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> Roundup-Ready GM crops are designed to survive Roundup dosing (obviously). This leads to an overall increase in Roundup use and a corresponding increase in Ro

• unclebucknasty 13y ago
  >Yes, I can. Resistance to Roundup is exacerbated by using Roundup-Ready GMOs, while resistance to other herbicides is decreased. No, you can't. Well, you can...in the same way that you can say up is down and down is up. That's literally what you're doing. You previously stated that resistance is no way exacerbated by using GMOs. Now you're saying that it is for one GMO, but trying to qualify it with a "but". Too late. You've already conceded the point. Now you're trying to lawyer it. With your initial claim refuted, we can move on to your qualifier. That is, whether there is some secondary effect whereby resistance to other herbicides is decreased in direct proportion would be another question. But, you fail on that point as well. Resistance is dose dependent. GMOs allow higher dosing. It's the entire point. The more herbicide-resistant GMOs we use, the more herbicides we'll use and the more resistance we'll see. It's really as simple as that.
  • Blahah 13y ago
    It's no use trying to be clever with words when you aren't being clever with facts. You are simply wrong, empirically and logically. > You previously stated that resistance is no way exacerbated by using GMOs. Now you're saying that it is for one GMO, but trying to qualify it with a "but". Too late. You've already conceded the point. Now you're trying to lawyer it. Total rates of herbicide resistance have not increased since the introduction of herbicide resistant GMOs. The rate of glyphosate resistance has increased, while the rate of resistance to many other herbicides (e.g. ureas, dinitroanilines, atrazine) has slowed by a greater total rate. > Resistance is dose dependent. GMOs allow higher dosing. It's the entire point. 1. Dose dependence of resistance doesn't mean what you think it means. When we say resistance is dose dependent, that means the plant is resistant only up to a threshold dose, beyond which it will suffer the normal symptoms of toxicity. It does not mean "the more herbicide we apply the more resistance there will be". 2. Glyphosate resistance does not allow higher dosing, it allows lower dosing after the crop has been planted (non-resistant crops in general have the land treated with extreme doses several weeks before sowing). 3. Herbicides select for resistance with different strengths, related to how easily mutations can lead to resistance. Glyphosate is a relatively low selector for resistance. Atrazine is an example of a very strongly resistance-selecting herbicide. By reducing the use of strongly-selecting herbicides like atrazine, Roundup-ready decreases the aggregate strength of selection for resistance. > The more herbicide-resistant GMOs we use, the more herbicides we'll use and the more resistance we'll see. No. The introduction of herbicide resistant GMOs has led to a reduction in the rate of herbicides applied for most crops, or approximately similar rates of less harmful herbicides applied in other crops.
    • unclebucknasty 13y ago
      >It's no use trying to be clever with words when you aren't being clever with facts. Funny that you're bringing up cleverness with words. You're engaging in wordplay to avoid the obvious inferences ascribable to the very facts you're acknowledging. That is, you're using "facts" to mislead in very much the same way that Monsanto does. What's your affiliation with them or related companies? Forget about the term "dose dependence". I misused it in an effort to be concise. I should have used "volume-dependence". The point is that it is patently true that the more of a pesticide we use in aggregate, the higher the rate of resistance to that pesticide and the more we have to use. You seem to have acknowledged that, but now you are attempting to obfuscate it. Obviously, this does not mean that if we use X volume of any given pesticide, then we will get Y resistance to that pesticide. Nowhere did I state that. Actual resistance rates are obviously dependent on the properties of the specific herbicide. But, for each pesticide, the more we use, the higher the risk of resistance. Again, you seem to be acknowledging this at least tacitly via your acknowledgment where Roundup is concerned. But, you are flailing about between arguments and contradicting each. On the one hand, you're saying that GMOs such as Roundup Ready do lead to higher resistance. OTOH, this is OK because we are decreasing use of other herbicides and thus decreasing resistance there. So you are arguing both sides. To see this, answer the following: what happens when we have herbicide-resistant GMOs for every herbicide in significant use? And, BTW, beyond resistance, we are using more roundup because GMOs allow the crops to tolerate more. >The introduction of herbicide resistant GMOs has led to a reduction in the rate of herbicides applied for most crops, or approximately similar rates of less harmful herbicides applied in other crops. Again, this is misleading because you are vascillating between discrete herbicides/GMOs and aggregate. Bottom line is that humans are consuming more glyphosate than in pre-Roundup Ready times because more of it is being used. You keep calling it safe but, as is often the case with chemicals meant to kill, the independent research is calling these safety claims into serious question. When the dose we receive from any given herbicide keeps going up, we eventually cross a threshold wherein even the industry-sponsored research is little more than a wild guess. The result is that we just don't know when we've reached a tipping point until it's too late. It boggles my mind when scientists, of all people, show little regard for the complexity of the human organism and make such cavalier statements about the safety of consuming chemicals that are intended to kill. If their presumably increased understanding of the delicate balance and complex chemical processes within the human body isn't enough to warrant a bit more respect, it seems that history should be.
  • nirnira 13y ago
    You're confusing yourself, because there're two interpretations of the phrase "exacerbating resistance" in play here. In your interpretation, any use of a product which results in increased resistance to that product "exacerbates resistance." In his interpretation, he compares the use of Roundup + Roundup-ready crops to a non-Roundup situation, and notes that indeed in both situations products must be used which will result in increase resistance, but notes however that the former scenario does not increase resistance relative to the latter, and may in fact increase it less. So he finds that the problem of resistance is not "exacerbated." It's similar to noting that people riding bicycles to work does not "exacerbate" road-use, even though roads are busier than they would be if the people riding bikes just stayed at home (which obviously they won't because they have to work.)
    • unclebucknasty 13y ago
      >You're confusing yourself, because there're two interpretations of the phrase "exacerbating resistance" in play here. No, I completely understand what he is saying, and I am suggesting that, in saying it, he is being disingenuous and misleading. It's industry sponsored double-speak. Judging by your response, it appears to be working. His initial statements that GMOs don't exacerbate the problem and that resistance is completely independent of GMOs are false. Full-stop. When challenged, he goes on to admit as much by acknowledging the well-known fact that resistance has increased where the Roundup Ready case is concerned. But, he then tries to qualify and obfuscate that acknowledgment by saying that overall resistance is decreased by a corresponding amount for other herbicides which are subsequently used less. The problem with this is that it is misleading and seeks to let GMOs off the hook. It even applauds them. The reality is that humans are now using and consuming more glyphosate. He tries to dismiss this effect by cheerleading their safety (which is anything but assured when independent research is considered). The other pernicious bit of his argument is due to the fact that, in the future, we are likely to use more and more herbicide-resistant GMOs. By declaring GMOs "competely independent" of the resistance problem, he is implying that overall resistance would continue to remain the same (or be reduced), even with more GMOs. But, the fact is, the more we use any herbicide-resistant GMOs, the more we will dump those herbicides on crops, and the more resistance we'll see to those (and, hence, overall). At the end of the day, our crops will be soaked in more of whatever herbicide we're using. But, you certainly don't get that potential scenario from statements like "herbicide resistance is a problem completely independent of GMOs".