6 ms·

Unrelated, but I was just debating GMO labels on "change my view" on reddit. I admit I was trolling that if GMO are healthy, then ultimately there is no harm i

by jokoon 10y ago

Unrelated, but I was just debating GMO labels on "change my view" on reddit. I admit I was trolling that if GMO are healthy, then ultimately there is no harm in a neutral label. My comments got downvoted very hard. It boiled down that those labels would essentially be a form of misinformation, or that the uneducated public would make uninformed decisions. I don't know if I'm right or wrong, but the post got 400 comments.

realusername 10y ago
It's exactly like democracy, no one wants democracy when it goes against what they personally want.
- matthewmacleod 10y ago
  That's a bit of a lazy analogy. Loads of people want democracy, even when it doesn't achieve their goals.
  - Noseshine 10y ago
    After watching the Brexit aftermath I think it's safe to say there also are loads of people who don't. The Brexiters are all just stupid and misinformed (focus on all, and no look at ones own chosen group for comparison), "mob rule", whataboutism (the Brexiters too would have continued to argue had they lost), etc.
pipio21 10y ago
The fact is that nobody knows if GMO are healthy or not. This is like saying that "machines are safe". It makes not sense, there all all kind of machines you can design. You should study a specific machine case by case. Gene modification is enormous, and open to all kinds of unintended consequences. Just because we don't understand it yet it does not mean it is safe(we modify genes without really understanding what they really do with detail, we are unconscious ignorant). I believe people should be able to buy GMO food if they what , but with traceability, if something wrong happens, and something wrong always happens with everything, to know it soon and do something about it. But traceability is exactly what companies like Monsanto want to destroy. Look at Volkswagen, when something wrong happens, with traceability the lawsuits alone could bankrupt the company if people have children with leukemia or autistic and a scientific connection is proven.
- 7sigma 10y ago
  You can never prove that any food is safe beyond a doubt. You can only say whether it riskier or not than other types of food or breeding. In the case of GMOs, it has been shown to be no less risky than conventional or mutagenic breeding. "we modify genes without really understanding what they really do with detail" Except that with genetic engineering, we know precisely what they do. Ironically previous ways of changing genes are a lot more random.
  - Millennium 10y ago
    >You can never prove that any food is safe beyond a doubt. Ultimately, this. You can test for very, very small numbers, but you can't test for zero. This is why, for example, even though lead has no biological function, extremely small "acceptable levels" are specified in regulations rather than simply saying zero lead. You can prove that, for example, lead levels in the air are less than 0.15 µg/m^3, or that they are not. You cannot do that for zero (nonzero is easy to verify, but zero is not). There is also, of course, the fact that no food is safe in all scenarios. Even pure water is toxic at high enough doses. For that reason, it makes no sense to hold GMO food to even higher standards than non-GMO food: equal standards certainly make sense, but not higher.
    - KingMob 10y ago
      > For that reason, it makes no sense to hold GMO food to even higher standards than non-GMO food Normal food has the advantage that we already know it has no disastrous ecological consequences, by virtue of the fact that is has coexisted in its environmental niche for a while. The more food is altered, the less sure we become about that. As Taleb has pointed out, our standards for danger should match the risk/reward involved. (E.g., we're ok with fast-tracking unproven cancer treatments because the alternative is death. Likewise, we have high standards for a common cold treatment because the alternative is inconvenience.) Unfortunately, we have no backup plan for the planet, so we must be extra careful with what we introduce to it. To me, saying we don't need more stringent standards for GMOs is like saying we can definitely burn $X billion more oil reserves and not worry about global warming.
kwhitefoot 10y ago
The problem with GMO not being labelled is not the health issue it is that my freedom of choice is being eroded.
AlgorithmicTime 10y ago
The point of the label is to harm the viability of harmless GMOs in the market. It's not a neutral thing, it's a politically charged movement by the misinformed who have an ax to grind against science.
TeMPOraL 10y ago
The problem with GMO labeling is that the same people who now say "if it's safe, there's no harm in a neutral label" will latter say, "if it's not unhealthy, why are you being forced by law to put a label about it"? I wouldn't mind GMO labels at all - hell, I'd buy primarily GMO-containing products on purpose, out of spite. But there's enough insanity going on about the labels we already have (e.g. E-numbers paranoia) that I don't think labeling GMOs will end well.

by jokoon 10y ago

realusername 10y ago

It's exactly like democracy, no one wants democracy when it goes against what they personally want.

matthewmacleod 10y ago
That's a bit of a lazy analogy. Loads of people want democracy, even when it doesn't achieve their goals.
- Noseshine 10y ago
  After watching the Brexit aftermath I think it's safe to say there also are loads of people who don't. The Brexiters are all just stupid and misinformed (focus on all, and no look at ones own chosen group for comparison), "mob rule", whataboutism (the Brexiters too would have continued to argue had they lost), etc.

pipio21 10y ago

The fact is that nobody knows if GMO are healthy or not. This is like saying that "machines are safe". It makes not sense, there all all kind of machines you can design. You should study a specific machine case by case. Gene modification is enormous, and open to all kinds of unintended consequences. Just because we don't understand it yet it does not mean it is safe(we modify genes without really understanding what they really do with detail, we are unconscious ignorant). I believe people should be able to buy GMO food if they what , but with traceability, if something wrong happens, and something wrong always happens with everything, to know it soon and do something about it. But traceability is exactly what companies like Monsanto want to destroy. Look at Volkswagen, when something wrong happens, with traceability the lawsuits alone could bankrupt the company if people have children with leukemia or autistic and a scientific connection is proven.

7sigma 10y ago
You can never prove that any food is safe beyond a doubt. You can only say whether it riskier or not than other types of food or breeding. In the case of GMOs, it has been shown to be no less risky than conventional or mutagenic breeding. "we modify genes without really understanding what they really do with detail" Except that with genetic engineering, we know precisely what they do. Ironically previous ways of changing genes are a lot more random.
- Millennium 10y ago
  >You can never prove that any food is safe beyond a doubt. Ultimately, this. You can test for very, very small numbers, but you can't test for zero. This is why, for example, even though lead has no biological function, extremely small "acceptable levels" are specified in regulations rather than simply saying zero lead. You can prove that, for example, lead levels in the air are less than 0.15 µg/m^3, or that they are not. You cannot do that for zero (nonzero is easy to verify, but zero is not). There is also, of course, the fact that no food is safe in all scenarios. Even pure water is toxic at high enough doses. For that reason, it makes no sense to hold GMO food to even higher standards than non-GMO food: equal standards certainly make sense, but not higher.
  - KingMob 10y ago
    > For that reason, it makes no sense to hold GMO food to even higher standards than non-GMO food Normal food has the advantage that we already know it has no disastrous ecological consequences, by virtue of the fact that is has coexisted in its environmental niche for a while. The more food is altered, the less sure we become about that. As Taleb has pointed out, our standards for danger should match the risk/reward involved. (E.g., we're ok with fast-tracking unproven cancer treatments because the alternative is death. Likewise, we have high standards for a common cold treatment because the alternative is inconvenience.) Unfortunately, we have no backup plan for the planet, so we must be extra careful with what we introduce to it. To me, saying we don't need more stringent standards for GMOs is like saying we can definitely burn $X billion more oil reserves and not worry about global warming.

kwhitefoot 10y ago

The problem with GMO not being labelled is not the health issue it is that my freedom of choice is being eroded.

AlgorithmicTime 10y ago

The point of the label is to harm the viability of harmless GMOs in the market. It's not a neutral thing, it's a politically charged movement by the misinformed who have an ax to grind against science.

TeMPOraL 10y ago

The problem with GMO labeling is that the same people who now say "if it's safe, there's no harm in a neutral label" will latter say, "if it's not unhealthy, why are you being forced by law to put a label about it"? I wouldn't mind GMO labels at all - hell, I'd buy primarily GMO-containing products on purpose, out of spite. But there's enough insanity going on about the labels we already have (e.g. E-numbers paranoia) that I don't think labeling GMOs will end well.