Core Truths: 10 Common GMO Claims Debunked

[pnwmom]

38. No, I'm saying that the 770 studies -- I'll have to take your word on the number, since it's not

Last edited Wed Jul 16, 2014, 04:23 PM - Edit history (2)

important -- may or may not be representative of all the studies that have been done, or could have been done, if the industry wasn't restricting the use of seeds in research, and claiming veto power over publishing of the results. It's not the number of studies that is important -- it's the quality, and the particular results. There could be ten favorable studies about a specific GMO and then one study that demonstrates a serious problem. That one study can be enough to overturn all the positive studies.

To give an example, there were many studies that once proved the safety of thalidomide, before it was placed on the market. Then babies began to turn up with horrible birth defects -- about 10,000 in Germany alone. Eventually, the drug was taken off the market. The scientists who had studied the drug were NOT involved in some conspiracy with the drug company. Their research hadn't been able to show the risk to human beings because the animal models didn't show any ill effects from the drug. All they would have needed, however, would have been one single study showing serious birth defects and this drug would never have gone to market. Unfortunately, human beings turned out to be the first species that showed this reaction to thalidomide. All the previous studies were outweighed by the informal post-market experimentation on millions of pregnant women. But one single study done on the right animal model could have stopped thalidomide from ever getting approved. This was an inadvertent error; not a conspiracy.

I am not an antivaxxer. I and my children are fully vaccinated. Since the government approved the safer DPT vaccine, we have even been able to get the vaccine that my pediatrician had earlier stopped with my children, after two of them had serious problems. Two years ago, I got the new adult form of the vaccine to help protect my (now fully vaccinated) baby granddaughter. (Even though my own sister had developed encephalitis and died the day after she received the original DPT vaccine.)

I am also not a climate change denialist. You throw around accusations like this because you don't have the facts on your side. So you resort to personal insults. No scientist would behave like that.