4 ms·

I wish them good luck in overcoming the anti-scientific hysteria. But I fear relying on scientific literacy is going to end in failure. How many other advances

by acheron 13y ago

I wish them good luck in overcoming the anti-scientific hysteria. But I fear relying on scientific literacy is going to end in failure. How many other advances in agriculture are we going to sacrifice to appease these superstitions? (Not to mention similar superstitions of anti-vaccine activists, who are probably the same people in many cases.)

olouv 13y ago
That's clearly wrong. You just have to actually read studies to find clear warnings about the toxicity of GMO. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278691512005637 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278691512...
rogerbinns 13y ago
I don't think the hysteria is anti-scientific. It is more a suspicion of agricultural corporations, of secrecy and of American companies. The perception of Monsanto is an excellent example. Corporate paternalism is not appreciated. Consider why companies lobbied so hard for GMO to not be labelled as such. If almost every product was labelled as GMO then after a while consumers would not care. They would be able to make their own choices about "regular" versus GMO. Instead the fight has been to "trust us" and to keep GMO secret. "Known to the State of California to cause cancer" is everywhere. No one bats an eyelid any more.
- crusso 13y ago
  The poster didn't mean that the hysteria was against Science itself, rather that it wasn't based upon any type of Scientific analysis or investigation. The fact that people will become apathetic to GMO labeling eventually doesn't mean that the industry won't fight to avoid the unwanted (and undeserved) stigma for now.
  - rogerbinns 13y ago
    > ... avoid the unwanted (and undeserved) stigma for now There is that paternalism again. It is not up to the producers of any product to decide if attention is undeserved. Consumers get to decide that. And yes some will be wrong etc. Shining a light and being truthful is the right way of doing things. The hysteria is not against science - it is against paternalism hiding itself as "trust us because science". Science requires being open and honest.
    - jrkelly 13y ago
      I actually think it is more fair for it to be up to the FDA to decide. The reason companies don't want labels is that people then assume the product is unsafe. Here is an MIT study finding exactly that for GMO labels: http://courantblogs.com/capitol-watch/gmo-labels-send-a-message-that-products-are-unsafe/ http://courantblogs.com/capitol-watch/gmo-labels-send-a-mess...
      - rogerbinns 13y ago
        The FDA decides if a product can even be sold. So what if truthfully labelled products are considered unsafe by some? Why shouldn't people be able to make up their own minds? The freedom that allows them to do that also also means sometimes they will be wrong. Again, so what? Sweeping it under the rug ("trust us") is not adequate. You do not foster understanding, science, progress or freedom by hiding things.
x0x0 13y ago
you say anti-scientific hysteria, I say reasonable fears regularly ignored by industry and whitewashed by an industry captured fda. example 1: bpa from the wiki article [1]: In 2006, the US Government sponsored an assessment of the scientific literature on BPA. Thirty-eight experts in fields involved with bisphenol A gathered in Chapel Hill, North Carolina to review several hundred studies on BPA, many conducted by members of the group. At the end of the meeting, the group issued the Chapel Hill Consensus Statement,[100] which stated BPA at concentrations found in the human body is associated with organizational changes in the prostate, breast, testis, mammary glands, body size, brain structure and chemistry, and behavior of laboratory animals.[101] The Chapel Hill Consensus Statement found that average levels in people are above those that cause harm to many animals in laboratory experiments. They noted that while BPA is not persistent in the environment or in humans, biomonitoring surveys indicate that exposure is continuous, which is problematic because acute animal exposure studies are used to estimate daily human exposure to BPA, and no studies that had examined BPA pharmacokinetics in animal models had followed continuous low-level exposures. They added that measurement of BPA levels in serum and other body fluids suggests the possibilities that BPA intake is much higher than accounted for, and/or that BPA can bioaccumulate in some conditions (such as pregnancy).[100] A 2008 report by the Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction within the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP), which is within the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, reported the results of its exhaustive review of the literature. Its conclusions, expressed relative to current estimates of general population exposure levels in the U.S., were the following: and yet bpa is still used. So when we hear that monsanto pinky-swears their experiments, even when they contaminate neighboring fields, are super duper safe, or orange growers promise up and down that, well, their genetic modifications they introduced to prevent their business from being destroyed are absolutely positively safe (we promise!)... forgive me for being skeptical. Not to mention the freakout about labeling foods; if they weren't knowingly poisoning us, why exactly would corporations be so very afraid of properly labeling foods? Any reasonable adult should have his or her bullshit detector going off when they are told gmo is absolutely safe, but it's the end of the world if we tell people which foods have gmo ingredients so that they can choose what to eat. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A
zsombor 13y ago
Expect a lot more: the banana for example that had it's reportedly most tasty variant (Gros Michel) gone extinct in the last century. The variant you are buying today (Cavendish) is under great strain and is likely to go down the same route. Species have been disappearing long before humans existed, there is nothing new here. We have always developed close cultural ties to what we eat, this made changes expensive. Hard to imagine a world without orange juice, bananas, plum fruit or a tasty tomato. Our ancestors lacked the tools to prevent losses. We have it and this only makes the loss more painful.

by acheron 13y ago

olouv 13y ago

That's clearly wrong. You just have to actually read studies to find clear warnings about the toxicity of GMO. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278691512005637 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278691512...

rogerbinns 13y ago

I don't think the hysteria is anti-scientific. It is more a suspicion of agricultural corporations, of secrecy and of American companies. The perception of Monsanto is an excellent example. Corporate paternalism is not appreciated. Consider why companies lobbied so hard for GMO to not be labelled as such. If almost every product was labelled as GMO then after a while consumers would not care. They would be able to make their own choices about "regular" versus GMO. Instead the fight has been to "trust us" and to keep GMO secret. "Known to the State of California to cause cancer" is everywhere. No one bats an eyelid any more.

crusso 13y ago
The poster didn't mean that the hysteria was against Science itself, rather that it wasn't based upon any type of Scientific analysis or investigation. The fact that people will become apathetic to GMO labeling eventually doesn't mean that the industry won't fight to avoid the unwanted (and undeserved) stigma for now.
- rogerbinns 13y ago
  > ... avoid the unwanted (and undeserved) stigma for now There is that paternalism again. It is not up to the producers of any product to decide if attention is undeserved. Consumers get to decide that. And yes some will be wrong etc. Shining a light and being truthful is the right way of doing things. The hysteria is not against science - it is against paternalism hiding itself as "trust us because science". Science requires being open and honest.
  - jrkelly 13y ago
    I actually think it is more fair for it to be up to the FDA to decide. The reason companies don't want labels is that people then assume the product is unsafe. Here is an MIT study finding exactly that for GMO labels: http://courantblogs.com/capitol-watch/gmo-labels-send-a-message-that-products-are-unsafe/ http://courantblogs.com/capitol-watch/gmo-labels-send-a-mess...
    - rogerbinns 13y ago
      The FDA decides if a product can even be sold. So what if truthfully labelled products are considered unsafe by some? Why shouldn't people be able to make up their own minds? The freedom that allows them to do that also also means sometimes they will be wrong. Again, so what? Sweeping it under the rug ("trust us") is not adequate. You do not foster understanding, science, progress or freedom by hiding things.

x0x0 13y ago

you say anti-scientific hysteria, I say reasonable fears regularly ignored by industry and whitewashed by an industry captured fda. example 1: bpa from the wiki article [1]: In 2006, the US Government sponsored an assessment of the scientific literature on BPA. Thirty-eight experts in fields involved with bisphenol A gathered in Chapel Hill, North Carolina to review several hundred studies on BPA, many conducted by members of the group. At the end of the meeting, the group issued the Chapel Hill Consensus Statement,[100] which stated BPA at concentrations found in the human body is associated with organizational changes in the prostate, breast, testis, mammary glands, body size, brain structure and chemistry, and behavior of laboratory animals.[101] The Chapel Hill Consensus Statement found that average levels in people are above those that cause harm to many animals in laboratory experiments. They noted that while BPA is not persistent in the environment or in humans, biomonitoring surveys indicate that exposure is continuous, which is problematic because acute animal exposure studies are used to estimate daily human exposure to BPA, and no studies that had examined BPA pharmacokinetics in animal models had followed continuous low-level exposures. They added that measurement of BPA levels in serum and other body fluids suggests the possibilities that BPA intake is much higher than accounted for, and/or that BPA can bioaccumulate in some conditions (such as pregnancy).[100] A 2008 report by the Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction within the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP), which is within the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, reported the results of its exhaustive review of the literature. Its conclusions, expressed relative to current estimates of general population exposure levels in the U.S., were the following: and yet bpa is still used. So when we hear that monsanto pinky-swears their experiments, even when they contaminate neighboring fields, are super duper safe, or orange growers promise up and down that, well, their genetic modifications they introduced to prevent their business from being destroyed are absolutely positively safe (we promise!)... forgive me for being skeptical. Not to mention the freakout about labeling foods; if they weren't knowingly poisoning us, why exactly would corporations be so very afraid of properly labeling foods? Any reasonable adult should have his or her bullshit detector going off when they are told gmo is absolutely safe, but it's the end of the world if we tell people which foods have gmo ingredients so that they can choose what to eat. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A

zsombor 13y ago

Expect a lot more: the banana for example that had it's reportedly most tasty variant (Gros Michel) gone extinct in the last century. The variant you are buying today (Cavendish) is under great strain and is likely to go down the same route. Species have been disappearing long before humans existed, there is nothing new here. We have always developed close cultural ties to what we eat, this made changes expensive. Hard to imagine a world without orange juice, bananas, plum fruit or a tasty tomato. Our ancestors lacked the tools to prevent losses. We have it and this only makes the loss more painful.