are no more proven by thousands of years than GMOs are, and those
developing and deploying them have a lot less knowledge of what changes are
induced and what health impacts they may have.

But since they aren't GMOs their apparently okay with the anti-GMO crowd.
There is no rational or scientific reason for this.

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nikolay
The anti-GMO crowd is simply the conservative reasoning crowd, not necessarily
the unscientific one. Why? Well, nutrition science still advocates for low-
fat, low-sodium, low-cholesterol diets. Doctors still prescribe Lipitor;
Tylenol is still OTC; prostate cancer is still "cured" with unnecessary
invasive surgeries, mammograms although questioned as a self-fulfilling
prophecy are still widely used, CAT scans with their huge amounts of radiation
are still performed for benign symptoms, and so on. Just because there's a
(poor!) study about something, it's not a good enough reason for people to
change their reasoning - so the heuristic is that everything new is too risky
for the slightly better yield. I might be pro-science and pro-technology, but
when it comes to what I ingest and how I live, I'm more than conservative, and
it's been working well for me. Most science is bad science, unfortunately.
Until AI starts dominating science, I can't trust scientists 100%, sorry!
Especially about super complex stuff like nutrition and metabolism! Our bodies
are the most complex system in the visible universe, and I don't think we can
predict the outcomes of each intervention. What we know for a fact is that
we're best adapted to our tradition diets and foods!

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Oletros
What has to do nutrition science with GMO?

> Most science is bad science, unfortunately. Until AI starts dominating
> science, I can't trust scientists 100%, sorry!

Yes, let's distrust Gravity Laws, don't trust physicists

> What we know for a fact is that we're best adapted to our tradition diets
> and foods!

What are those tradition diets and foods?

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nikolay
By "bad science" I meant bad health science and I apologize for not being
clear. That also happens to be the department of science most obviously linked
to commercial interest! A lot of studies have sponsored outcomes!

"Traditional" varies from population to population and that's a subject for
Epigenetics and the fact that it takes 4-6 generations to fully adapt to a new
diet.

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mhkool
The article has a link to "the report" but is merely a link to the website of
"The Natanional Academies of SCIENCES, ENGINEERING and MEDICINE". The actual
report is not public: you must pay USD 71. The "Who are we" button on the
website is vague: Each report is produced by a committee of experts selected
by the Academies to address a particular statement of task.

I want to be able to verify if this report is made by independant individuals,
but cannot.

Mark Lymas, the author, does not say anything about the content of the
report... nothing is said about evidence. This article is not worth reading.

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smartial_arts
Incorrect, you do need to provide an email address (bogus one works fine) and
tick the Ts&Cs box.

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okket
See also:

BBC: "Royal Society calls for review of European GM ban"

[http://www.bbc.com/news/science-
environment-36359682](http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-36359682)

Royal Society: "Genetically modified (GM) plants: questions and answers"

[https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/gm-
plants/](https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/gm-plants/)

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touristtam
> the scientists wrote that they "found no substantiated evidence that foods
> from GE crops were less safe than foods from non-GE crops."

I thought the "issue" wasn't solely based around human food consumption ...

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Oletros
What was the issue then?

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touristtam
patenting the "living" and turning it into a product. Like sterile seeds
making it impossible to reuse part of your own production to saw the next
season.

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DanBC
To be fair the corps are damned if they do and damned if they don't.

If they release seed that grows fertile seed they get accused of releasing GMO
into the environment.

If they include "terminator"[1] genes to they get accused of making it
impossible to reuse your own seed. Even though many conventionally bred hybrid
seeds are the same.

[1] that's a _terrible_ name for the technology. What were they thinking?

