Monsanto

I can't form a rational opinion about this issue because I find the anti-GMO crowd to be obscenely obnoxious

― Heyman (crüt), Thursday, March 28, 2013 11:36 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm, otm for everything tbh

just wanted to belatedly respond to the above post

The most recent Harvard study linked Bee Colony Collapse Disorder to imidacloprid - a pesticide. Not corn or corn syrup. The pesticide can be transmitted via corn syrup or pollen the report said. Nothing to do with genetically modified corn. This story got changed somewhat to "Pesticide-laden corn syrup lead to CCD" which not what the study demonstrated.

I don't know of a credible report that links CCD to genetically modified corn. Anyone?

― everything, Monday, April 23, 2012 10:37 PM (11 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

If it wasn't clear, I was not trying to link CCD directly to genetically modified corn. Of course, use of imidacloprid has increased dramatically with the global marketing of Monsanto's Roundup + Roundup Ready GMO product chain over the last ~15 years.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/29/science/earth/soaring-bee-deaths-in-2012-sound-alarm-on-malady.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

The European Union has proposed to ban their use on crops frequented by bees. Some researchers have concluded that neonicotinoids caused extensive die-offs in Germany and France.

Neonicotinoids are hardly the beekeepers’ only concern. Herbicide use has grown as farmers have adopted crop varieties, from corn to sunflowers, that are genetically modified to survive spraying with weedkillers. Experts say some fungicides have been laced with regulators that keep insects from maturing, a problem some beekeepers have reported.

Eric Mussen, an apiculturist at the University of California, Davis, said analysts had documented about 150 chemical residues in pollen and wax gathered from beehives.

“Where do you start?” Dr. Mussen said. “When you have all these chemicals at a sublethal level, how do they react with each other? What are the consequences?”

Experts say nobody knows. But Mr. Adee, who said he had long scorned environmentalists’ hand-wringing about such issues, said he was starting to wonder whether they had a point.

Of the “environmentalist” label, Mr. Adee said: “I would have been insulted if you had called me that a few years ago. But what you would have called extreme — a light comes on, and you think, ‘These guys really have something. Maybe they were just ahead of the bell curve.’”

Of course, use of imidacloprid has increased dramatically with the global marketing of Monsanto's Roundup + Roundup Ready GMO product chain over the last ~15 years.

I had to read a few articles to double-check, but you're talking about a seed treatment as a pesticide and a seed product that has resistance to a herbicide. The two may have both become popular in the same timeframe, but they're not otherwise related?

Hurting 2, that article you linked referred to "GMO expert Gregory Conko." Google tells me that Conko is better known as a right-wing thinktank guy who writes predictable articles

Gregory Conko is a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC.
Henry I. Miller, a physician and fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, was the founding director of the FDA's Office of Biotechnology.

they became popular in the same timeframe because they are being marketed by Monsanto as an integrated line of products

Roundup = their herbicide, patented in the 70's
Roundup Ready = their line of GM seeds which somehow does not die when you spray Roundup on it, 1996

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate#Monsanto.27s_Roundup

if a company is good at making poison, and at making food, why not combine those two into one irresistible product?

Milton, imidacloprid is an insecticide and Roundup (glyphosate) is an herbicide

apologies for my conflation, I hear your point clearly now. Admittedly a bit emotional after reading that ny times article.

imidacloprid is apparently not Monsanto, it is Bayer?

that changes everything. I love asprin.

mon petit santo

x-post

so we have the published anti-GMO cliches on one side and the conservative thinktank and libertarian ones on the other...

ah dammit didn't think of searching for a thread with this title

When it became law that corporations could patent organisms, we saw one of the most breathtaking power grabs ever devised. The difficulty with putting all this power to fuck with the foundations of life on earth into the hands of mega corporations is that mega corporations are greedy, short-sighted, profit-driven entitities which will predictably act to fuck over everyone on earth if it will enrich their corporate officers and shareholders and bury the competition. If the Chief Executive Lizard of Monsanto (or Bayer) could with impugnity become the new Pharoah, it would not blink twice before it reached for that crown and scepter.

http://www.monsanto.com/investors/Pages/stock-performance.aspx

Yeah this "Monsanto Protection Act" thing I'm like 90% sure after reading it that it's pretty minor. It basically prevents federal courts from IMMEDIATELY, during an interim period, halting the use/planting/sale of GMO foods in the event of some kind of adverse finding. But federal courts are not typically the avenue by which food safety is regulated anyway -- in fact as far as I can tell the only reason this provision even exists is that certain GMO foods have been given a special regulated status that other foods don't have, so the provision only comes into play if a regulatory body decides to deregulate them and then a court tries to stop them from doing that.

In any case, this certainly does not in any way "protect Monsanto from litigation" as some people are claiming.

Like, farmers can still sue Monsanto, individual consumers can still sue Monsanto, the Government can still sue Monsanto.

but I also feel kind of like "Ok, make a case for me WHY it would be dangerous to take a gene from one species and put it in a different species." Like "we don't know all the potential effects" isn't a good enough argument.

fyi we have been cross-breeding for over 100 years, which is a form of genetic modification, except with traditional cross-breeding you introduce all of the traits/genes of one plant into another instead of just the aspects that you want (whereas w/ science lab-y genetic modification you can isolate just the traits/genes that you want to introduce into the new strain); in a lot of ways sciencey genetic modification can be *safer* than traditional cross-breeding, which the anti-GMO crowd seems to have v little qualms with. Like, at this point, iirc virtually everything has been genetically modified at some point due to cross-breeding.

All that is from my friend who is pursuing a PhD in genetics at Yale.

The difficulty with comparing traditional cross-breeding with genetic modification is that there is no traditional way to cross-breed cats with jellyfish, or corn with sequoias. Traditional cross-breeding is a method whereby humans select modifications that were theoretically possible without human intervention. This is not true of direct genetic modification as it is practised in the lab.

If a jellyfish cat is wrong then I don't want to be right.

The difficulty with comparing traditional cross-breeding with genetic modification is that there is no traditional way to cross-breed cats with jellyfish, or corn with sequoias. Traditional cross-breeding is a method whereby humans select modifications that were theoretically possible without human intervention. This is not true of direct genetic modification as it is practised in the lab.

― Aimless, Thursday, April 4, 2013 11:38 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that's true, it's just that assuming that that = more likely to be dangerous seems like subscribing to some kind of Intelligent Design/frankenstein's monster/don't tamper with mother nature fallacy, as though nature had somehow put the jellyfish genes on this shelf and the corn jeans on this shelf because they should never be mixed. Again "we don't know what will happen" isn't a convincing argument to me -- why SHOULD something happen?

it's pretty obv to me that jellyfish corn should happen immediately

this has been going on for a while now guys

http://images.wikia.com/capcomdatabase/images/9/97/CatDog_by_deadPxl.jpg

I agree that there is a chance that splicing genetic material from a jellyfish into a cat might result in a cat which is in some way superior for human purposes than could be achieved in any other way. This opens amazing possibilities. Where I start to have misgivings is when these exotic modifications are injected into the food supply by profit-driven corporations.

The profit motive is wholly driven by the desire for personal benefit. As Adam Smith noticed, this drive can be harnessed for public good. But he never made the mistake of thinking that the profit motive never results in public harm. He understood that strong laws and regulations must place limits around individual selfishness and canalize it into safe boundaries.

Most of the bitching and moaning I hear about how the public are idiots who don't understand how wonderful genetic modification is comes from interested parties with a profit motive. Your friend the PhD in genetics is an interested party just like any of us.

What I mostly hear the public demanding are extremely strong safeguards against unwanted side effects from sloppy, selfish, shortsighted or malicious use of genetic modification. Very few people are saying this new science must be strangled in its crib and buried at midnight with a stake through its heart. We, the public, get that this is powerful stuff. We're convinced. It was the scientists who convinced us. We've seen powerful new technologies unleashed with no regard for their consequences. This science strikes at the very core of life. That's heavy stuff in the hands of mere humans. We want to be protected from its potential excesses.

That position is extremely reasonable even if it makes genetic scientists gnaw at their fingers in exasperation. We don't exist for their pleasure. Fuck 'em. I want to go slow on this shit.

jellyfish corn tho

it's sweet, nutritious, and stings the fuck out of your face

lol at aimless deploying the interested party line the right's been using in their anti-science tirades for years. huger lol at his deploying their 'fuck scientists' line also.

'of course scientists say global warming is occurring! that's how they get grant money!'

most current PhD students are being driven by intellectual curiosity moreso than profit motive, given that research assistants don't make that much money

"a cat which is in some way superior for human purposes"

trying to figure out what those may be. liek it could glow in the dark?

"this corn has a real bite to it!"

all decisions should be made by uninterested parties with no stake in the outcome btw. leads to v. thoughtful discussions.

seriously dumbest anti-science thing i've read on ilx since josh in chicago argued that non-native species of mosquitos shouldn't be eradicated thru non-pesticide means cuz of 'nature'.

it's fine, when mankind wipes itself from the face of this planet, nature will continue

Satisfying one's intellectual curiosity is a personal gratification. That is to say, it has selfish elements in it. When the average scientist is on the trail of an exciting new discovery, that feeling of excitement is very compelling. The idea that somewhere down the road this discovery may be put to horrific uses is unlikely to deter that scientist from going forward. The ability to live a life of intellectual excitement pursuing his field is strongly motivating to the average scientist. You cannot deny that.

As for global warming, that is a red herring. Argument by analogy where the analogy is weak.

why don't you just say "science scares me so I wish people would proceed slower with this" since that's what your arguments boil down to; it's not even an indefensible position to take

balls, you are talking trash

why don't you just say

Reduce argument to a walking erection joke has been done, dan.

so has the ad hominem attack

are you referring to "dumbest argument"?

Satisfying one's intellectual curiosity is a personal gratification

"why should we subsidize intellectual curiosity?" - ronald reagan

at least the right is more honest that they don't believe science, are scared and confused by what they do believe, and don't really give a fuck about the environment or whether poor ppl die anyway

Lefty science denialism is the worst.

now genetic modification and personal gratification -- i thing i see where this is going.

yeah but you can't deny that scientists deliberately became scientists and enjoy science and - brace yrself - even paid to do science (some, though not as many as some think, may even find their jobs exciting. they get off on that excitement. they live for it. they come to need it. and eventually, they'll do anything for it.), so of course when you ask one of them about something they're gonna give you some science answer which of course we have no method of testing or verifying. you can't deny this.

To be clearer, the anti-global warming argument is that scientists are fabricating data in order to perpetuate their jobs in a bogus scientific field, and pretending a threat exists in order to add urgency to our need to employ them, so they can save us from this non-existant threat. And those who originated this argument and pay to propagate it clearly profit from the burning of fossil fuels.

By contrast, I am not arguing that anything the scientists are saying is bogus, but rather that the knowlege they are finding, the techniques they create and the claims they publish are all obviously otm. So, to say this is anti-science is incorrect. But just as chemistry PhDs work for chemical companies and mathematics PhDs now work for Wall Street banks, genetic engineers work for Monsanto and other agribusinesses.

The argument is not over whether the science is correct or the scientists are corrupting their data, but an entirely different argument over how to put this new knowlege into the world, and how to do it in such a way that unforeseen consequences are kept to a minimum. I say that profit-driven corporations are not trustworthy enough to make these decisions without oversight.

I say that balls equating this with the anti-global warming argument is superficial and tendentitous, and he is just skating on the thin ice of "lol anti-science" to make his analogy work. If he wants to get into it, let him develop his argument beyond "lol". Otherwise, I get to call bullshit.

feel free druid

The distinction of the scientific method is that it establishes factual knowlege, based on testable hypotheses, repeatable experiments with measurable results, full disclosure of findings, peer review and eventual consnsus among experts in the field. It works just fine, thank you. But scientists who work for Monsanto are not the ones who decide how Monsanto will profit from their work. Those decisions are made by marketers, lawyers, and managers.

Fuck it, if you all want to insist that I am frightened and confused when faced by omg genuine science then feel free. I've made my points. Misunderstand and distort them however you wish. I'm done clarifying. It's your sandbox now.

i will say that the one geneticist i know does work from time to time for monsanto and last year we were all 'how can you be a scientist and vote republican?'. boy has he been laughing it up the past few weeks. gmos are pretty heavy regulated (and the 'monsanto protection act' doesn't change this fwiw) but if you want to actually make an argument for more regulation feel fee, i'm down (feel free to be consistent in applying it to raw milk and homeopathy while you're at it). if you want to actually make an argument against monoculture or about reforming our intellectual property laws (there are even pro-science arguments to be made here though that might make some uncomfortable, the warm loving embrace of mother nature and all that), i'm down. but if you want to make an argument against agriculture that feeds more ppl and reduces negative enviromental impact though and your argument is 'someone somewhere will make money off it, possibly even lawyers' i'm gonna lol, esp if you cloud it w/ vague worry of 'unforseen consequences'. if the 'unforseen consequences' don't have anything to do w/ science (or professional self serving scientists w/ their lies and their extremely exciting lives) let me assure you that regulating gmos out of existence won't actually lead to the overthrow of capitalism. it won't even lead to the overthrow of big agriculture.

You have just provided arguments against about half a dozen things I never argued for. I see though that you had the integrity to make your ascription of these positions to me provisional.

yeah i'm waiting for you to make an actual argument, any argument beyond 'i dunno guys, i getting bad vibes about this'. anytime you're ready.

aimless tbf your concern appears to be rooted completely in your distrust of big ag; we can all sympathize, but the science isn't on your side. watch that video that was posted in the other thread, if you haven't. it's probably a good intro for well meaning enviros