Genetically Engineered Organisms Invade Our Planet - What's the Harm?

[nosmokes]

original-epochtimes

Genetically Engineered Organisms Invade Our Planet - What's the Harm?
By Gary Feuerberg
Epoch Times Washington, D.C. Staff
Mar 12, 2007

For a long time now, Americans have been told by the scientists who developed genetically modified (GM) crops and organisms that GM is safe and wonderful.

This was done with the blessing of government regulators, such as the Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). It was alleged that GM crops, such as Bt and Roundup Ready, to use the best known biotech products, are good for biodiversity, increase yields, are resistant to pests, reduce the need for pesticides, are more profitable for the farmers, and less labor intensive.

But a close examination of the benefits of transgenic crops will reveal that the benefits, if they occur, are way overstated, and the costs are often ignored.

Denise Caruso devotes a chapter in her new book, Intervention: Confronting the Real Risks of Genetic Engineering and Life on a Biotech Planet (2006), to assessing the evidence.
~snip~
.
.
.
complete article here

[ThomCat]

1. Cheerleaders will show up any moment now to attack

anyone who is sceptical of GMOs, the claims, and the corporations who profit from this stuff.

We're all just luddites, after all. :eyes:

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

3. A bit of a contradiction, isn't it?

I mean, there's the argument about how corporations profit from it, and then there's the argument that there's no benefit from genetic engineering.

So what's the deal?

[ThomCat]

4. That's a really pathetic straw-man even for you.

Normally you at least pretend to be a better critical thinker than that.

Companies can find ways to profit from anything. That is what they exist for, after all. That has no bearing at all one whether or not their products benefit the consumers, ecological diversity, or the farming industry as a whole.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

5. Actually, I'd like an answer please.

"Companies can find ways to profit from anything."

Somebody's got to be buying their product.

[crikkett]

12. people buy their product to their own detriment

as is evidenced by the alarming swath of farmer suicides in India (direct result of poverty brought on by growing GM crops).

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

14. LOL

[nosmokes]

15. so farmers committing suicide is really funny to you, huh BAH? wow.

a real class act.

[ComerPerro]

6. well, no benefit to society, other than profit for the few, I would imagine

Profit for the few is not a benefit for society. If it were, it could be said that the Iraq war has been extremely beneficial to the US.

[KT2000]

9. You noticed that too?

You can be sure some of them are paid for their efforts too.
Some others have joined the "I'm smarter than you" club and feel compelled to express that.
And sometimes group think takes over the so-called scientists on GM and chemical issues, but this area is so lacking in scientific proof of safety it is frightening.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

2. That's a good question. Where's the harm?

"Caruso cites USDA figures for 2006 that show that 68% of all soybeans planted in the U.S. were transgenic, as were 69% of the cotton planted, and 26% of corn acreage."

I'd suspect the dangers of GM food are going to manifest themselves any day now.

[nosmokes]

7. for a product that's supposed to have so many benefits, why is bribery and

colusion w/ corrupt governments, the hiding and suppression of scientific reports SOP for monsanto and the rest of the biotech AGmulti-nats? and why is it that every developed country except the US has either strict regs or outright bans on GMOs? is everyone else crazy? or is it just barely possible that big bidness has too much influence in our government? hell, we can't even labels on foodsrtuffs that contain GMOs.

[crikkett]

13. how to tell if your fruit is GMO

every pc. fruit is sold with a sticker.
4 digit number code on sticker = conventionally grown food
5 digit # starting with 9: organic
5 digit # starting with 8: GMO

[kestrel91316]

8. Yeah. Just the way harm from endocrine disruptors or atmospheric

CO2 have instantly appeared..................

That's the way biology works. If something is not immediately and visibly harmful, there IS NO HARM.

:sarcasm:

[ThomCat]

10. See, there you go thinking again.

If any harm exists it has to be instantaneous and blatant, otherwise it just doesn't count.
:sarcasm:

[KT2000]

11. Silent epidemics

due to chemical exposures through air, water and food have already occurred. They are called "unexplained illnesses," idiopathic environmental illness, psychiatric disorders, malingering, Munchhausen by Proxy and many other names. The medical/insurance/manufacturing entities spend a lot of money to promote this ridiculous evasion.

Currently the gun is pointed at genetics but we are now learning that genes are altered by chemical exposures.

Lack of research does not mean something is safe. The chemical industry has gotten away with murder and the GM industry is following their game plan.

[crikkett]

16. GM soy had a horrible year 2005,

the heat split their stalks.

Monarch butterflies are dying off because GM "BT Corn" pollen kills their larvae.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

17. Link on the soy?

Monarch thing's been debunked.

[nosmokes]

18. it has not been debunked. that is a LIE.

even the studies that support GMOs say that the risk is neglible because supposedly there wouldn't be enough larvae to be able to eat enough of the Bt toxin in the wild to cause to cause mass die off. nobody disputes the toxity of the Bt toxin to the monarch larvae. they (the proponents) just try to downplay it and say it's not a problem. i call bullshit. to borrow a phrase, you're entitled to have your own opinion and you can sniff it as often as you wish, but you're not entitled to pull your own facts out of it.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

19. Not only was it debunked...

it was debunked five or six years ago.

http://deltafarmpress.com/mag/farming_butterfly_kills_bt/

"nobody disputes the toxity of the Bt toxin to the monarch larvae."

Well, yeah, nosmokes. If you force feed enough insecticide to monarch larvae in the laboratory, it'll kill them. But Bt corn's not killing any butterflies in the field.

[nosmokes]

20. hardly.

GMW



GM crops wiping out monarch habitat (6/9/2006)

You may have thought the problem was monarch butterfly larvae dying when they fed on Bt corn pollen, but it doesn't stop there.

EXCERPT: Milkweeds are the only plants on which monarchs lay eggs... Every monarch on the planet depends on milkweed.

...You used to see milkweeds everywhere... You see them seldom now.

We're eradicating milkweed... Most monarch/milkweed habitat occurs in farmland, vanishing at nearly 3,000 acres a day. The remaining habitat, mostly owned by agribusiness, increasingly grows genetically modified (GM) corn and soybeans. GM crops resist glyphosphate, the active ingredient in RoundUp. Milkweed cannot. The GM switch meant the loss of 80 million acres of monarch habitat...

The monarch and the milkweed will vanish. Everyone knows that economics come before beauty, commerce before conservation. Everyone knows that everything legal is safe.

Or maybe we all don't know this... Maybe we're not certain that GM crops should predominate, playing an unknown role in our children's health.
---

The monarch and the milkweed
By Roxana Robinson
The Boston Globe, September 6 2006 http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/09/06/the_monarch_and_the_milkweed/

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

21. She isn't referencing any scientific journal.

She's blaming habitat distruction, not Bt, and seems to have Bt confused with glyphosate.

[nosmokes]

22. OFFS!

they took the damn Bt corn variety that was most toxic to monarch larvae off the market. if that isn't an admission that it was killing them i dunno what is.


Institute Responsible Technology

April 2005 Spilling the Beans


US Government and Biotech Firm Deceive Public on GM Corn Mix-up
By Jeffrey M. Smith
Author of the international bestseller Seeds of Deception


“This seems to be yet another display of deceit, secrecy, incompetence and arrogance from the GM industry.”1 This condemnation from Francis Blake of the organic farmers association in Europe was one of several choice comments hurled at the biotech firm Syngenta after it was revealed that their unapproved genetically engineered corn variety had contaminated the food supply for four years. Furthermore, after it was made public, both Syngenta and the US government misled the public about its composition and safety. The German consumer protection minister described the whole affair as “Unbelievable sloppiness!”2 The European commissioner for health and consumer affairs said, “We deplore the unauthorized imports of this corn.”3

The controversy, which may eventually cost hundreds of millions of dollars, is centered on Syngenta’s Bt10, an experimental, unapproved corn variety genetically, engineered to produce its own pesticide. In mid December 2004, the company informed the US government that it had just learned that the corn had been mislabeled in the 1990s as Bt11, an approved variety. From 2001 – 2004, about 14,000 bags of Bt10 seed4 were grown on 37,000 acres in the US and the resultant 165,000 tons of corn was sold as food and feed in the US and abroad.

This was not good news for the US government, which vigorously promotes GM crops and downplays health and environmental concerns. Bt10 is technically illegal, since it is a pesticide producing crop not registered by the EPA. News of its contamination ironically coincided with the public comment period for an FDA proposal, designed to calm public fears if unapproved GM varieties were discovered in the food supply. It also came at a time when the US was challenging the EU’s regulations on genetically engineered crops in the World Trade Organization.

The FDA, EPA, and USDA, along with the White House,5 decided to keep everything secret—for the time being—while they investigated. They reviewed seven information packets received from Syngenta from Jan. 7 to March 10, 2005.6 In late March, the story was leaked to the journal Nature. When their reporter called to check the facts,7 the government was forced to go public.
~snip~