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Monsanto gives up fight for genetically modified plants in Europe

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Re: Monsanto gives up fight for genetically modified plants in Europe

#121

Post by smsm42 »

genwin wrote: post #120
smsm42 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GMO labeling is as stupid as California prop 65 labeling, only more harmful. Every commercial food we eat is "genetically modified", it's how we manage to survive and feed 7 billion people - since the dawn of civilization, men found organisms useful to them and "genetically modified" them to be more useful. Trying to scare people off some methods of doing this would only lead to less productive agriculture and raisin…

Plant hybridization (or whatever the ancient method is called) is significantly different than modifying the genome of a plant to embed a pesticide. The former is much more in tune with natural evolution.

It's not in tune with the evolution at all - the evolution does not make plants useful to humans, it makes the plants survive. Evolution would not produce fruits, vegetables or berries we love to enjoy - they would be wasteful and useless in natural conditions. The plants we use are genetically modified, and btw many plants produce pesticides naturally - such as Chrysanthemum or Nicotiana plants. It's just easier and faster to genetically modify plants on genomic level than by selection, where it could take generations to produce needed genomic change.

Re: Monsanto gives up fight for genetically modified plants in Europe

#122

Post by genwin »

smsm42 wrote: post #121
genwin wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plant hybridization (or whatever the ancient method is called) is significantly different than modifying the genome of a plant to embed a pesticide. The former is much more in tune with natural evolution.

It's not in tune with the evolution at all - the evolution does not make plants useful to humans, it makes the plants survive. Evolution would not produce fruits, vegetables or berries we love to enjoy - they would be wasteful and useless in natural conditions. The plants we use are genetically modified, and btw many plants produce pesticides naturally - such as Chrysanthemum or Nicotiana plants. It's just easier and…

You want the change to take a long time so that humans can evolve with it. Yes plant hybridization (e.g. to make fruit sweeter) is not as fast or easy which is why it's more in tune with evolution. Some things that genetic modification can do are impossible with the ancient methods.

Even if GM produced a plant that was truly superior and healthier in every way, there's no good way to trust it. There are too many instances of "oops, what we thought was good for you is actually bad for you" or "oops, we thought we could improve nature but we made it worse" to trust GMO, at least for the next fifty years or so. The plant that seems truly superior and healthier might end up killing enough insects or otherwise affecting them such to be worse all things considered.

Re: Monsanto gives up fight for genetically modified plants in Europe

#123

Post by smsm42 »

genwin wrote: post #122
smsm42 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not in tune with the evolution at all - the evolution does not make plants useful to humans, it makes the plants survive. Evolution would not produce fruits, vegetables or berries we love to enjoy - they would be wasteful and useless in natural conditions. The plants we use are genetically modified, and btw many plants produce pesticides naturally - such as Chrysanthemum or Nicotiana plants. It's just easier and…

You want the change to take a long time so that humans can evolve with it. Yes plant hybridization (e.g. to make fruit sweeter) is not as fast or easy which is why it's more in tune with evolution. Some things that genetic modification can do are impossible with the ancient methods. Even if GM produced a plant that was truly superior and healthier in every way, there's no good way to trust it. There are too many inst…

Evolution takes much longer time than selection. And human evolution does not function like it did since humans have medicine and society, which means if you can't eat grains, for example, you don't die and take your genes out of gene pool - you just take some medicine and eat something else and live happily and procreate. So evolution has nothing to contribute with regard to organisms modified by human selection - it's both too fast and evolution doesn't have a chance to do its cruel business.

Im modern mind "evolution" has became synonymous to "natural" in the quality of "it has no nasty science in it so it has to be good". In fact, neither "natural" nor "evolution" has nothing good in it - nature is impersonal, immoral and unimaginably cruel, viewed from our point of view. And if the science can do something to correct it - it is great.

For example, sweeter apples we enjoy now appeared in the last couple of centuries, and the US varieties in the last century alone, before that apples were mainly used to make cider or applejack. A couple of hundreds of years is nothing for the evolution.

Re: Monsanto gives up fight for genetically modified plants in Europe

#124

Post by genwin »

smsm42 wrote: post #123
genwin wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You want the change to take a long time so that humans can evolve with it. Yes plant hybridization (e.g. to make fruit sweeter) is not as fast or easy which is why it's more in tune with evolution. Some things that genetic modification can do are impossible with the ancient methods. Even if GM produced a plant that was truly superior and healthier in every way, there's no good way to trust it. There are too many inst…

Evolution takes much longer time than selection. And human evolution does not function like it did since humans have medicine and society, which means if you can't eat grains, for example, you don't die and take your genes out of gene pool - you just take some medicine and eat something else and live happily and procreate. So evolution has nothing to contribute with regard to organisms modified by human selection - i…

Yes from our point of view, where human death is always bad and future consequences are largely ignored. From a macro point of view nature achieves what is perhaps the best possible outcome. Man has a spotty track record of improving or correcting it. We made some improvements that still seem better over the last century, like vaccines. And we've made many big mistakes, like DDT. What you support is a matter of what seems trustworthy.

Search for: "Pests are adapting to genetically modified crops in unexpected ways, researchers have discovered. The findings underscore the importance of closely monitoring and countering pest resistance to biotech crops." That sounds like another "oops, we did it again" in the making to me.

Re: Monsanto gives up fight for genetically modified plants in Europe

#125

Post by smsm42 »

genwin wrote: post #124
smsm42 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evolution takes much longer time than selection. And human evolution does not function like it did since humans have medicine and society, which means if you can't eat grains, for example, you don't die and take your genes out of gene pool - you just take some medicine and eat something else and live happily and procreate. So evolution has nothing to contribute with regard to organisms modified by human selection - i…

Yes from our point of view, where human death is always bad and future consequences are largely ignored. From a macro point of view nature achieves what is perhaps the best possible outcome. Man has a spotty track record of improving or correcting it. We made some improvements that still seem better over the last century, like vaccines. And we've made many big mistakes, like DDT. What you support is a matter of what…

Science is not perfect. It's the best we have. Yes, pests are adapting and we don't have silver bullet. The solution is, however, not to say "well, science didn't work out, let's try to go back to the caves" - the solution is to keep working.

>>> What you support is a matter of what seems trustworthy.

This is exactly the problem - the support becomes political and relies not on what is actually better but on whose lobbyists are better and whose PR campaign is more successful. This venerable tradition started a long time ago, with Edison's shenanigans[1] to give him edge over the competitors. The story of DDT is another example - while the scientific basis for the book that destroyed the DDT - Silent Spring - remain shaky[2] and the ban ended up costing millions of lives of malaria victims, it is still considered an example of how science is going to doom us all. Another example is the continuing PR battle between sugar lobby and corn lobby. Initially, corn lobby was winning - that's why HFCS is called "high fructose" - because once fructose was good and glucose was bad, so the marketing term emphasized the good part, even though some varieties of HFCS have less fructose than table sugar, and commonly used one has only very slightly more [3]. Due to this and as the effect of the insanely high sugar tariffs, US industry switched from sugar to HFCS. Now the tide has turned and HFCS is becoming the bane of our age. And now the corn lobby wants to go back to "corn sugar", but so far they weren't allowed to. Corn guys though did another number in "biofuels", so even if they lose the HFCS thing, they have other victories in their belt.

This is all to say "what seems trustworthy" is a very poor guide, since most information you'd see in popular press is probably worthless. And decisions made by politicians are probably based on random factors having nothing to do with actual merits of proposed solutions.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Currents [2] http://reason.com/archives/2002/06/12/silent-spring-at-40 [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_fructose_corn_syrup#Produc...

Re: Monsanto gives up fight for genetically modified plants in Europe

#126

Post by smsm42 »

genwin wrote: post #113
smsm42 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We assume this always happens it because we observed many things falling off many cliffs. Though if you had a parachute concealed on you, our assumption about what would happen if you jump off a cliff would be proven wrong. We never observed the thing that were predicted above, despite the claim that it always happens. We didn't even observe the "fall" you claim to be happening right now. No evidence for it exists ex…

Actually there is plenty of evidence of societies suffering greatly when they exceeded their resources, including modern ones like during the Rwandan genocide. We can also observe the current global fall, in terms of fast declining ocean fish stocks, fast depleting aquifers, and tons of other measurements. The book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed is a layman's introduction, with references to extens…

I am not saying society failure never happened. I am saying society failure because of improved conditions of life so far never happened - Green revolution did not actually led to something worse than widespread starvation. Like Rwandan genocide, most of current failures are designed, not just happening due to overpopulation - they are consequence of man-made evil designs, not development of society.

Re: Monsanto gives up fight for genetically modified plants in Europe

#127

Post by smsm42 »

genwin wrote: post #99
smsm42 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this scenario "less people" is achieved by starving them off, so you're basically saying "we will starve people off and then there would be less people to starve, so it's actually a good thing". Seems to be like an extremely cynical piece of mental gymnastics.

Nobody needs to starve when the root cause is focused on. You're basically saying "we will starve people off in the future, but save less people today, so it's actually a good thing". Of the two of us, I'm the one advocating that less people starve.

"When the root cause is focused on" is an extremely vague and non-practical phrase. You can always say "since we have people starving, root cause is not fixed, so we should leave them starving and not help them until it is". What is your method for making "less people"? We have population of 7 billion and growing, Green revolution technology can enable us to feed them. If you deny it, then what you propose to do with those people, where they are supposed to go?

Re: Monsanto gives up fight for genetically modified plants in Europe

#128

Post by Anonazon »

mpyne wrote: post #107
Anonazon wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this statement is it is assuming that there are no health concerns.

To be honest this whole "debate" reminds me more of the popular antivax movement than anything else. I suppose I can understand Europe's arch-conservatism regarding food products after the thalidomide disaster, but I would certainly prefer to see actual evidence of harm from genetically-modified food, or even a plausible explanation of why a given GM food could cause injury and not just FUD FUD FUD.

Well, if it makes you feel any better, I got hellbanned for that comment.
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