Truvia sweetener a powerful pesticide; scientists shocked as fruit flies die in less than a week

[mike_c]

153. I'm sorry, but you're simply incorrect....

There is no credible evidence that Bt proteins are toxic to non-target animals, including humans. None whatsoever. It has become fashionable among those doing very bad "advocacy science" to publish "research" documenting Bt toxicity in fake journals spawned specifically to proliferate pseudoscience, and those papers end up being passed around anti-GMO advocacy web sites like baseball cards, each more shrilly trumpeted than the last. It's all BS-- those papers carry ZERO weight in the real research world because real scientists read them critically and see their flaws immediately.

It does not matter how much Bt we eat. It's just another protein in vertebrate guts. You seem to attach importance to the amount we eat, but there is NO dose dependent Bt response in non-target vertebrates, so complaining about eating too much Bt is like complaining about eating too much mustard. Actually, too much mustard would probably be more harmful than too much Bt.

Insect resistance to Bt is a real issue, but human toxicity is not. It just isn't.

It's still true that insects are our biggest competitor for food and other agricultural products. We cannot ignore that, especially when food insecurity is increasing around the world. Even today, with the massive pest population control efforts we use, agricultural losses to pest insects amount to about 30% of production. What would you tell farmers who want to get the best return on their investment each year? What about hungry people hoping for something to eat? "Sorry, I'm fearful of Bt despite all the assurances of decades of research, so you're just screwed?" Do you have a better answer? One that doesn't start with "first we have to change our basic approach to agriculture and all become small scale organic growers living in harmony with nature," because that's pie-in-the-sky idealism , not real solutions for real world problems.

Finally, if you've read this far, let me say something about your comment that "We were told for decades that DdT was safe and for over half a century by big tobacco that smoking was perfectly fine and caused no problems." I see a big problem in that the American public is largely scientifically illiterate and utterly dependent upon the pronouncements of industrialists, policy makers, and the press for explanations about how things work and what their risks are. People need to be able to critically evaluate the evidence for themselves, both to arrive at conclusions and to understand the dynamic nature of science and research. For example, referencing your comment once again, DDT is in fact quite safe if used responsibly and with certain environmental restrictions, which is why it is STILL the malaria vector control agent of choice in certain settings (e.g. sprayed upon interior walls in the tropics). My point is that DDT is not inherently bad-- it's badness resides in how we use it. Technological solutions to problems are rarely black-or-white good or bad. They're inevitably compromises between necessity and desire, what we need in the real world and what we'd prefer in an ideal one. People who cannot assess that balance of needs and wants are at the mercy of charlatans pursuing personal profit or advantage. They become foot soldiers in dogma wars. They're the heart of both the anti-GMO movement and the climate change denial movement, for example.