Post: #26

(11-27-2013 05:18 PM)kingjuice Wrote:  Listen to this podcast for a scientist's perspective on GMO.

http://impruvism.com/gmo-foods-podcast/

Very interesting stuff.

tl;dl: There's no scientific proof that eating GMO's are going to give you cancer of the super aids.

Be wary of the pleb and hippies for they love attributing causality when it doesn't exist.

As an aside, we have very little understanding about nutrition as it is.

Especially how it affects our health.

There's no money to be made with this diet advice:

Eat a balanced and varied diet.

Don't overeat.

The people defending Monsanto and their ilk seem to come back to the phrase "there is no evidence of..."

A lack of scientific evidence (even if we were to ignore the studies presented in this thread) only says that we have yet to prove something with current scientific knowledge. That is not akin to saying something is safe.

The studies showing how squirrels and bees won't touch GMO foods are to me far more telling than what a scientific community with dubious objectivity can produce. Here we have living animals in their natural habitat, that have senses far more developed than what humans can understand and replicate, and they are shunning GMO crops.

Post: #27

(11-27-2013 06:36 PM)Vicious Wrote:  

(11-27-2013 05:18 PM)kingjuice Wrote:  Be wary of the pleb and hippies for they love attributing causality when it doesn't exist.

The people defending Monsanto and their ilk seem to come back to the phrase "there is no evidence of..."

A lack of scientific evidence (even if we were to ignore the studies presented in this thread) only says that we have yet to prove something with current scientific knowledge. That is not akin to saying something is safe.

When science discovers why a traditional food has a positive benefit I am highly interested. But when a traditional food purported to have some positive benefit has no known scientific cause, I will in no way take that as a cue not to try it in my diet.

Science can be a great supplement, but ignore the lived experience of generations -- old wive's tales to some -- it may be your losee.

I have following to be true, all of which were passed on to me from an 80 year old Ukrainian woman from a village:

Onions and garlics are good for colds. [science]
Watermelon is a natural viagra for men. [science]
Sitting on cold concrete will provoke a UTI. (no science or food here)

The list goes on...
Article on food folk remedies

In short, I have had better results with these folk traditions over our scientific assessment of what is good for us. These assessments (the food pyramid for example). My ideas about GMO are colored by this experience.

Ukraine has amazing bread. I was told to stop eating so much... "everyone knows bread is not good for you" and at the same time forced to eat a little bread with my soup "you need the bread to counteract the soup fats".

Historical cultures have rich ideas of the relationship of food to the body. That is why GMO is such a hard sell in places like Ukraine where people do not have blind faith in big business and big medicine.

In the U.S. we have very little food culture at least at the natural cultural level. We take a profoundly scientific view on most things... except our almost blind, pseudo-religious belief in the current state of scientific knowledge.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! A little short from David Lynch's Eraserhead that introduces new, improved chickens.

Post: #28

I just love how big Agra fights so hard and spends so much to prevent GMOs to be labeled.

This comes straight out of Monsanto's website:

Quote:We oppose mandatory labeling of food and ingredients developed from GM seeds in the absence of any demonstrated risks, as it could be interpreted as a warning or imply that food products containing these ingredients are somehow inferior to their conventional or organic counterparts.

Link

How disingenuous, deceitful and dishonest can you be? If the problem is the public's misinformation about your product than it is your duty to educate us about its safety, not lobbying and spending millions so we don't know what we're eating. Of course the real and obvious reason is that GMOs are shit and they would see a decrease in their profit margins if labeling was a reality.

These people are garbage.

Post: #29

Here's an article addressing a few of the arguments against labeling:

The Case for Labeling GMOs

Post: #30

This study has been discredited and the paper will be withdrawn soon.

http://retractionwatch.com/2013/11/28/co...retracted/

Post: #31

(11-28-2013 06:13 PM)not_dead_yet Wrote:  This study has been discredited and the paper will be withdrawn soon.

http://retractionwatch.com/2013/11/28/co...retracted/

Did you read it?

"Unequivocally, the Editor-in-Chief found no evidence of fraud or intentional misrepresentation of the data."

The retraction is due to the small sample size, not because there was anything wrong with the data gathered. Personally I think the pictures speak for themselves.

Post: #32

I haven't read enough to be confident in my opinion of GMO crops but there are certain things that make me hesitant to consume it with regularity. The main reason, is that so many of those people who have authority over regulations are also involved with the very same companies being regulated. This article(http://www.mises.org/daily/6580/Monsanto...igh-Places) specifically targets Michael Taylor as being complicit in suppressing and impeding studies and results on the effects of GMO products.

Also, have any of you looked deeply into the mice studies on GMO? I saw that they were only fed GMO corn, and although I know that mice have a different physiological make-up and needs than us, Pellagra may have caused some of those same side effects being attributed to GMO foods. I read that in Italy in the 19th century Pellagra(niacin deficiency) caused horrible defects because the Italians were only eating polenta in the Winter.

Who knows? Until I know with some certainty that GMO crops are safe, I'd rather err on the side of caution and limit the amount of GMO products I put in my body. The last fucking thing I want is to become sterile. My seed shall inherit the earth.

Post: #33

Nassim Taleb has commented on GMOs in the past. An argument he makes against it is how it takes a way a lot of genetic diversity in crops so if there's ever some sort of blight it'll pretty much destroy nearly the entirety of whatever is planted at the moment.

Post: #34

Do you guys think there's a correlation between GMO and gluten allergies?


http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articl...-rise.aspx

Post: #35

(07-28-2013 03:11 PM)TexasMade Wrote:  Eventually we will need every boost we can get. Bring on GMO. The Earth can barely support 7 billion people let alone 10 billion. Humans are a cancer to the Earth no doubt about it.

To quote (or misquote, I can't find the original article online, but it stuck in my head pretty well) David Richardson from British magazine Farmer's Weekly:

David Richardson, Farmers Weekly Wrote:"We keep hearing the fact that 'the world will need to support an extra three billion people by 2040', used as justification for GMOs and other 'neccessary' advances in science. As if three billion people will just live on fresh air whilst farmers play catch up"

He's right. The human population is like any other species- self limiting due to resource availability. This is not seen so much in the Western world, but is a basic fact of like in Africa etc.

Should we happen to make it to an extra three billion by 2040 thanks to GMOs, we will need to gain exponentially greater advances in food production technology over the next decades.

It has to stop somewhere. It may as well stop here. Ban GMOs and let the human race limit it's growth. Bleating on about the poor in Africa is all very well, but if you help them eat they will just breed more. Plenty of members on here I'm sure are already doing their bit by not reproducing.

There's no magic bullet for this, no fairy tale happy ending. GMOs will intensify and compound human misery in the long term, regardless of whether they are bad for our health or not.

My view? If a Monsato exec told me it was raining, I'd go outside to check...

Post: #36

You can't say that all GMO crops are going to be unhealthy across the board. As they are modifying specific parts of a genome will vary depending on the crop, saying they are unhealthy across the board is like saying all bacteria will kill you dead because anthrax does.

What matters is what is being modified and what effect that modification has on the species.

Post: #37

Nassim Taleb has been going on an anti-GMO crusade recently, thought some people want to follow since I know he has a big following here (I'm a fan myself). He spent years calling out big bank and financial firms for creating the conditions that allowed for the financial meltdowns we've seen in recent years and looks like big food is his next target

https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/498229204446887936

He's claiming some Monstanto lobbyist is going out of his way to smear his reputation:

https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/498035197024411648

Post: #38

1. Monsanto is a CHEMICAL and PESTICIDE company first.. They made GMO foods so that their pesticides dont kill the natural CROP itself.
... Glycosulphate and what not..

2. They are way IN with the Govt & FDA..

3. Imagine world food supply in the hands of few companies like Monstanto. That is their goal. Once you use their products.. you can grow much on that land.. in new nations.. they start with freebies.. jack up prices.. non seed bearing fruits & crops.. have farmers by the BALLS.. CONTROL WORLD FOOD SUPPLY..
EVIL.. even worse than HYDRA (avengers)

4. If you believe GMOs are good for YOU to EAT... Please LABEL IT.. Let PEOPLE .. CHOOSE.. Dont block the other side with your DOLLARS and PROPOGANDA..

5. They are in the same boat as McDonalds and General Mills.. Fuck with Natures foods.. give you unhealthy diet..
Big Food, Big Pharma, Big Health.. Big ...Lobbyists..

6. Stop suing small farmers because some of your TOXIC seeds landed on their ORGANIC Non GMO farm.. On the other hand PLEASE PAY PENALTY.. to them for CORRUPTING their NATURAL LAND.

7. GMOs & strong PESTICIDES are dangerous.. PERIOD.. See the rise of wierd new syndromes and diseases in all cultures globally..

BOTTOMLINE.. I hate them. .. they've been the cause of farmer suicides and what not..

Post: #39

(12-03-2013 04:06 PM)Aliblahba Wrote:  Do you guys think there's a correlation between GMO and gluten allergies?


http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articl...-rise.aspx

Gluten, Lactose.. and all kinds allergies that people in previous generations.. 50/100 years back did not have issue with.

Food has been fucked.. Food, Dairy, Agri practices are not industrialized chemical, hormone factories..

Post: #40

Post: #41

(05-09-2015 07:15 AM)Zep Wrote:  

HA! Now that's what I call "putting your money where your mouth is"!

I guess our lobbyist friend there had no skin in the game, that's a shame tbh, would've loved to see him drink that stuff.

Post: #42

It's interesting-while I can see that GM crops will, at some point, be a necessary part of diet, I plan to avoid them until the bugs are worked out and I'm compelled to eat them.
Outside of scaremongering that GMO plants are "unnatural" or that they'll turn me and my plants infertile, GMOs are worrying on another level.
Regarding the corn that would kill off any insect which ate it-yes, that preserves harvests, but think about how the need for that developed. The insects become resistant to pesticide, so they eat sprayed crops and breed in greater numbers, spraying has to be stepped up so the sprays which repel the resistant pests risk damaging the crop, so Monsanto develop a strain that the bug won't eat- this is like the race between antibiotics and diseases. The bug will adapt to that eventually
OK, they grow better in nutrient-poor soil. WHY is the soil nutrient-poor? Could intensive farming and lack of crop rotation, topsoil deprivation, cumulative effects of pesticide overuse, have anything to do with that? Has anything been done to address those factors?
(if yes, never mind-I'm not an agronomist).
It was touted as a humanitarian solution to send engineered seeds to Africa. It's not humanitarian; their diets are markedly different, even the strains of similar crops are equally different, and the biggest agricultural problem facing african nations is displacement, environmental devastation, not quality of the crops. Zimbabwe was called the breadbasket of Africa; now it barely produces enough to feed it's own population. New corn and wheat strains won't fix that.
It may be safe to eat or at least without obvious side-effects to the consumer, but there's never not a downside.
The increase in allergies, Crohn's etc has a tenuous connection to increased pesticide use (there is a study but I can't find it) since
sensitivity to certain foods is heightened by nicotinoid treatment. Bees avoid some sprayed plants, are harmed by others-will Monsanto work on engineering new bees?

Post: #43

Amazing things can be done with GMOs. Rice crops infused with Vitamin A were planted in the Philippines to help combat vitamin A deficiency there (which can lead to blindness), then a bunch of activist fuckers destroyed them.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/...t_and.html

As someone who doesn't like pesticides being used on his produce, I think GMO fruits and vegetables engineered to be more resistant to insects and parasites (like the eggplants mentioned in the article) are potentially a really good thing.

The people wringing their hands over GMOs, vaccines, etc. are not particularly convincing. It seems like a bunch of paranoid religious beliefs to me.

Post: #44

(05-10-2015 04:20 AM)TheWastelander Wrote:  Amazing things can be done with GMOs. Rice crops infused with Vitamin A were planted in the Philippines to help combat vitamin A deficiency there (which can lead to blindness), then a bunch of activist fuckers destroyed them.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/...t_and.html

As someone who doesn't like pesticides being used on his produce, I think GMO fruits and vegetables engineered to be more resistant to insects and parasites (like the eggplants mentioned in the article) are potentially a really good thing.

The people wringing their hands over GMOs, vaccines, etc. are not particularly convincing. It seems like a bunch of paranoid religious beliefs to me.

You would think since you don't like pesticides that you also wouldn't like GMO's fruits and vegetables that produce pesticides.

Post: #45

(12-04-2013 04:14 AM)roberto Wrote:  He's right. The human population is like any other species- self limiting due to resource availability. This is not seen so much in the Western world, but is a basic fact of like in Africa etc.

Should we happen to make it to an extra three billion by 2040 thanks to GMOs, we will need to gain exponentially greater advances in food production technology over the next decades.

It has to stop somewhere. It may as well stop here. Ban GMOs and let the human race limit it's growth. Bleating on about the poor in Africa is all very well, but if you help them eat they will just breed more. Plenty of members on here I'm sure are already doing their bit by not reproducing.

There's no magic bullet for this, no fairy tale happy ending. GMOs will intensify and compound human misery in the long term, regardless of whether they are bad for our health or not.

My view? If a Monsato exec told me it was raining, I'd go outside to check...

Yes. Many of our problems, even some cultural ones like mass immigration, I would argue, stem from overpopulation. We touched on some serious ones like resource depletion in the California thread and there's just no question that we are in a position of population overshoot right now, and GMOs compounded the problem.

I don't quite agree with the bolded because as Veloce pointed out, we already produce enough food to feed far more than the number of people presently on the planet, but the system leaves a lot of waste and if we continue this model there will be many more problems in the future. In other words the technology is already here, but our systematic assumptions will lead to problems.

Truth be told I'm a lot more concerned about the availability of other resources going forward, foremost among them water.

As for the GMOs themselves, is there any real way to avoid them in the US, besides just avoiding things like corn syrup and the like? At some point in the future I want to start growing my own food and baking my own bread, which doesn't seem to be as hard as it sounds.

Post: #46

(12-04-2013 04:14 AM)roberto Wrote:  He's right. The human population is like any other species- self limiting due to resource availability. This is not seen so much in the Western world, but is a basic fact of like in Africa etc.

Should we happen to make it to an extra three billion by 2040 thanks to GMOs, we will need to gain exponentially greater advances in food production technology over the next decades.

It has to stop somewhere. It may as well stop here. Ban GMOs and let the human race limit it's growth. Bleating on about the poor in Africa is all very well, but if you help them eat they will just breed more. Plenty of members on here I'm sure are already doing their bit by not reproducing.

I see a lot of parallels between GMO and global warming, and honestly I think the people who should have the final say on what will basically amount to significantly higher food and energy costs, are the people on the edge who this will affect the most.

Even assuming worst case scenarios like GMO's cause cancer and the earth is warming and we're causing it, for someone with not enough to eat, or someone who can't afford the power bill to refrigerate their insulin, these are moot points.

It's all well and good to say 'let to poor folks die' but I wonder if you'd be singing a different tune if food and energy prices soared to the point where it affected you personally more than going from two cars to one?

Honestly I haven't seen any convincing evidence either way, and a lot of it basically feels like it's on the same tact as 'power lines/cell phones cause cancer' or 'vaccines cause autism'.

Post: #47

(05-10-2015 10:38 AM)Seadog Wrote:  Honestly I haven't seen any convincing evidence either way, and a lot of it basically feels like it's on the same tact as 'power lines/cell phones cause cancer' or 'vaccines cause autism'.

There have been studies that suggest that long term cell phone use could increase cancer risk. That doesn't mean they cause cancer outright but that heavy use can increase your chances of getting some forms of cancer.

Vaccines is another issue. Most vaccines have been found to have negative effects on a small percentage of people who use them.

Vaccines have also become a way for Medical corporations to increase there profits. They lobby governments to mandate vaccinations for things that people are unlikely to contract.

One of the more famous recent examples is Gardisil which is supposed to vaccinate against HPV. This virus is supposed to be the cause of many forms of cervical cancer. Only a very small percentage of women will get cervical cancer. Yet the government was mandating the vaccination of all girls.

Is this in the good of the general public or is this just a way to line corporations pockets?

I don't believe that any of these subjects should be viewed in simplistic terms. We shouldn't be for or against all GMO's or vaccines. Instead we should take each vaccine/GMO on a case by case basis.

I also believe that we should have a choice in the matter barring extreme circumstances. So I should be able to buy GMO free food. I also shouldn't have to vaccinate my children when it is mandated not for health reasons, but to line a corporation's pockets at the taxpayer's expense.

Post: #48

I really want to post something constructive on this post but when it comes to GMOs and Vaccines and Global Warming for that matter, My science background tells me one thing but my skepticism tells me another. I have a lot of work to do currently and do not have the time to really dig in and research these topics as I should to give an informed, unbiased, comment on this issue. I don't want to talk out of my ass so take this with a grain of salt...

Something foul is up with GMOs, everybody in science that I know is being paid off or intimidated into head nodding on this shit in America. This is not the case outside America, I am in school with Saudis, Pakistanis, and Brazilians and there is a consensus outside of the US that labeling GMOs is a good thing and not eating them is a better thing. This extends to genetically modified animal products that do not spoil or decompose as they should. I will have considerable free time in September, I have every intention of looking into GMOs, Global Warming and Vaccines I will start my first thread on RVF once I can back up what I write with something solid.

Post: #49

For the record there is a link between cell phones and leukemia/lymphoma. I do not carry my cell phone with me everywhere and maintain a hard line so I am not exposed to my cell phone too often. I know this for an absolute fact, and this is being suppressed by the powers that be. I worked on a document review project and I saw classified documents from major cellphone manufacturers and they are well aware of it and suppressed it, violently.

Post: #50

They're perfectly fine.

Just ignore the idiots.