GM food- threat to health?

[MojcaS]

What do you think about GM food? Is it a threat or is it something we use for thousands of years without serious or known consequences?

 

I do not believe GM food- as we know it today- is bigger threat than crossbreeding or interbreeding of plants and animals.

[selky]

what's gm food?

 

 

am young so i don't know

[UncleAl]

Pray tell us what is the difference, bottom line, between spending a $billion dollars over a decade to Mendelian breed and select hundreds of thousands of plants compared to having an undergrad at Caltech spend a summer recombinant DNA assembling the exact desired genome?

 

Southest Asia has a traditional diet woefully short in Vitamin A. About a million kids a year go blind or die outright from vitamin A deficiency. Sticking a marigold gene cassette into rice gives yellow beta-carotene rice. One portion is one day's Vitamin A requirement. How was this miracle to charitably SAVE OUR CHILDREN received? Franken-foods! Let them all die. Abundantly.

[Biochemist]

What do you think about GM food? Is it a threat or is it something we use for thousands of years without serious or known consequences?

There is absoloutely no evidence of any threat from GM food. There is abundant evidence of specific values of GM food. In addition to the example (colorfully) reported by UncelAl above, there are pest resistant strains of grain and drought tolerant varieties as well.

 

References to "frankenfood" are purely fear mongering.

[CraigD]

I enthusiastically believe that that GM foods and medical products have great and significantly realized potential for improving public and ecological health. I also believe that the majority of objections to their use arise from sensational, poorly informed thinking. I’m unprepared to entirely dismiss all concern, however.

 

Potential risks associated with GM foods fall, I think, into 3 major categories:

1. Direct threats to humans or benevolent animal consumers of foods

2. Unexpected changes to ecological systems

3. Negative social, political, or legal impact

 

1. Direct threats to humans or benevolent animal consumers of foods - The GM food contains an unexpected toxin or allergen.

Despite some alarming reports and political speech, threats in this category seem unlikely. Genetic modification typically involves well understood genes from other plant or animal genomes, and careful post-modification testing, so the accidental introduction of allergens or toxins is arguably less likely to result from GM than from old-fashioned cross-breeding.

 

2. Unexpected changes to ecological systems - An intended effect – i.e. attack on a particular pest species – causes an unintended one – i.e. a species that preyed on the pest is displaced, or pest species that was kept in check by competition with the targeted pest species is promoted.

Threats in this category seems more likely than category 1 threats. They are is less tractable to a detailed understanding of the effected genes, and more difficult to detect in lab and small-scale field testing. However, when compared to threats to the ecology from such factors as pesticides and introduced species, which GM plants can reduce or eliminate, the use of GM appears a potential improvement on previous agricultural practices.

 

3. Negative social, political, or legal impact - The public perception of a GM food, its effect on government policy, or its legal status may have a negative impact on human or ecological health – for brevity, a necessarily vague description.

Unlike the previous 2 categories, there is documented evidence of harm to specific individuals due to instances of this category. They arise from the legal status of GM plants and animals as intellectual properties eligible for patent protection, as opposed to naturally occurring plants and animals, which are not. Shortcomings in legal systems, primarily the US and Canada’s, have allowed the owners of GM plants, who are consistently large corporations, to unfairly use the law as business weapon against adversaries who are typically smaller agro businesses.

 

The clearest illustration of this potential abuse of which I’m aware is 1997-2001’s Percy Schmeiser vs. Monsanto. In short, this case involved the apparent spread of a gene owned by the Monsanto company by accidental pollination into crops owned by Schmeiser. He was subsequently successfully sued for by Monsanto for possessing these genes without having purchased them.

 

This case remains controversial, as after its accidental spread, Schmeiser may have actually acted with intent to steal Monsanto’s property, but it’s still illustrative of a surprising legal impact of GM foods.

[IrishEyes]

what's gm food?

am young so i don't know

Genetically Modified

[Aki]

Well I think like everything else, there's good and bad.

[selky]

OK.i get it now

[sanctus]

I don't deny I'm against gmo (selky, gmo= genetically modified organism), reason I don't want the risk 1 and 2 enounced by CraigD.

In 1, he wrote quite good, that the genes are generally well understood, but that's not enough before playing with nature one has to completely understand it. I agree that most probably the strwbeeries with the resistance against cold gene from the polar fish for example do not have negative effects on our body. But as long as we can't say it for sure, why take the risk to spread it all oer the world? Because if it does something to our body, removing all "infected" strawberries from earth won't be easy and pbviously makable in the industrialized world so that as usual the third world would pay the consequences.

about the second point:

take for example the Bt gene which is "implanted" in some corn and potatoes. That gene makes the plant resistant against the colorado potato beetle for example (who eats off all leaves in one night!).So far so good, but this beetle will become resisdant, which will result in having to use stronger pesticides, which will kill more as well innocuos beetles. How long does it take for the beetle to become resistant? It is esteemed in about thirthy years sort of 10 generations.One can show that this will eventually happen by looking at the rats there is no venom any more which is deadly for rats which is as well very poissonous for humans. Why, simply because as the reproduction rate of the rats is very quick, one needs about two years for having ten generations and therefore most of the rats have become resistant against the older weaker poissons.

And just an anecdote on the bt gene: it doesn't only attack the colorado beetle but as well as the innocuos monarch butterfly. Other studies showed as well that flies that ate some worms that ate gmo with the bt gene have a mortality which higher by two thirds or that the red beetle with the black points (don't remember the english name) that ate the small black beetles (the ones we got on the salads for example) which nourished themselves with ogm with the bt gene had a life time of one half of the average and laid less eggs. All this while Monsanto claimed that their bt gene attacks only the parasites. And this links to point one do we really understand well enough the genes we implant?

[Biochemist]

I don't deny I'm against gmo (selky, gmo= genetically modified organism), reason I don't want the risk 1 and 2 enounced by CraigD....

I do understand your position, S, but I think this is an oddly balanced view of risk. The driving force behind GM foods is to provide basic foodstuffs cheaper/faster/better. Some of the GM foods are strong candidates for seed stock in environmetns (e.g., Africa) where we might avert thoudsands of deaths fron starvation in the near term. If we are afraid that we might hurt someone later, and we pay for it by definitely hurting someone now, I am a little confused.

 

I know there are some potential risks (well articulated by CraigD above) but they do not seem particularly severe compared to a myriad of other techncal advances that we have advanced across the planet for smaller potential gains (use of nuclear energy, use of antibiotics, use of traditionally hybridized grains). It seems to me this kind of advance is comparable to water treatment plants or mosquito spraying for malaria. The short term benefits are so great that the potential long term penalties (erosion changes, mosquito resistance) seem trivial by comparison.

[TeleMad]

Biochemist: I know there are some potential risks...

 

Are you a politician? You originally said...

 

Biochemist: There is absoloutely no evidence of any threat from GM food.

[sanctus]

I do understand your position, S, but I think this is an oddly balanced view of risk. The driving force behind GM foods is to provide basic foodstuffs cheaper/faster/better.

 

If it would be cheaper/faster/better there wouldn't be the law-problems of the farmers re-planting the gm-corn a year after having bought it, that means it is more expensive.Better would mean that there would be less risks (of all kind that means also those you judge as negligible) and not more.

By the way don't tell the aim of Monsanto is to provide basic foodstuff, their aim is to make money like all big industries (big industry and having social ideas is a contradiction as to become big you have to eat up the small).

 

Some of the GM foods are strong candidates for seed stock in environmetns (e.g., Africa) where we might avert thoudsands of deaths fron starvation in the near term. If we are afraid that we might hurt someone later, and we pay for it by definitely hurting someone now, I am a little confused.

 

The risk of having to use afterwards stronger pesiticides is not a risk...it's a certitude. Nature has always adopted all possible strategies to survive. Telll me how will the african pay the pesticide, after having been used as test-groung for gmo? Monsanto and friends try just to touch your conscience saying that they can stop stravation in the whole world, but actually they look only for profit (that's called selling strategy). Anyway the solution to starvation is not at all via things like Monsanto, before colonialization they survived quite well there so there is something else that has to change. You know I've got as well a bad conscience about people starving in the so-called third world (every citizen of an industrialized country should), imagine we all would give 5$ per month to a develpping help organization, that would solve the problem without GMO.

 

 

I know there are some potential risks (well articulated by CraigD above) but they do not seem particularly severe compared to a myriad of other techncal advances that we have advanced across the planet for smaller potential gains (use of nuclear energy, use of antibiotics, use of traditionally hybridized grains).

 

Well the antibiotics you brought up are a problem as they are so easily prescribed by doctors the bacterias become more and more resistant to them, what is another example that the risk isnot a risk but a certitude.

Nuclear we still see a big portion of earth surface radiated in twenty years there was no diminuation of the radiation. But ok, here you win if there is the money to make good centrals, only the end-products are a problem.

 

It seems to me this kind of advance is comparable to water treatment plants or mosquito spraying for malaria. The short term benefits are so great that the potential long term penalties (erosion changes, mosquito resistance) seem trivial by comparison.

 

No they are not trivial, changing ecosystem of whole continents is not at all trivial.

 

By the way you didn't comment the studies made on bt gene, which implyx that this risks people talk about are not only long-term risks. And 30 years is not long-term to me, about one generation.

[sanctus]

Telemad, changing his mind quickly is a sign of intelligence. I gues in bio's case he read my first post and CraigD's and then couldn't deny any more that there are no risks

[Biochemist]

Telemad, changing his mind quickly is a sign of intelligence. I gues in bio's case he read my first post and CraigD's and then couldn't deny any more that there are no risks

Telemad just enjoys extracting quotes from context. Both of the statments he quoted are still true.

[Biochemist]

..No they are not trivial, changing ecosystem of whole continents is not at all trivial....

I do understand your concern. I have to admit that I am a lot less concerned than you about the legal and/or capitalistic arguments that you offered. I am not intrinsically anti-corporate. I don't care if Monsanto makes money.

 

Competition in the market would create competitive products in competitive pricing models. I also am not sure if alterations to the ecosystems are always bad. Ecosystems chage all of the time, with or without human intervention. Your suggestion that everyone ought to give $5 is interesting, but it is not going to happen. I also expect that it would not solve the problem either, given African nations inability to deal with infusions of foreign cash responsibly.

[sanctus]

Yes Bio, but still even if you defend the capitalist system you have to admit that what pushes Monsanto is not the concern of helping starving people, that just the way they try to sell it, while they want to make money.

[Biochemist]

Yes Bio, but still even if you defend the capitalist system you have to admit that what pushes Monsanto is not the concern of helping starving people, that just the way they try to sell it, while they want to make money.

Yes, but I am confused why you bring this idea into the discussion. Who cares what Monsanto thinks? This issue is whether GM foods are useful and whether the risks are reasonable. You can elect to impeach the input from Monsanto because of bias if you like. But the facts about the risks and benefits are mostly public. There is potential for significant good here.