GMO foods are safe.

[CreamCat]

 

 

• GMO makes organic farming cheaper because most genetic modifications are done to make foods need less pesticide.
• Non-GMO food is just as likely or unlikely as GMO food to alter your DNA because altered DNA has the same chemical characteristics as DNA. Altered DNA is still DNA.
• Worry about pesticide and heavy metals rather than GMO food.

Edited January 15, 2019 by CreamCat

[Cepzeu]

GMO can be safe, it can be unsafe (possibly) (recent research shows ambiguity in the long term safety of Monsanto maize). At the end of the day genetic modification is a TOOL. It is very easy for people who don't understand the molecular biology of genetic modification to lump everything into a big "GMO" bin and call it bad. All Type I diabetics survive because insulin is made in GMO E. coli. There is a strain of GMO rice called "Golden Rice" that is designed to produce more beta-carotene and provide vitamin A to some African populations, whose children go blind because of the shortage of vitamin A producing foods there. There are many things it can be used for.

My educational background is in molecular biology and plant biotechnology. From my experience, 90% of lay people have no nuanced understanding of how GMO are made and just jump on the bandwagon of "GMO" is bad.

Now, just because a tool can be neutral (similar to money), doesn't mean a big corporate ego can't take advantage of it for personal gain. Monsanto are involved in some very shady business practices and are not driving GMO in a positive direction.

[outlandish]

Agreed, we shouldn't write off GMO. There's nothing inherently "bad" (nor "good") about GMO, just like there's nothing inherently bad or good about electricity. It's a technology that we need to learn to use responsibly. Proceed with caution, and don't automatically reject GMO.

Viruses and bacteria are constantly GMOing each other in the wild, as well as the plants and animals they interact with. We've been manipulating the genetics of our livestock, crops our pets for millennia, albeit with blunter tools.

[moon777light]

A lot of people think that gmo is the stuff that has the pesticides/etc and non-gmo doesnt. BUt it isnt that straightforward. Take the banana for example. Classic food staple, many vegans and hippies love em as does the body-builder/businessman. The long yellow curved fruit we know of today did not exist back in the day. All bananas were genetically modified to be larger than they used to be. Natural banana were much muuuuch smaller. So just because your buying organic doesnt mean it wasnt genetically modified. The problem isnt the genetic modified stuff, its the pesticides and heavy metal, like mentioned. One should aim to buy organic since its doesnt have these chemicals (for the most part) but lots of "organic" stuff actually could have been gmo foods previously.

Buuuuut i gots to admit that non-gmo will always taste muchhh better

[CreamCat]

11 hours ago, Cepzeu said:

Now, just because a tool can be neutral (similar to money), doesn't mean a big corporate ego can't take advantage of it for personal gain. Monsanto are involved in some very shady business practices and are not driving GMO in a positive direction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto was acquired by Bayer. What was Monsanto doing to make GMO dangerous?

[pluto]

The problem is the people who create GMO's n what not are not In-tune with nature and universal flow(if you will). Nothing they create will ever be harmonious because they are not in-tune/harmonious themselves. This is Universal Law.

Biodynamic (No-Till) Farming is probably the closest thing we have to replicating natures way. If you seek optimal health.

Edited January 16, 2019 by pluto

[Cepzeu]

@CreamCat I didn't say it was making GMO dangerous, I said it wasn't taking it into a positive direction in the sense that the spread of the pollen to different farms by wind led to other farmers acquiring the male genetic component which turned their maize crops into the same as Monsanto's, which led Monsanto to sue them. Also there is a big ethical debate on the role of intellectual property in genetic alteration. I'm not familiar with the details of Monsanto's policy but one example is a cancer research company that found associations between cancer and thousands of genes. No matter how small the association was they decided to patent all the associated genes which essentially monopolised cancer-gene research to them. Given a lot of this information was in public datasets this was an unethical move and the patent was overturned in court.

@pluto You're speaking from a naturalistic fallacy. Humanity is part of nature and the universe, our "unnatural" creations and technology are an expression of our nature-given ability of non-instinctive thought. People's intentions are governed by nature. Destructive and creative are part of the same spectrum and are relative. Nature/universe is what it is, being "in-tune" with it is a subjective human view. 

The closest thing we have to nature is what exists in the now. All of our technology is a rearrangement of parts of nature. People who are not "in-tune" are themselves part of universal flow. Their "non-in-tunement" is through the will of universal flow.

[CreamCat]

8 minutes ago, Cepzeu said:

@CreamCat I didn't say it was making GMO dangerous, I said it wasn't taking it into a positive direction in the sense that the spread of the pollen to different farms by wind led to other farmers acquiring the male genetic component which turned their maize crops into the same as Monsanto's, which led Monsanto to sue them. Also there is a big ethical debate on the role of intellectual property in genetic alteration. I'm not familiar with the details of Monsanto's policy but one example is a cancer research company that found associations between cancer and thousands of genes. No matter how small the association was they decided to patent all the associated genes which essentially monopolised cancer-gene research to them. Given a lot of this information was in public datasets this was an unethical move and the patent was overturned in court.

So, the safety of GMO was not a problem. Trying to monopolize GMO seeds and knowledge about cancer was the problem. I wish patents were demolished.

Edited January 16, 2019 by CreamCat

[Cepzeu]

@CreamCat Safety of GMO as a whole is a trap, Safety of each variation of GMO in the short and long term on a case-by-case basis is what needs to be done. Monsanto's maize long term safety has not been verified, we don't know if it is good or bad in the long term. Other GMO products will have other tests.