I wanted to open up a discussion regarding genetically modified foods. As a health oriented person GMO's are a growing concern as more and more foods are being genetically modified. Also, it would be good to discuss companies like Monsanto who patent GMO's.

So what do you guys think?
Are GMO's safe/unsafe?
Are they good/bad for the environment?
Please include sources when necessary.

I know this topic very well it was a major focus of my studies and research at a point in my life and its a topic I will hopefully be more involved in, in the future. Although I wouldn't say I am an 'expert' but I tend to know the science behind the issue quite well.



Patenting genes irks most of the public. But the public doesn't see something vital. The public and governments of the world demand safety and huge regulation for GMO's much more then most people are aware of. It costs millions to billions of dollars to get a GMO crop developed and improved. Therefore companies really do need a garuntee of financial return on that investment. This is why patents are necessary. Although patent law should consider that eventually its time for the patent to run out and for the prices to begin dropping and that does happen and will happen more.



GMO's that have been approved for human consumption are safe. There is very little doubt of this in the scientific community. Like I said the approval process demands extensive safety studies.



This is also hotly debated issue. However the view of a large number of scientists in this field is that they are if used properly good for the environment. Here is why:

1- GMO's can be grown with less pesticide use (although farmers sometimes keep using them the same way anyway but thats another issue they can change their ways the more they learn and the more money they save).

2- increased yields with GMO's = less agricultural land needed which means more natural land available. It also means less energy input into the system.

3- GMO's can be grown with less fertilizer use especially if combined with some of the techniques that organic farmers use (as well as conventional farmers).

Theres more but lets start there.

Here is my issue.

You say "the approval process demands extensive safety studies."
So where are the studies? And what exactly are the standards?
From what I understand ALL GMO's are understudied, and there really isn't conclusive evidence for them being safe or unsafe.

I suspect that the ultimate authority on whether GMO's are safe are not, is in bed with the companies producing GMO's. Give them enough money, and anything can be safe

I've heard that GMO soy has been shown to disrupt digestive hormones.
From what I've read these safety studies are done on animals, and typically have resulted in harm to the animals.

Also,
GMO's could potentially create super weeds that are resistant to pesticides, which could interfere with the biodiversity of an area.

As far as Monsanto,
They are notorious for releasing a patented GMO version of a staple crop, waiting a couple seasons for it to pollinate surrounding crops, then suing the farmers when they try to harvest their own seeds because now the genetic material belongs to Monsanto. The farmers are left with the option of complying with Monsanto and buying seeds from them at the start of every growing season or losing their home, farm, and every penny they own.

Well I must admit that I also have grave concerns also about Monsanto...

Just look what happens when people try to investigate and report on the safety of their products.... It sounds like they really care

This problem is more about aggressive politics then about GMO's.
Those kind of tactics aren't exclusive to the GMO trade but are used widely across many trades
within any legal system of which allows for it...unfortunately=(

As for actual genetically modified foods.

Genes get mixed up in nature all the time around us, mate a bee with another bee and you'll get a
gene-coctail. Will the newly produced bee be dangerous to eat?

Selective breeding is a good example of genetic manipulation.
Purposely selecting certain genes in the trait of the wolf has created all the different kind of
dogs you know today. Dont think it's dangerous to eat a bulldog.

GM puts us in control of which genes gets in the coctail.
My impression is that it's not dangerous to mix genes.
However, this is not my trade.

Burnt, you seem to know a lot about this stuff: If Itake a gene from a fish that is known not to be dangerous for consuming and
I put this gene inside a tomatoe, can this lead
to dangerous combination?

Good point on Monsanto impsimon.

On your other points,
The combining of genes is not as simple and straight-forward as you're making it seem. And quite honestly, I do not want pig genes in my damn tomatoes. What we really need though is conclusive scientific data, and I've yet to come across any for EITHER side of the argument. I was, and still am hoping burnt can provide some more information/sources regarding the safety studies.

That's probably true=)



Haha! I get the point but I disagree. I find it very interesting the mixing of genes.
Like the flourecent pigs and monkeys.

The fish are called glofish and are the first genetically enginered pets.
The green colour is a flourecent protein taken from a jellyfish, and the red from a coral...dont know where
the yellow comes from.

www.glofish.com

Oh and I remember reading about some kind of architect (or designer maybe) who wanted to
make trees with flourecent leaves spacing them between lampposts...sweet=)

I do find that interesting, and consider genetic engineering worth exploring. I'm not against it at all.

My concern is with genetically modified foods, and potential health risks.

In regards to florescent animals; that's neat and all, but how is it benefiting humanity? Perhaps someone could offer insight into how much time, money and overall resources goes into making a fluorescent pig; or really ANY genetic modification.

I think that exploring genetic engineering could be worthwhile, but I constantly battle my self in trying to determine what is worth while and what isn't. To me fluorescent animals is neat but, I just don't see the point.

I don't think eating the GMO's is bad for you, but I'm against eating bees and bulldogs, modified or not.

Pokey

I make transgenic organisms. Mostly mice and bacteria though. It is easy to insert genes, cut out genes, specifically mutate genes, replace genes, do all sorts of things.

It is remarkably feasible to do very elegant transgenic job in mice, bacteria, yeasts. It is very very very very difficult to do in mushrooms, those bastards have many barriers of resistance . When it comes to plants, the current technologies do not allow for a clean (so to peak) transgenic job. Things are OK but not ideal.

This is where I have my first issues with transgenic crops. I am not criticising the rationale of wanting to make transgenic plants in the first place anyway. Just like any technology, it can be used for good or bad or whatever. But let's get to the plants. The main ways of inserting gene(s) in plants (that's the aim!) it is done either by using Agrobacterium, electroporation or shooting gold particles coated with the desired DNA inserts into the plant cells.

I really do not like these methods because they are messy. A given gene-to-be-inserted can stick anywhere. In all of the times the research groups shoot a bunch of DNA into plant cells, DNA is inserted randomly in the genome, then the researches select those cells that are able to survive the attack. Then they they map the integration site of the gene-to-be-inserted and grow the plant cells to mature plants.

Due to the random integration of the transgenes, sometimes they fall into vital genes so plants cannnot make it. Other times the transgene falls in a phenomenally "dump" DNA region and this is good because it hasn't harmed any plant genes. Should these plants be able to make it to maturity and produce seeds, then they're good candidates for the market. Other times even disruption of phenomenally unimportant areas has detrimental effects to the plant. These scenarios are very rare the caee with mice where one can be very sure where to insert something.

The problem therefore is that we really do not know exactly to what extent transgenic plants (or GMOs) are affected by the genetic engineering. And unfortunately it emerges that many of the so-called "dump" DNA regions hide lots of important information that people could not even envisage 10 years ago. The point is that despite numerous quality controls we can never know exactly in which way a gene insertion affects the plant. It could be in more subtle ways than we think.

The latter underlies something that is rarely taken into account; when people look for a phenotype of a just-made transgenic plant they often do so in the lab. They often miss to take into account the ecological factors that may affect a gene or area of DNA. As an example imagine a transgenic maize whose disrupted DNA part is essential for resistance in this X species of locusts that infest it every 20 years. This would never be picked up by standard quality tests in the lab or the field. So you go and grow your transgenic corn, then 15 years later the locusts strike and bye bye corn. Or, the corn due to its inability to react to the locust infestation because of its disrupted gene starts producing poisons in the kernels (let's say Plan B in the plant's resistance inventory), consumers eat corn and consumers get poisoned

Point is that you can never really tell EXACTLY how you've altered the plant.

I have a recent story coming from my lab; I made a mouse with an insertional mutagenesis in one of its genes, let's say X. It was designed so (and the design also approved by my peers) to abolish the function of this X gene. So the X gene would not make RNA and would not make protein. They had an interesting phenotype. Fine, success. We gave some of these transgenic mice to another research unit in another country. The mice grew in slightly different conditions than ours, and they had different phenotype! It emerged that even if it was practically the same mice harbouring the same mutation, the mice in the other institute due to their different environment processed differently their mutated gene. These are apparently cutting out the part in the DNA I disrupted thus ameliorating their damage and phenotypic severity!

Wow. That's very interesting and contributes a lot to what I've been wondering. Thanks for posting Infundibulum!

very interesting inf..

I've also read of many of the GMO seeds from monsanto and other similar companies not being able to reproduce in the next generation, and therefore the farmers become 'hostages' of them because every season they have to buy more seeds and cannot have seeds themselves.. There are also the stories of these plants screwing up the soil (also due to extensive monoculture plantations), and then only the GMO ones are able to grow in that bad soil, so once again more chances of farmers becoming completely dependent on GMO producing companies.

I dont think GMOs are absolutely bad, but I see it as a problem that, appart from what was already mentioned, the production/research is many times concentrated on known ethics-less companies such as monsanto.. I also feel that a big problem is that GMOs in a big part wouldnt be necessary if humans were not so damn wasteful and stupid... GMOs as an attempt to increase productivity, while there is so much waste and unnecessary transport of food, and earth-destroying monoculture techniques and over-fertilization/pesticide-spraying, bad management, etc..

Lastly, I think that it should be an international law that ALL products that have present or used in any part of the process GMOs should obligatorily have in the label clearly stating so!! The consumer should be aware and able to decide... I know I most likely would NOT buy it....

Monsanto is a weird company. I believe that they are more money-driven than ethically driven.

I should mention something quite important because I do not like demonizing GMOs too much. People have been selectively breeding for ages; eugenics on crop plants
(as well has farm animals) is not seen as a malignant process at all. It effectively moulds the crops to our needs. But this is a form of genetic engineering but in a different scale. The ancestor of maize and wheat have genetic differences in the level of
5-6 genes compared to today's plants.

Genetic engineering on the other hand brings changes much faster. But we do not know the drawbacks yet and whether it is going to be bad in the long term. but mind you, we have the EXACT same risk when employing traditional selective breeding. It is like progressively selecting for larger oranges because they are larger, juicier and give better yield, but at the same time we may run the risk of having a orange variety that has very little vitamin C or other healthy compounds. Or we may be selecting for a strain that despite its larger fruits is very susceptible to disease. How do we know whether selective breeding is 100% doing the right thing?

Anyway, in the end of the day these decisions take too many factors into account, like politics, economics, public health, science etc I do not know the values to all the parameters to make a safe choice pro or against GMO. Some say that it is food distribution that is responsible for hunger and the issue is political and not technological and this is where we do not need GMOs. Others say that equally distributed food is utopic and you cannot sit and argue where the food goes while people die from starvation and something needs to be done, so GMO is a good solution where the benefits are more than the drawbacks etc etc etc.

I know studies that have studied the effects of genetically modifying plants on the overall metabolism of the plants. There was nothing to be concerned about. Nothing weird happened. I'll have to dig around for em again tho..

I don't know why everyone has a bug about monstanto. Monsanto has done genetic engineering projects for people in developing countries FOR FREE!!! Just to get a better relationship with people long term (of course thats their incentive) but why is that wrong? All companies do things like this. Monsanto isn't as bad as people think they are just a target for anti GMO groups. There have no choice but to take people who use seeds crossed with their plants to court otherwise there would be no point in having a patent which like I said is necessary to make up for the costs of the research.

Also if people want labelling on GMO crops then I want labels on every single crop that uses any pesticide organic or not. Lets see the organic farms who use copper sulfate (mainly the bigger industrial ones) give in to that one.

good points, inf...

but as for this last part about GMOs being solution to hunger, this would only make sense of the GMOs were used for feeding the hungry... If there was some regulations that at least a significant part of GMOs did feed the hungry, then ok, but its not really whats happening, is it? I would like to see data of where GMOs are actually being consumed, and I have a feeling most of it goes to already wasteful cultures, and that its just making richer richer, while the hungry are still there with their empty bellies

Organizations like greenpeace are continuously launching campaign after campaign to scare the crap out of people in developing countries from using GMO's. Its directly responsible for further starvation and misery in certain countries who could benefit from this technology. And again like I said in some cases Monsanto was doing the project FOR FREE!

Just look at their campaign against golden rice. Its sickening.

GMO's aren't the solution to hunger but they are a valuable tool in improving our agricultural technology and if used properly can benefit the environment and lessen our impact in a major way.

lol burnt saying monsanto did research for free is like saying mcdonalds is a great company for saving the poor children with ronald mcdonald organization... Its just a tiny tiny percentage, a diversion from the shit they are actually doing.. Sure its better than nothing but to take from this and think they are a 'good' company, thats a long jump

I recommend this documentary:

harvest of fear

I think it was done by PBS or frontline or both. Anyway it presents both sides of the issue in a rather honest way. What was immediately obvious to me was how the anti GMO people didn't really have dick to say but the usual rhetoric. But yes I highly recommend it I really enjoyed watching it. Its really good to get the entire issue without bogging it down in scientific details.

Infund:

In response to what you are saying about how we can never really know the effect of genetically modification on the whole plant. We can! Heres one example:

http://www.pnas.org/content/102/40/14458.abstract

Metabolomics and systems biology approaches are successfully tackling this issue. It will only get better as time goes on and the techniques improve. The approach has many uses but this is one. Its proving to be an awesome approach to answering this potential problem.