Re: Good News on GMO

Posted by WellWorn on May 20, 2016 at 06:05:03 from (75.226.119.31):

In Reply to: Good News on GMO posted by David G on May 19, 2016 at 05:51:10:

Quoting Removed, click Modern View to seeWell, in an ideal world it might be "good news", but just because GM, Ford and Chrysler have proven that most of their 20 year old cars were safe, doesn't mean that any vehicle anyone (including the big 5) can throw together in their lab will evermore be exactly as safe. Sometimes, like the Pinto, and like Tata air bags, it's the real world use over a period of time that proves they aren't, and not in all cases for all people, but enough to be a concern. The big difference between cars and crops, is that cars currently don't reproduce themselves, nor do we ingest them every day.

The facts reveal that GMO technology is at best a 30 year fix, as the weeds glyphosate are supposed to kill are developing resistance, requiring more roundup use (not less) and eventually more toxic and persistent compounds to achieve sufficient weed suppression. This is why GMO scientists are working on "stacking" herbicide traits, hoping to effect a longer time frame of weed control. My guess is that 25 years from now we'll not only have glyphosate and 2-4d and Dicamba resistant weeds with several million tons applied world wide every year, but scientists scrambling to come up with another 25 year 'magic bullet' to keep the existing (highly profitable for industry) paradigm in place.

Ditto for BT corn and cotton - after 20 years of the surviving pests breeding, the pests are becoming substantially resistant, requiring a "plan B" which often falls back to more toxic chemicals, which will work for a while, then ultimately fail with a total environmental toxin load that increases substantially faster than degradation is possible. In addition, what each chemical does individually may not be "bad", but what the sum total and synergistic effects of those compounds and adjudevants (sp?) do for susceptible human and microbiome life is a vast unknown that may not be figured out until the negative effects are too far along to deny.

Glyophosate was originally a de-mineralizing agent for boilers. Yes, it still works to bind minerals in the soil reducing mineral availability to plants, and while possibly making crops more abundant by reducing weed pressure, it can also make crops less nutritious. There is suspicion that a part of the obesity problem stems from people eating more because their bodies are telling them they need more nutrition which is in short supply in their diets. (Yes, the hard science is still out on this, but it bears mentioning.) Glyphosate also messes up soil bacteria by interferring with their chicamate pathway (nutrient uptake), the same bacteria which help make plant nutrition available from the soil. It also appears to effect human gut bacteria in the same way. Hmmm. Doctors are now giving "poop transfusions" to repopulate gut bacteria, which are giving relief to a surprising number of "ills". The industry solution is to make replacement soil bacteria to sell to farmers which can tolerate the current industry toxins, which will last until the next new chemical... Nothing quite like creating a problem to make more money from.

It's hard to argue with Darwin's observations - the adaptable weeds and pests (often via multiple generations per year), adapt to their "new (formerly toxic to most of them) environment". Humans, should we toxify ourselves in the process, have a much longer generational adaptation span, which potentially means lots of losses for a lot of generations before "the most adaptable" survive. Is this an acceptable consequence? Part of the problem is that it's impossible to come up with a "LD50" for GMO's, just as it was for tobacco. You don't eat a GMO corn tortilla and die. You don't smoke just one pack of cigs and die. You don't eat a tortilla every day and smoke a pack a day for 10 years and die. See? Scientific observation says they're safe! Yet much like tobacco, which the pro-GMO efforts look suspiciously related to (including revolving door industry insiders in places like the FDA and USDA), the science seems to be relying heavily on industry scientific research (asking a limited set of questions "does this cause cancer", the hell with any other disease) for findings basis. Yes, I've read reports from both sides, the science is really complicated, still evolving, and we are still learning about how the genome works. However, there are a lot of suspicious and currently unexplained correlations, such as the dramatic rise in autoimmune diseases, a suspected connection with "leaky gut", and the fact that the BT toxin works by perforating the gut wall of pests. Proven in humans? Not yet. And yes, there are kooks in both camps willing to ignore certain "data" to prove their own point. I willingly admit I don't know it all. Because of that, I prefer to err on the side of caution. The science of non-gmo (and non-chemical "organic") crops has been proving out since before Homo-erectus took his or her first step. How organic is currently practiced can be a long way from what it was and had to be ages ago, and yes, there can be a lot of bad "organic" practices and practitioners. It's far too easy to generalize on either side of the debate.

To summarize and simplify, plant breeding is NOT in any way similar to gene splicing by amending cauliflower mosaic virus (for it's gene breaking and insertion capability) to specific chemical tolerant genes, with antibiotic marker genes attached to confirm gene insertion, and microbe (BT) genes put into plant genes. If plant breeding was no different than making GMO crops, that would be akin to burying your steer 'oysters' in the corn patch, and having the corn stalks grow horns. "It just 'taint natural". Selective plant (and animal) breeding, has been done for tens of thousands of years, and is limited to the genomic variation inherent in the plant or animal itself; it is not soil bacteria genes built into crops, not cabbage virus genes in corn, nor salmon genes in tomatoes (remember the "flavor savor" tomato?). On the other hand, there isn't a weed that has evolved over 100,000 years to be immune to a hoe, and we need more jobs in America. (Just kidding. Sorta.)

MAYBE the current "final word" is that the current batch of GMO's are as "safe" as we can currently determine them to be, but that still doesn't give every successive instance carte blanc to enter the food supply without rigorous long term testing by thoroughly independent labs before being planted outside the lab. Genetic tinkering is a very large and powerful hammer, and because it is self replicating and subject to unforeseen mutation (genetic instability), it's use can potentially cause vastly unforeseen consequences. Life on this planet is immensely complicated and intricately interwoven, and we as a species are still just beginning to unravel our place within the global biome as it and we have co-evolved over the millennia. We are just beginning to perceive how much we need to protect even the nooks and crannies of this biome for our own long term survival. Messing with the building blocks of life, especially when there is massive corporate profit involved, does not seem to me to be a foolproof idea soley rooted in altruism. There is far more to our survival, to say nothing of our health and the overall health of every other species on the planet, than making food and fiber "cheap and abundant at any cost". While I respect everyone elses' right to disagree, "your right to swing your fist ends at my nose". Your right to plant whatever makes you profitable, ends not just at my plate, but at my property line. Unfortunately, living things respect no such boundaries, and to quote Shakespear, "therein lies the rub".

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