The title says it all. Whats your thoughts?

I study molecular genetics, and I personally do not fear any physiological ramifications from the genetically modified crops that are currently sold to consumers to date in North America specifically. IMO there are concerning environmental risks imposed by GMO crops however, such as insecticide resistance, and off target pesticide effects.

I am curious what the opinion is here at the nexus?

I'd love to hear your reasons as well either for or against.

-Q

I do everything in my power to avoid GM foods, even over nonorganic foods. While I try to eat all USDA organic in my household, I will break this rule for certain food items that are certified non-GMO. I have various reasons for this.

I have read many "holistic" and natural type magazines, articles, and studies in my life that have unanimously pointed at GMOs being terrible. Companies that produce GM crops also have horrible business practices (such as Monsanto), such as patenting biological life and suing natural farmers when their mutated seeds cross-pollinate with the farmers' plants. I find this to be quite unethical and would rather not support companies who do such things.

Many studies that claim little to no harm resulting from GMOs were also funded by such companies, and whenever corporations fund a study, I am quite wary of the results because of possible biases.

My mother also has a severe gluten allergy and suffered for many years, but now she is beginning to suspect that only GM wheat disturbs her intestinal tract. She researches a lot about food and has determined that GM wheat is probably what caused her intolerance/allergy to begin with.

Check out this link: http://enhs.umn.edu/current/5103/gm/harmful.html It details some studies that show various negative health effects of GM foods, such as increased toxicity and antibiotic resistance.

I have argued slightly for GMOs in the past, alleging that it is probably not true that 100% of GMOs are bad for humans as very few things if any are so clear-cut. But I do not think we understand nearly enough about the effects of this food as it moves through the entire food chain for it to be trusted in our precious bodies. As there can be economic benefits for corporations using GMOs, I am immediately wary as many are known to sacrifice human health and allow suffering to increase profits. Therefore, I avoid them where I can.

EDIT: I also started this thread a while back which may be of interest to you: https://www.dmt-nexus.me...spx?g=posts&m=592921

I don't mind them, however what apparently seems to be happening is like laziness or just the best "first generation" plants which are resistant to pesticides and have better yields.

My issue with this paridigem is that more pesticides will be sprayed in my food. In several years hopefully they splay the plants they wish to farm open wide and are able to create unheard of biomass thru some means which have not been exploited yet (gm)

But this bs of making plants resistant to roundup is so lame but I don't go in for all the harms people tend to ascribe to gm foods many of which are detailed in the hyper link posted by RAM

So I'm for more advanced teks but the current ones could pose health risks

I agree totally with this; if nothing else, the increase in pesticide use is bad enough when plants are made resistant to them so the companies can use/sell more. While studies about GMOs may be lacking in some areas, the studies about negative effects (most notably cancer and neurotoxicity) of pesticides and herbicides are undisputed.

I also study molecular bio. I am not particularly concerned about physical ramifications, like you, though it is theoretically possible. My main concerns are regarding the profit paradigm, destruction of biodiversity, and unethical business/environmental practices.

The dependence on corn/soy and other monocrops is troubling. I think genetic manipulation of plants has a lot of potential for good though. People have done cool things with enhancing the nutritional value of staple crops like rice: https://en.wikipedia.org...enetically_modified_rice

Also, as mentioned above. Pesticide use is always a concern in GMO and non-GMO crops.

I'm not realy against GMO as such, and i don't see why you by definition should be against genetic modification persé.

There are a couple of issues however, that have been pointed out by other commentors:
-if the only reason you want to modify an organism is, so that you can use pesticides more easily, then i don't see that as a real improvement or a technological breakthrough.
-there have been cases of studies, meant to prove the harmlesness of some GMO crop, that where falsified. Real cases of fraud. Scientists even have been harrased by judicial people, working for companies like monsanto, to keep quiet about these kind of things.
To me that indicates that at least in some cases, GMO crops don't live up to expectations.

And then there is the issue of personal taste...I realy like some natural variation in fruit and vegetables. I actually find it a bonus if peaches or potato's don't all have the exact same flavour, texture and shape.

On the other hand, there are probably cases where it realy makes sense. If you can make some crop more drought resistant. Famine is not such a good thing either.
And i do like those fractal shape broccoli's.

You do know that romanesco is not actually a GMO?

Anyway, since AFAIK, it's impossible to buy any GMO foodstuffs that are not likely contaminated with significant quantities of glyphosate, it's pedantry to claim that the tech is safe, and the problem lies only with the weed-control.

In general, if Monsanto et al are selling, I ain't buying. PCB's and Agent Orange are still gonna be swirling about the biosphere a century after they were last produced. And GM fields are just downright eery places, sterile as hell, no bugs, no birds, no nada, just rows of sad-looking plants. First we made the plants conform to our ideals, then the animals, and finally, the humans.

As Ram's mom clearly discovered, the link between our general health and that of our gut microbiome are deeply intertwined, and a growing body of evidence suggests that glyphosate messes with our microbiome too. Not to mention that of the soil, and rhizosphere...

The attached graph shows only correlation obviously, and not any causation, but it should be borne in mind that much/most of the glyphosate use depicted wasn't even on GM wheat, but regular wheat, where it's used "off-label" to accelerate ripening prior to harvest.



As William Carlos Williams wrote:

“Say to them:
Man has survived hitherto because he was too ignorant to know how to realize his wishes. Now that he can realize them, he must either change them or perish.”

Excellent points above

In relation to the cilliac claim I have trouble understanding the glycophosphates role, let's say I eat a lot of glycophosphate laced gluten free products, would I ever get cilliac?

The term cilliac wasn't en vouge in the early nineties and while the amount of glycophosphate has increased precipitously along with the reported incidences of cilliac go up along with it I personally am skeptical of a causal relationship between the too. But it's possible I just don't see a likely interaction between glycophosphate and stuff in wheat on the digestive tract. But it's possible and in 20 years we will likely know





But then I read

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih....pmc/articles/PMC3945755/


The place chan probably got that graph from


So while a glycophosphate ridden glueten free diet could probably not cause cilliac it could cause unfavorable balances of microbes and problems with nutrient transport& inflammation so hey it's worse than I thaught

So it looks like it is probably associated, I tend to trust animal models in terms of their applicability to human diesease models.

And I apologize for this too long, contradictory post but my overly skeptical nature deserves to be exposed

However chan I would love in the future to have a few sources whenever claims like that are made

I think it's always wise to doubt then dig until you can discern what's really what
Much easier if the stuff is on the surface
Respect
-orbiting

A peer-reviewed meta analysis of 2000+ studies investigating the health effects of GMOs found that there is no risk of illness associated with the consumption of genetically modified food. I don't even know how this is still a question.

Full Text

That said, there are a lot of problems with the economic and business practices of the biotech companies associated with GMO productions, but those are DISTINCT from the actual science of GMOs.

Blessings
~ND

Most succinctly put!

Hello and thank you for your reply.

Some genetic modifications can prevent the need for pesticides in certain plant species, while remaining harmless to humans.



I agree that corporations are evil. I concur that genetic modifications are great and have a huge potential to feed/nourish a lot of hungry people.



Exactly, well said.


Thanks everyone for all of your insightful replies!

-Q

yeah, i also tend to think along these lines.
But the fact is that many of these studies are fraudulent.

For instance, a common practice is to do trials with a crop, just as it is, and then with the same crop, injected with the modified genes.

So that would ofcourse prove that the modified genes by themselves are not harmfull, but not that the newly 'created' crop is harmless.

Your logic escapes me. If they're doing the test with the genetically modified crop, they're demonstrating that the genes are not harmful BY showing that the newly created crop is harmless.

Maybe I'm not understanding your point, but what you're describing doesn't seem like a gross violation of scientific ethics. It sounds like an attempt to make rigorous controls, which are key for scientific studies.

Blessings
~ND

IMHO, not all GMOs are born equal. Some might be harmful, others are not. It depends on the genes used, it depends how they were developed, how well they were tested, the natural ability of the plant to contain proteins that could neutralize some of the effects of gmo etc etc. So it's not all black and white.

For example, we could vilify GMO... beets, while short wheat, that was developed in the 1950s using "natural" methods (i.e. bleaching, and trying random chemical things until they got what they wanted), is much worse. More people are today gluten intolerant than ever before, since this new type of wheat has twice as much gluten as traditional varieties. To top it off, the guy even got a Nobel prize for it too.

Having said that, I don't quite trust corn and soy GMOs, since they're by far the more tricked-out of the GMOs, since they're so important in the American diet. I personally don't eat any corn or soy (except some organic tamari GF soy sauce rarely).

I wish there was selection going on about nutrient density instead of pesticides etc. According to a research paper a few years ago, today's vegetables have less than half the nutrition that they had a century ago. This is why they're so tasteless. In some varieties for example, magnesium was down 80%. No wonder the vast majority of Americans are magnesium deficient. And that's just one of the vitamins tested.

So, I'm not against selecting plants, I just want these modifications to have long terms studies on their belt by ~neutral bodies, and to be optimized for nutrition.

The point is that very often, the GMO crops themselves are not being tested. The crops being tested are often crops with, literally, just some modified genes injected into them.
So i mean that, literally, just putting a syringe into a potato and injecting a fluid with some genes into it, doesn't make it a GMO crop.
It's not the same as testing the modified potato itself.

And i don't see what kind of purpuse such a test would have, other than pulling up a smokescreen.
It doesn't mean that the GMO potato is toxic or something. But it sure does mean that companies like monsanto simply do not want to do some real, proper research.

No problems for me with gmos. It's the pesticides that are sprayed upon them that makes me avoid them.

I don't, I've attained incredibly good health avoiding them as much as possible, and intend to stay that way.


I don't have much science behind this, nor do I care to. I can tell the effects on my body, as well as observe how people look and feel who consume these things, or are just not conscious about their health, while amongst the general public (I work in a health food store and people watch, ask questions quite a bit).

I've never heard of such a thing. If you can go through the studies cited in the meta analysis I posted and back up your claim, I'd be very interested in reading the original papers.

Blessings
~ND

Well, i shouldn't have used the word 'often'.
I know of at least one such case that happened in the 90's. The only reason i know, is because there was a scientist at some english university who publicly objected this way of doing research, and then some big GMO-company put pressure on the university he was working for to fire him. Threatening to no longer fund all kinds of research, and so on.
I had read about it in a dutch science magazin that unfortunately no longer exists.

It would seem to me that GMO is merely an engineered feature, to monopolize a market; the bottom line is profit, and elimination of competition. this reasoning is based on fiscal reality and geopolitics, not fear-fueled hypotheses of the unknown, but a more predictable factor...greed.