Monsanto gives up fight for genetically modified plants in Europe

> > ...among those [Europeans] who know what GMOs are, 59 percent of surveyed citizens believe they are unhealthy, with only 22 percent believing they are not.

It would be nice to correlate this with the percentage of people who are considering dihydrogen monoxide to be unhealthy.

A lot of people see opposition to GMOs as irrational, but I don't think it is. It's perfectly rational, especially if you don't really understand genetics (which most people don't... it's an esoteric subject).

The reason it's rational is this: were GMOs to be found to be unhealthy, it would be a continuation of a well-established pattern. Nearly all food "innovations" of the last 100 years are unhealthy.

- Trans-fats (hydrogenated oils) are basically artery plaque in the form of fake butter or shortening.

- Nearly all additives such as MSG and artificial sweeteners are either unhealthy or suspect.

- Bleaching and other treatments to improve shelf life denude food of its nutrients. Re-enrichment only replaces macronutrients, leaving micronutrients and minerals unaccounted for.

- Preservatives enhance shelf life and reduce the likelihood of food-borne illness, but many are themselves suspect and many have been taken off the market.

- Nitrites are possible carcinogen.

- Google: brominated oil, arsenic poultry.

... and so on. The only beneficial modification to the food system from a nutritional perspective has been fortification with certain key nutrients, namely iodine and vitamins C and D. But we're talking two successes out of dozens of failed experiments.

In every case, the "experts" told people it was safe or even good for you before the experts proceeded to change their minds. Margarine in particular is illustrative. It was recommended as a health food.

As a result, people have become rightly ultra-conservative about food, viewing any modification to food as guilty until proven innocent. "GMO is safe" means "we haven't figured out how GMO kills you, yet."

>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.

What system of IP protections would be suitable to allow private industry to subsidize the expense of developing genetically-modified foods that are able to be planted over and over again after the first purchase? I suspect it will at least resemble patent protection, which at least does eventually end.

It's a very old problem, with parallels with Unix (as I understand it you could duplicate the install media after purchase for free; it wasn't until later AT&T would realize the value of what they were sitting on and try to control distribution of SysV to extract capital from it).

While open-source programmers like myself don't mind volunteering time and code, there is not a comparable contingent of "open-source geneticists" that I'm aware of. That means someone has to pay the piper if they want the GM seeds. If you concentrate the cost in the first batch of seeds you make them prohibitively expensive, which would lead to a gray market of fellow farmers selling their excess seeds at much cheaper cost.

So I don't see buying seeds yearly as a tithe, as much as a requirement of the overall business model given the reality of the large capital investment required. Am I missing a superior alternative?