Millions Worldwide March Against Monsanto

[FarrenH]

49. Educate yourself rather than talking crap

These are Sprague-Dawley rats, which Seralini used

http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/33/11/2768.full.pdf

"A spontaneous tumor incidence of 45% was noted in 360 Sprague-Dawley rats..."

They're used in *cancer research* because they get tumours so easily, ffs. Seralini KNEW this. He was a polemical anti-GMO campaigner BEFORE conducting his "research", then he went and cooked up some completely fraudulent research using a tiny test group and control group that yielded a statistically insignificant result that is not replicated by any other research, held a big press conference before his results were even published (they were later retracted by an embarrassed Journal) and released a bunch of shocking photos of S-D rats exhibiting the kind of tumours they FREQUENTLY DEVELOP WITHOUT INTERVENTION.

When you rely on outright frauds and research that you don't understand to make your point, you don't get to call other people "minions" of teh evil corporation. You just look like an idiot who doesn't understand the science and is resorting to bluster.

FYI, I'm a middle aged South African programmer working on artificial neural networks for security. I have nothing to do with agribusiness. In fact I

1) Object to the patenting of life forms. I think IP law is broken, especially in the USA.
2) Think that our future food security lies in the reduction of monoculture and an increase in permaculture.

I'm not the cartoon villain or corporate shill you and other naive hippies think I am. I am, however, a science nut who finds the rank ignorance and stupidity of many science-illiterate GMO critics incredibly annoying.

Here's a brief list of things I think you should know

1) Any viable life form that can be arrived at by GE techniques can be arrived at by evolution, even moreso assisted evolution like conventional selective breeding. I mention this because some people are operating under the dumb delusion that GMO somehow means there is something inherently "unnatural" about the biological nature of GMOs. GE techniques just get to the desired life-form faster than any other technique (like the popular technique of mutation breeding, or conventional selection)

2) There is no distinctive trait that is common to either the tissue structure, cellular structure or DNA of GMOs and not "natural" organisms. Given two unknown organisms, one genetically engineered and one "natural", and using all of the science available to us, an expert could not identify which is the GMO. There is no physical property, no "GMOness" that makes GMOs GMOs. They are called GMOs wholly on the basis of how they were made, not their physical phenotype. This makes the assumption of some common risk to all GMOs on the mere basis that they share the label GMO, well, moronic. A rational person would proceed by looking at each individual organism and examining the proven risks of each organism. For Monsanto GM corn for example, this established, proven risk is diddly squat after billions of people have eaten it. But hey, lets not get science and a trial group of billions of humans over decades of consumption get in the way of our precious hippie intuitions, because TEH EVIL CORPORATIONS.

3) Every single common food in the world today is the result of thousands of years of slow genetic engineering and look nothing like their wild cousins/still existing plants they were derived from. The engineering technique used was simple selection for traits that favour human consumption, traits that would otherwise not be selected. Conventional breeders have selected and propagated thousands of viable mutations (mutations caused by viruses, radiation and replication errors) to arrive at the plants we have today. Every mutation was selected only for visible and tasteable phenotypic attributes, without any understanding of their deeper or less visible consequences. And yet, even for foods that only became global staples in recent history when they were spread to people who didn't co-evolve with them before, especially from South America, no-one who is or has ever marched for the ridiculous level of safety testing being demanded of GMOs.

In short, my irritation is with the fundamentally ignorant position that GMOs, even transgenics, represent a physically different class of organisms from any other plant, with unique risks. THEY DON'T, they're just different DNA sequences, ones that nature itself could come up with, from an endless library of possible combinations.

And if anyone tells you nature can't come up with "transgenics", like plants with bacterial genes, they don't know what the fuck they're talking about. Here are two actual transgenic organisms:

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

Elysia chlorotica is a sea slug that has hijacked plant DNA to allow it to sustain chloroplasts and photosynthesise

http://achemicallife.wordpress.com/2012/08/26/aphids-carotenoids-and-photosynthesis/

Aphids, similarly, have hijacked plant DNA and incorporated it in their genes.

And at a bacterial level its becoming apparent that its all transgenic all the way, as we discover that completely different kinds of bacteria use plasmids to share DNA all the time, which is quite extraordinary. There are literally pathogens in your gut picking up antibiotic resistance genes from harmless soil bacteria you ingested with your food.

We're gradually coming to realise that lateral evolution happens more often than we think. So yes, nature DOES produce transgenics. IOW there is absolutely nothing about the physical nature of GMOs that distinguishes them from organisms produced by nature. So vague, handwaving anti-GMO hysteria is based on fundamental scientific ignorance.

Criticise a particular organism based on it's particular, scientifically-proven harm if you will. Criticize monoculture or IP law that allows people to "own" particular forms of life. But wave your hands around about the "dangers of GMOs" and you just look like an idiot that doesn't understand biology. A cartoon stereotype, the ignorant peasant marching with their pitchfork and torch in hand to burn teh mad genius at the stake because they don't understand his/her science. The fact that there are hundreds of millions of you does not make your arguments more compelling, any more than the opinions of hundreds of millions of people who don't know how to program computers would convince me of anything WRT programming computers. Its just ignorance, holding back potentially lifesaving science (like the not-for-profit GMO Golden Rice, which has also been a victim of this kind of hysteria).