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Mark Lynas, environmentalist who opposed GMOs, admits he was wrong.

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Re: Mark Lynas, environmentalist who opposed GMOs, admits he was wrong.

#41

Post by pohl »

enraged_camel wrote: post #16
graeme wrote: post #4

His views are insubstantial. His main argument is that his previous ad hominem positions were not sufficient to condemn GMOs (correct) and that GMOs haven't caused any problems yet. He has not presented evidence that GMO's are safe. He has two main arguments: 1. Trial and error crossbreeding affects entire genes. 2. Viruses sometimes spread genes from one organism to another. First, trial and error crossbreeding isn'…

>>I'm making a Talebian argument here. Nature is a VERY complex system. When we mess with it, we make incremental visible gains, and run the risk of large, invisible losses. I've never understood this argument. It basically amounts to "yes, there are advantages to GMOs, but we haven't found any disadvantages yet, therefore they are unsafe!" This is basically the equivalent of early seafarers being afraid of uncharted…

I've never understood this argument. It basically amounts to "yes, there are advantages to GMOs, but we haven't found any disadvantages yet, therefore they are unsafe!"

You've got the wrong thing after "therefore". The argument you're trying to paraphrase would probably advocate the Precautionary Principle instead:

"... if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of scientific consensus that the action or policy is harmful, the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls on those taking the action."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle

Re: Mark Lynas, environmentalist who opposed GMOs, admits he was wrong.

#42

Post by celiac »

maratd wrote: post #33
pyre wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If an early seafarer went down with his/her ship, it didn't affect a significant portion of the population. GMO foods are more like, "Hey look! I invented this new banana in a test tube! It looks safe, so it must be! Here eat it! Does it cause problems when you eat these types of bananas for 20 or 30 years? Who knows! Just eat it, it looks safe!"

You could say that about any new product. Here! Use this cellphone! What? The battery can explode when it overheats? Don't worry about it! Almost never happens! And with cellphones ... that's already happened. Yet you still have one in your pocket. > Does it cause problems when you eat these types of bananas for 20 or 30 years? Bananas didn't evolve with "being good for you 20 or 30 years from now" ethos. That doesn'…

>You could say that about any new product. Here! Use this cellphone! What? The battery can explode when it overheats? Don't worry about it! Almost never happens!

If the battery explodes you will know about it. Each explosion will be an independent, isolated event. They will not all blow up at once. A better analogy would appeal to concerns over EM radiation from cell phones. In that case, it turned out to be harmless - at least in terms of cancer risk. And that single, highly-controllable factor took years to validate for safety.

>Is there even a plant out there that has harmful side-effects two decades after you eat it?

Gluten sensitivity can take years to show up, and months to get better after you've cut it out of your diet. For years doctors dismissed patients who claimed to be suffering from wheat allergies. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Re: Mark Lynas, environmentalist who opposed GMOs, admits he was wrong.

#43

Post by tinco »

ScottBurson wrote: post #38
enraged_camel wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>I'm making a Talebian argument here. Nature is a VERY complex system. When we mess with it, we make incremental visible gains, and run the risk of large, invisible losses. I've never understood this argument. It basically amounts to "yes, there are advantages to GMOs, but we haven't found any disadvantages yet, therefore they are unsafe!" This is basically the equivalent of early seafarers being afraid of uncharted…

There's a huge middle ground between "proven safe" and "proven unsafe". People in this debate seem to forget that. Personally, I want pretty good evidence that something is safe before putting it in my body. If the mere lack of evidence that it's unsafe is sufficient for you, well, that's your choice.

You can never prove something is safe. The only indication that something is safe is lack of evidence of unsafety multiplied by time.

What would be evidence for you that something is safe enough to put into your body?

Re: Mark Lynas, environmentalist who opposed GMOs, admits he was wrong.

#44

Post by andylei »

DanBC wrote: post #15
iand wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read his argument differently. He is not claiming they are safe in an absolutist sense, merely that they are safe enough to alleviate the food shortage the world faces without them.

The world doesn't face a food shortage. We already have enough food. We just don't distribute it. One of the big concerns is micronutrients in Asia. We don't need GMOd crops for vitamin and mineral supplementation.

> The world doesn't face a food shortage. We already have enough food

due to GMOs...

Re: Mark Lynas, environmentalist who opposed GMOs, admits he was wrong.

#45

Post by revelation »

graeme wrote: post #4

His views are insubstantial. His main argument is that his previous ad hominem positions were not sufficient to condemn GMOs (correct) and that GMOs haven't caused any problems yet. He has not presented evidence that GMO's are safe. He has two main arguments: 1. Trial and error crossbreeding affects entire genes. 2. Viruses sometimes spread genes from one organism to another. First, trial and error crossbreeding isn'…

There are no magic pathways for gene "transfer". Theres chromosomal crossover and there are random mutations. These are very very blunt instruments and the only reason they work to create complex organisms is through sheer number of different organisms and natural selection.

Nature is messing with nature all the time through pure randomness, the penultimate chaos monkey. Nothing has collapsed.

Re: Mark Lynas, environmentalist who opposed GMOs, admits he was wrong.

#47

Post by ScottBurson »

graeme wrote: post #4

His views are insubstantial. His main argument is that his previous ad hominem positions were not sufficient to condemn GMOs (correct) and that GMOs haven't caused any problems yet. He has not presented evidence that GMO's are safe. He has two main arguments: 1. Trial and error crossbreeding affects entire genes. 2. Viruses sometimes spread genes from one organism to another. First, trial and error crossbreeding isn'…

Very well said, and I'm heartened to see your comment at the top of the page.

I think it's worth emphasizing that GMOs aren't a category, from a safety point of view. There can't be any evidence that all GMOs that will ever be produced will be safe, any more than there could be evidence that all drugs that will ever be synthesized will be safe. We have to look at them individually. I don't think the public has digested this point yet.

EDITED to add: It's also worth keeping in mind that in some cases, the primary danger may not be from the plant itself, but from pesticides to which it has been engineered to be resistant. I'm speaking, of course, of glyphosate, which I understand is being applied in growing quantities as the weeds it is intended to kill evolve their own resistance.

Re: Mark Lynas, environmentalist who opposed GMOs, admits he was wrong.

#48

Post by hcarvalhoalves »

cheeseprocedure wrote: post #32
graeme wrote: post #4

His views are insubstantial. His main argument is that his previous ad hominem positions were not sufficient to condemn GMOs (correct) and that GMOs haven't caused any problems yet. He has not presented evidence that GMO's are safe. He has two main arguments: 1. Trial and error crossbreeding affects entire genes. 2. Viruses sometimes spread genes from one organism to another. First, trial and error crossbreeding isn'…

> Current techniques may be more risky, but generally speaking it should be hard for plants to produce a horrid mutation based on natural interbreeding mechanisms. What about the (widespread) practice of mutation breeding? [1] Blasting seeds with X-rays and gamma rays in an attempt to generate new cultivars is a genetic wrecking ball compared to performing genetic engineering. Conventional breeding has given us plent…

> I think "incremental" is a bit of an understatement if we can, for example, feed tens of millions of humans in parts of the world where conventional crops cannot (yet?) provide reliable and sufficient nutrition, a critical step in reducing poverty.

You can argue about many benefits, but genetic engineered crops is hardly a solution to poverty and malnutrition.

Re: Mark Lynas, environmentalist who opposed GMOs, admits he was wrong.

#49

Post by cromwellian »

Plant breeding has always been tinkering with the genome, why aren't people scared of it? Read the Wikipedia page on the various ways plants are bombarded with radiation, mutagenic chemicals, have nuclei fuzed with electricity, et al in "non-GMO 'organic'" plant breeding.

Why is the more error prone process, in which we are ignorant of the mechanism, presumed safer?

If we invented a machine which randomly bred plants, sampled their DNA, and tested for the modification of a single gene, or infected plants with naturally occuring bacteria or virii and waited for an inter-species transfer, would you find this less scary than a process which uses a petri dish and a pipette?

There's a continuous gradient between the way people bred, modified, and selected plants thousands of years ago up until today. Our precision and our knowledge has gotten a lot better.

The only reason at all to trust maize, or other human domestic modifications, is simply because they've been around for a long long time and so you can infer safer because if there was something dangerous, it would have shown up already.

Or, are we simply ignoring dangers that have already existed but become desensitized to them, like gluten issues, or lactose intolerance. Our diet has changed radically since the invention of agriculture, and in a way, much of man's early experiments at domestication of plants, our first "GMO" so to speak, may have had unforseen circumstances.

But we brush it all off, yet people are hypersensitive to any minute theoretical issue that could happen with GMO, real or imagined.

This boils down a lot I think to human emotion, and our notions of disgust with respect to food. We like what is common and fear the unknown.

Re: Mark Lynas, environmentalist who opposed GMOs, admits he was wrong.

#50

Post by bcoates »

politician wrote: post #5

If he's changed his mind based on facts, then I'm happy for him. However, the implications of Monsanto's Terminator seed technology (DRM for plants) is so sweeping and, frankly, frightening that whatever time society wasted due to the anti-GMO activism was worth it. Does anyone really think that if we didn't make a stink about GMO that they wouldn't have gone full steam ahead? [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic…

Uh... what implications would those be? Sterile hybrids of plants where the offspring of hybrids are generally undesirable anyway?

DRM for computers is bad because the only way for it to work is to ban computers as we know them and replace them with something fundamentally broken. There really isn't a plant equivalent.

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