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>didn't control the entire industry While this is obvious hyperbole, I agree with your general sentiment. In fact, GMOs, perhaps more-so than any other modern
by pvnick 13y ago
>didn't control the entire industry
While this is obvious hyperbole, I agree with your general sentiment. In fact, GMOs, perhaps more-so than any other modern technology, have an unprecedented potential to save billions of lives. Golden Rice alone could save the lives of one million children every year.
As a biochem major, GMOs are something I'm passionate about, and it really aggravates me when I see armchair scientists (read: people who watched a youtube video) decrying them as dangerous and calling for their banning. I would say these people are partially to blame for the regulatory nightmare that Golden Rice advocates are facing, meanwhile one million children go blind and die terrible deaths each year from vitamin A deficiency.
- manmal 13y ago>unprecedented potential to save billions of lives Potential, yes; but not with massive financial interests behind it. In a world where shiploads of wheat are held back in order to game the wheat market, things need to change before GMOs can cure 3rd world hunger. I've read that GMOs have to be bought anew for every season because the harvested crops can't be used as seeds. Is that actually true?
- qwertzlcoatl 13y ago> Potential, yes; but not with massive financial interests behind it. This is not necessarily true in every case. pvnick mentioned Golden Rice. The Co-inventor of the genetically engineered, vitamin-A-rich strain of rice Potrykus has spearheaded an effort to have golden rice distributed for free to poor farmers. This required several companies which had intellectual property rights to the results of Beyer's research to license it for free. In fact, Monsanto was one of the first companies to grant free licenses. If the substinence farmer doesn't make more than $10,000 per year, he is freed from paying any royalities. The farmers are even permitted to keep and replant the seeds. This is in the specific case of Golden Rice. Maybe somebody can jump in and tell a horrific Monsanto story.
- CapitalistCartr 13y agoYes, they're patented and copying them is a violation of the "user agreement". http://grist.org/news/supreme-court-hands-a-big-win-to-monsanto-on-gmo-seeds/ http://grist.org/news/supreme-court-hands-a-big-win-to-monsa...
- samolang 13y agoYes [1]. But for good reason. It is similar to pharmaceutical companies. They invest millions into inventing products. They should be entitled to a monopoly on the product for some period of time in order to re-coup their investment. [1] http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/Pages/why-does-monsanto-sue-farmers-who-save-seeds.aspx http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/Pages/why-does-monsanto-su...
- genwin 13y agoTrue. See "The GM genocide: Thousands of Indian farmers are committing suicide after using genetically modified crops" at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1082559/The-GM-genocide-Thousands-Indian-farmers-committing-suicide-using-genetically-modified-crops.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1082559/The-GM-genoc...
- smsm42 13y agoThis article commits journalistic fraud - it attributes the fact that crops failed due to pests (which can happen to any crop, GM or not) solely to the fact that the crops were GM, and making a false impression that suicides were caused not by crop failures but by the fact that the crops were GM. They imply that "after" means "because", and that's the fraud. Of course, even GM crops can not protect from all causes of crop failure. But blaming them on every cause of failure is wrong.
- tomjen3 13y agoThat shiploads are held back is actually a _great_ thing, maybe one of the best things capitalism does. Yes it means you get to pay more (in some cases a lot more) for your bread. It also means that farmers make more money and enable them to sell their wheat _now_ when they need the money and not after they have been foreclosed and it puts a price floor on the market for wheat, insuring that the crops we need to prevent starvation will not rot on the fields.
- manmal 13y agoI agree that it's good for the sellers (farmers). But how is artificial scarcity and rising prices good against hunger? The argument about rotting crops is a bit weak, AFAIK crops can be stored quite well if kept dry.
- jrkelly 13y agoBuying new seeds every season began with hybrid crops in the 1920s. "Today, hybrid seed production is predominant in agriculture and home gardening, and is one of the main contributing factors to the dramatic rise in agricultural output during the last half of the 20th century. In the US, the commercial market was launched in the 1920s, with the first hybrid maize. All of the hybrid seeds planted by the farmer will be the same hybrid while the seeds from the hybrids planted will not consistently have the desired characteristics. This is why hybrid seed is constantly repurchased by growers for each planting season." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_seed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_seed
- nitrogen 13y agoBut at least you still have the option of accepting the mixed results of replanting hybrid seeds.
- genwin 13y agoapi's comment in this thread sums up the rationale behind the public's opposition: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5800001 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5800001 People don't need to become experts on any particular food innovation to have a very good chance of serving their best interests in opposing it. The people have been continuously misled about health risks. If GMO saves a million children it will next need to save ten million children, and then a hundred million and so on, until it fails and then there will be greater suffering. Culture and religion are the root cause of the problem; it's better addressed from that angle.
- smsm42 13y ago>>> If GMO saves a million children it will next need to save ten million children Are you advocating population control by starving off the poor?
- brent_noorda 13y agoI think genwin's point is that we humans behave very stupidly whenever we find an innovation that allows for exponentially more of anything. We behave as if that massive growth will continue forever, and it never does, and usually leads to a crash worse than the solution. So if a new invention allows us to feed all 7 billion of us comfortably, instead of just feeding 7 billion of us comfortably we'll instead create 10 billion, 20 billion, 100 billion of us, up to whatever point the innovation no longer feeds us all comfortably, and then it crashes, and then instead of a billion people dying off we now have 90 billion people dying off. Where I think genwin is wrong is in blaming culture or religion. Instead I think we're just stupid that way.
- genwin 13y agoYep. > Instead I think we're just stupid that way. That's culture and religion. Both could change to promote smarter sustainability.
- glhaynes 13y agoBut that's not what studying population shows us: when people have economic opportunities, education, and choices, they choose to have fewer children. So much so that we end up with the "problem" of the birth rate dropping below what's needed for replacement. It doesn't appear that population growth will ever reach the point that we'll have a problem producing enough food to feed everyone.
- stephengoodwin 13y agoThe issue that I have is that Monsanto and other food companies fight very hard against GMO labeling. That's a big red flag to me.
- pvnick 13y agoSuch a label does indicate danger to the uninformed masses, even if it's unfounded. I would say it falls under free speech. Let the market forces dictate the risks vs benefits. Once completely organic chicken breast becomes as unattainably expensive as beluga cavier I think you'll find nobody gives a shit how the cheap stuff is produced.
- stephengoodwin 13y agoIf only "market forces" worked like that...
- jrs99 13y agoMonsanto rightfully believes that if GMO products are labeled, and there is one single instance of a GMO product killing a person (even from some kind of rare allergy), then the market will fall since GMOs will be able to be avoided by consumers. GMOs can have a staggering amount of benefits to this world. But to say that they are safe across the board is extremely dishonest. We simply can't see all the long-term consequences of the new forms of life that we ingest. With enough knowledge, we can theoretically do whatever we want with DNA, including make cells in apples produce prions that eventually cause Alzheimer's. And we can do so accidentally.
- api 13y agoWhat would have happened had GMO food been introduced with labels in the beginning that indicated that it was GMO, how it was modified, and the benefits? I wouldn't be surprised if there'd be much less opposition to it. If you're opposed to labeling now, it looks like you're trying to cover something up or sneak something past the public. I just realized... maybe the problem isn't that the Monsanto PR machine is deceiving everyone about GMO food. Maybe the problem is that Monsanto sucks at PR, bad. They certainly suck at modern PR. The kind of PR-firm tactics that they use to try to explain themselves to the public come off as smarmy and disingenuous to anyone under 40. Rule #1 of modern PR: if you assume that your audience are idiots, they will realize this instantly and assume that you are a lying sack of you-know-what. I know I can smell a talking-down-to-me PR flack writeup a mile away, and stuff like that makes me feel like I'm eight years old and my gym teacher is telling me this is what people do when they love each other.
- chm 13y agoThe problem is not with the product per se, but with the uneducated populace they force it unto. I never saw a Monsanto infomercial, but I'm pretty sure I eat their product every day. No wonder people are unwilling to give them their confidence. That's why I think this story is great news for the general population. It will hopefully push Monsanto to change its lobbying practices. It should, in my opinion, take some years to really educate (not propagandize) the people instead of spending the millions on a couple of political lobbies. It would have a longer lasting effect. And if they're not willing to educate the people because their product really is a health hazard, so be it!
- jrs99 13y agoI think most people who are anti-GMO really just want to know what they are eating. They just want to see a label on it if it has GMOs in it. The fact is that we don't know what GMOs can do to you. They might be safe, they might not be. It has to be different in every single case, since in every single case, you're talking about different combinations of DNA. Can that possibly be dangerous in a particular case? It sure can. Both directly and indirectly.
- baby 13y agoI think the danger here is that Monsanto is a private company and is doing shady stuff. I'm from France and we have to take a course on that at one point in university. IIRC Monsanto launched several products without testing them and was later forced to stop selling them since they were tested dangerous for health. Seeing that they weren't really testing their products and using biased studies sometimes, Europe just decided to make a lot of laws about testing before using GMOs. IMO a technology as important as GMOs should never be in the hands of a private company motivated by money and share holders. It should be in the hands of an international association (like the UN).
- Create 13y agohttp://www.arte.tv/fr/le-monde-selon-monsanto-de-marie-monique-robin/1912816.html http://www.arte.tv/fr/le-monde-selon-monsanto-de-marie-moniq...