NEWS: You Eat Living Pollution

There seem to be many health scares at the moment, which give the impression that we are doing things that are going to cause us harm.

My point about life expectancy is that we are on an upward trend, with longer life expectancies than ever before. If there is merit in the scare stories, we should see a fall in life expectancies, but that is not the case. This suggests that we are doing most things right.

But you are correct that our maximum life expectancy could be much longer.

Exactly! I don't know why so many people piss and shit over the whole GMO thing. Still tastes the same, still looks the same, still nutritionally the same. Grows better, heartier, resists pests without chemical additives.... Yeah, I'll take an extra bit of DNA over pesticide/insecticide any day.

So we should just let our poor neighbors starve to death? That's what some people out there would want. Just let them starve to death then we can swoop in and take their land and all its worth.

Norman Borlaug is on the right path and so are those like him. But he isn't the pure solution to the problem. People of like mind need to also help 3rd world countries cultivate their lands and resources so bring them out of the muck and into a more modern state. They need to industrialize and reach a state of self reliance. Instead just feeding them, we need to help teach them how to feed themselves. Population growth is another issue that needs to be addressed as well. Believe it or not, religious views aside, in poverty stricken areas and third world countries there is another reason for parents having multiple children. Life expectancy is low. Having 3 or 5 or more children gives you a better chance of your family line continuing than just having 1 or 2. Then there is the before mentioned religious influence. Some religions actually frown on or are directly opposed to any form of birth control. Unfortunately, this is a harder issue to address.

But the point I'm getting at is that it's like the old saying (with a little alteration)

"Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime. Teach a man to sell fish and he eats stake."

Education and knowledge should be free and shared openly to all. But if people are starving to death then they will breed as wildly as they can in a dying hope of keeping their bloodline and their culture a live. Feed them then educate them and watch them become healthy and self reliant.

Otherwise we're treating them like roaches, waiting for them to die off so we can move in and take their land.

I stand by my statement that people are stupid. Take an individual and they can be rational and clear of thought. But add that individual to a group and they become a mob. Reason loses way to hysteria and fear.

GMO does not equate to bad, evil, poison, unhealthy, etc. GMO has saved lives. Great men like Norman Borlaug have saved billions of lives. They're doing a hell of a lot more than those who are just spreading fear and misconception about GMO. If I lived in a 3rd world country I'd readily eat GMO food rather than starve no matter how much someone tried to scare me with the idea of "frankenfoods".

In the case of this article, a year goes by and no ill effects. For most that is enough. Just because it was not previously approved for human consumption does not mean it is pollution. I would imagine there was at least some testing done to see if it really was harmful. Ideally you would like it approved before it was put in the food but do you think anyone would have made a stink over this if it was approved first then added to the foods? I think that is really what some are complaining about, not that the food is GMO.

This has been the reigning wisdom and policy for generations, hasn't it? Has it worked yet? Is there not still a "third world," full of starving, "uneducated" people? Have they become healthy and "self-reliant" (whatever that means)? Has increasing the food supply exponentially, a la Norman Borlaug, totally fixed the problem of world hunger? Has it even made a dent? Did I miss something here?

"Old minds think:
If it didn't work yesterday and it isn't working today, we need MORE of it tomorrow.

New minds think:
If it didn't work yesterday and it isn't working today, we need something else tomorrow."

This is exactly what I thought when I read this article. This stuff has been in our rice supply for YEARS, we're not hearing a peep on the consumer end of things.

With regard to the 60 years of testing, how long exactly should we wait until its OK to use a product? 60 years is close to a generation. Seems a little crazy to me.

I do agree however, that we need to give people incentive NOT to reproduce when they are living in an unsustainable environment. If you can feed one child, it doesn't make much sense to to have a gaggle more...

I am sorry, but what evidence do you have that they lower a body's resistance to disease? There are organic foods that are fertilized with raw sewage, so I personally take claims that the food is by definition healthier with a grain of salt.

I don't see how artificially lowering a company's profits helps the situation -- for example, think of the flu vaccine shortage we went through. No profit + high liability = no vaccine. You want to punish scientists for advancing agricultural technology???

No , 60 years is close to a lifetime. It be more like 3 generations.

Ok, so while I'm not entirely sure what your whole "starving to death" issue is about, I think it's fair to say that generally speaking, ingesting pesticides is not "healthy." That's one example of some of the dangers of GMO foods. The pesticide is literally built right in, genetically. This is, arguably, a danger zone for human health.

Another potential danger of GMO foods are Terminator Seeds. Those are seeds that have been genetically altered to basically kill themselves after one crop. They're only viable once, which means each season, the farmers who use them have to buy a whole new, different batch. There are two big dangers here: one is social/economic, in the sense that it traps farmers into an endless cycle of always having to buy a new line of seed each season, which is very costly.

The other potential danger of Terminator Seeds is the fact that preventing cross pollination of GMO and non-GMO crops has basically be proven to be impossible, or at the least, very difficult. What this means is, potentially, down the line, a world in which Terminator Seeds have cross pollinated with enough crops that the spread of the suicide gene outpaces the production of "new" seeds. It might sound far-fetched, but it's obviously a concern, and if you look far enough into the future, you can see how and why GMO seeds and crops are problematic on a number of levels.

While I understand your concerns, I think some of the information you are presenting here is largely unfounded and misleading.
IIMC it is not pesticides that are built into GMO but the resistance to pesticides. A particular pesticide in fact. So, your statement seems either like a gross misunderstanding of the science or just hyperbolic scare tactics.

On terminator seeds. If they got to be a problem, they were engineered with those characteristics. Don't you suppose they could engineer seeds with other characteristics ? It seems like a false dilemma to suggest that the seeds are going to take over the natural world and there will be no way to turn the clock back.
I think a more valid argument may be that corporate interests may wind up predominant over the peoples. But that could be a big subject and may even be more of a valid concern today rather than in the future.

I'm not sure where I fall in this subject. I'm a big fan of science. But I am a little sympathetic to your points, at least in spirit. You know maybe if the anti GMO environmental activists had come up with any conclusive evidence in that 60 years that GMO DID have harmful effects on people instead of just making up plausible scenarios I would be a little more behind them. But it doesn't seem like it.
You really don't think 3 or 4 generations is enough to at least have a good idea what happens ? I'm not suggesting they have reached a definitive conclusion and no one should study the effects any more, just that possibly after 60 years there is little reason for doomsday scenarios.

genetically recombined and mutated rice (lol) is healthier than mcdonalds.

Actual pesticides are built into certain GMO crops.

Corporate interests throughout much of the world already dictate that farmers must buy their seed from them, not to mention the fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides (some of which are, yes: genetically embedded). Then farmers are forced to sell their products back to these transnational corporations without any control over what they pay for the things they need or how much their products are worth when they sell them.

I don't think it's a false dilemma to propose that Terminator Seeds (just as an example), could do irreparable damage to the world's seed supply through the cross polination of their suicide gene. Am I saying it's definitely going to happen? No, but I think it's a fair concern. By the way, doesn't the creation of a suicide gene make you wonder? I mean, I'm all for science, as well. But that's not science, is it? That's brutality, if you ask me. The simple existance of a terminator seed is proof that the world's food supply has been hijacked, and not for the purpose of saving people from starvation.

I might just have to agree with you on that one.

Can you please site some sources for that information ?

In my understanding, altering the genes of a plant to be resistant to pests does not constitute the same thing as lacing a plant with pesticides. Do you see the same difference or is this something I'm imagining ?

Here I agree with you about corporate control and much of these issues. You wont get a whole lot of argument from me that the level of corporate manipulation is obscene and unfair.

On the terminator seeds. Once again, saying something is possible constitutes pretty close to zero.
Get some studies, do some research, come up with some evidence. Monkeys might fly out of my butt. Chances are slim.
The simple existence of suicide seeds may be a failsafe that prevents the overwhelming uncontrolled spread of GMO not evidence of a hijack.
Maybe.
I agree that it is a " fair concern ". I'm not ready to go all Chicken Little about it though. ( and I'm not saying that you ARE getting all CL, just sayin )

WTF???