Posted on 11/01/2013 3:26:45 PM PDT by EveningStar
If one believes the backers of Washington State Initiative 522, Tuesday’s vote is simple commonsense: It’s about the “right to know” what’s in our food...
“To be clear the Just Label campaign is not an anti-GMO effort,” says Gary Hirshberg, founder of organic food maker Stonyfield Organic, and head of Just Label It...
But in less guarded moments, Hirshberg makes it clear that the labeling movement has nothing at all to do with science, information and discourse—it is exclusively an anti-GMO effort...
(Excerpt) Read more at geneticliteracyproject.org ...
Oh you’re not copying from some place on the web. Shills normally have an internal set of talking points which adhere to the approved agenda.
Really does the earth wear a lab coat and use a microscope?
“Living your life floating from one emotional decision to the next is really a horrible way to live. I am glad that I don’t live in an emotional swamp like that.”
Well lets see....
I wake up and kiss my wife because it feels good.
Then I get up and go to the bathroom, because well it feels good too.
Then I take a shower and use hot water, because it feels good.
I use a soap that smells good, because I like good smells.
I brush my teeth with a toothpaste that tastes good.
I eat a breakfast based on what I feel like having.
I wear clothes that I feel comfortable in and that I look good in.
I go to a job I like.
I drive a car that is cool and I feel good driving.
I come home and pet the dog, because its happy to see me.
I hug my kids and make jokes and play with them. Again, because it feels good.
I watch stuff on TV that is fun and eat a dinner that my wife makes for me because she loves me.
Yeah floating from one emotional event to another is just a horrible way to live.
You actually advertise it when a discussion is over your head?
I sit here at work today completely miserable. I licked a spoon last night that had pasta remnants on it. Today I cannot breathe, and the meds take forever to kick in so the allergy symptoms are at least tolerable.
In 2006, I started having all sorts of weird medical symptoms that docs either brushed off, or attributed to stress. Today, after finally getting full-fledged allergy symptoms whenever I eat so much as a half a noodle, I know that I am allergic to wheat. There are many today that suffer any number of symptoms, that are due to gluten or wheat intake. Whether you believe this or not, and I was one that used to think it was a crock of bull, it is so.
It would do science a great justice to actually do an unbiased study on the effects of genetically modified wheat, because so many are having reactions to it these days. But I don’t expect science to catch up to reality for quite some time. It is unfortunate that something as great as science, is muddled by man. By man that has preconceived notions, biases, and is often blinded by his own beliefs, whether of a religious or ‘rational’ nature.
In the meantime, many of us suffer these symptoms, and science denies splicing could be in any way the cause. I have no doubt in ten years or so, science may catch up with the facts. Unfortunately, people may die before the ‘rational and reasoned’ wake up.
Those are my feelings and I’m sticking to them. Ya’ll have a blessed day.
Yes, many are allergic to gluten. What does that have to do with GMOs?
Trying to claim that the DNA is different for each organism is like trying to claim that the alphabet is different for each book. It is not--deoxyribonucleic acid is chemically identical, no matter which organism it comes from.
When you get to the level of sequence--that is, the order of the four letters A, T, G, C in the DNA--and the number of letters that make up the DNA in an organism, then you do start to see some differences. Probably not as many as you think, since organisms tend to use the same set of genes and have the exact same cellular machinery to use those genes. The differences are mostly in how the genes are used. Organisms also share genes--for instance, the human genome contains bacterial and viral DNA, and we would be unable to live without it.
You put spider and corn DNA together, and logic and reason tell most of us, it might not be good thing.
I have never tried that specific combination before, but logic and reason tell me that the results of such a mix would not be much different than the results of mixing mouse and human, human and bacteria, yeast and mouse, etc. I've made a lot of mixed species DNA. Nothing much happens, actually. Yeast that contains human DNA looks, smells, and acts just like yeast that doesn't contain it.
Every new technology causes a certain subset of the population to start panicking hysterically about the imminent end of the world. I'm sure these fearful ninnies had their counterparts thousands of years ago, who panicked when humans first discovered crude genetic engineering. They will eventually forget about it when something new to panic about shows up.
One of the biggest ironies I find is that our modern genetic engineering techniques actually make use of methods developed by Mother Nature eons ago. Whether I want to cut and paste snippets of DNA, change the sequence of DNA, or make new DNA, I use enzymes from bacteria and other organisms to do the work. Using these enzymes is akin to using fire--Mother Nature did all the work of invention, and it takes human intellect to find new applications for it. Genetic engineering is as natural as anything can be!
“Trying to claim that the DNA is different for each organism is like trying to claim that the alphabet is different for each book.”
The arrangement of the letters is key for the alphabet to make any sense at all. If you arrange the letters so that they give instructions for how to build a rocket and arrange them for how to build an atomic bomb, then insert one into the other, to end result is uncertain.
Science only recently admitted that ‘junk’ DNA is not junk after all. But having a full understanding never stopped them from messing around with what they did not fully understand. Who knows the damage that has been done, that will not be fully understood until future revelations occur.
Thanks for your expertise and knowledge. The reasons for the popular disbelief of many things are the concrete and continuing examples of being lied to about various aspects of tech advances. Japan IIRC won’t buy Washington wheat because we cannot guarantee non GMO wheat anymore. I think that in itself gives many people pause. Our recent experience with “pink slime” in our meat and being lied to about it also comes from the recent past. I don’t think the issue is being ignorant as much as being lied to, and the resulting backlash.
I have a few tech rules I could apply to this issue, courtesy Microsoft.
Never buy the xx.0 version of any MS product, wait until it has been tested for months and the first revision has taken place.
If someone claims to know the truth, it is not science. They may have much to bolster the claim, but evaluating approaching the truth is a judgment that is wrong 1 time in 20 by most scientific standards and being wrong 5% of the time is not good enough for my food. If the claim is there is no difference between the foods effect on people, and the food is different in the environment than non GMO food there is a scientific problem with Epistemology. How do you know what you believe you know? Just like the drug axiom that if it is strong enough to have a corrective effect, it is strong enough to have a side effect.
There is a lot we don’t know about GMO food, we’ll know more in the future. I would expect when we know the human genome and have clear models of what things do to it, like the difference between a particular GMO modification and it’s “natural” analogue we’ll be on our way to perfecting individual diets and modifying them to the particular person to optimize health. Mayhaps even modifying the food in particular ways for particular people.
Sadly we are not there yet, but your work is getting us closer.
DK
There is even science to show how important emotions are to humans. If you weren’t such a shill for the food companies you’d be able to admit it.
The issue is not whether emotions are important. The issue is that you completely avoid using any kind of thought process, and base all of your decisions on your feelings. Because you actively avoid using any kind of logic or rational thought, you fall for any con man that comes along. Con men are great at pretending to care and manipulating your feelings, but all they care about is getting your money.
The ancient Greeks recognized the evil of using emotion instead of thought to make decisions--and the words they came up with to describe it are still in our language--as in pathos, pathological.
Indeed. There *is* a world of difference between selectively changing one single gene while leaving the rest of the genes in an organism alone, versus randomly mixing entire genomes with utterly unknown and unpredictable effect. In nature, genes are randomly mixed up between different organisms--even completely different organisms. Furthermore, whether we are talking random mixing in nature, random mixing by "selective breeding," or using radiation to cause countless random mutations in an organism, none of these old or natural methods of genetic engineering are ever tested. We actually have no idea whether they are safe, or what the long term consequences of eating them are.
An argument only a Monsanto lobbyist could make.
I wake up and kiss my wife because it feels good.
...
Yeah floating from one emotional event to another is just a horrible way to live.
Somehow, the fact that you are a man and as incapable of having a logical thought as any of the brainless women that Democrats love to elect to office is somewhat disturbing.
I meant exactly what I said about living in an emotional swamp. You have yourself worked up into panic over eating anything that has been modified by the "new" genetic engineering techniques. Not only do you not want to examine the facts to determine whether your fear is justifiable-- you refuse to learn anything about the "new" techniques.
I am afraid of flying. However, statistics inform me that flying is the safest form of travel. Logic tells me that the reason airplane crashes make the news is that they are so rare--ordinary automobile crashes rarely make the news because they are so common. Since rational thought informs me, and I do not use emotion to make decisions, I fly places. I just flew yesterday, in fact. And I survived traveling at inhuman speeds while being an unnatural height above the ground just fine.
What took you so long to reply? Have a few days off from work?
Actually it isn’t random. It only appears so because of a large number of variables and a lack of understanding of the underlying principles regulating the interaction.
In 2006, I started having all sorts of weird medical symptoms that docs either brushed off, or attributed to stress. Today, after finally getting full-fledged allergy symptoms whenever I eat so much as a half a noodle, I know that I am allergic to wheat. There are many today that suffer any number of symptoms, that are due to gluten or wheat intake. Whether you believe this or not, and I was one that used to think it was a crock of bull, it is so.
It would do science a great justice to actually do an unbiased study on the effects of genetically modified wheat, because so many are having reactions to it these days. But I don’t expect science to catch up to reality for quite some time. It is unfortunate that something as great as science, is muddled by man. By man that has preconceived notions, biases, and is often blinded by his own beliefs, whether of a religious or ‘rational’ nature.
In the meantime, many of us suffer these symptoms, and science denies splicing could be in any way the cause. I have no doubt in ten years or so, science may catch up with the facts. Unfortunately, people may die before the ‘rational and reasoned’ wake up.
Those are my feelings and I’m sticking to them. Ya’ll have a blessed day.
Allergies can appear at any age, and you can become allergic to any organism or product made out of an organism. Allergies are an immune system disorder. Although we have yet to figure out exactly what triggers people to become allergic, we do know that the tendency to become allergic is genetic. That is, if one or both of your parents is allergic, you have a high chance of developing an allergy yourself.
Celiac disease--that is, gluten intolerance--is also an immune disease, but it is not an allergy. It has a genetic basis, as well. You can have a wheat allergy without having Celiac disease.
We see more of these genetic allergy/immune diseases these days, because we have the medical technology to keep most people alive even when they have severe reactions. For example, 1 out of 20 (or 5 out of 100) of all people might develop allergies. But if 4 of them die before adulthood, then only 1 out of 96 people has an allergy. So it appears that the number of allergic people has increased, even though the number of people who develop allergies remains exactly the same.
Allergies have always existed, and, unfortunately, some of us get them. I am allergic to avocado, ginger, black pepper, and water chestnuts--all products of thousands of years of genetic engineering by humans. I am also allergic to many kinds of fish--which are products of completely natural and undirected genetic engineering. There seems to be no difference in whether I am allergic to "natural" or "man-made" foods.
Lastly, science is the profession of observing and describing reality. Saying that you don't expect science to catch up to reality for quite some time is rather nonsensical. Just because the reality we describe does not match your version of nature worship does not make reality or our description of it wrong. BTW, you can easily check whether science is studying a topic that you think it should. As long as it is medical science, you can search for the subject at www.pubmed.org, where all medical research meeting certain standards is indexed.
Science only recently admitted that ‘junk’ DNA is not junk after all. But having a full understanding never stopped them from messing around with what they did not fully understand. Who knows the damage that has been done, that will not be fully understood until future revelations occur.
I can guarantee that the DNA alphabet is identical for just about any organism you can name. The letters ATG code for the amino acid methionine. The letters AAA and AAG code for lysine. The letters TAA, TAG, and TGA code for STOP. The machinery for converting the DNA code into proteins is nearly identical and absolutely interchangeable between spider, human, grass, and mushrooms. When you start looking at specific gene products (proteins), you will find everything that is in the spider is also in the human; the difference is that, in general, the human has more variants of any given protein than the spider. And so forth. In reality, nothing much happens when DNA code from one organism is stuck into another organism. A spider will function perfectly well if some of its genes are replaced with their human counterparts. It will even function perfectly well if a jellyfish gene is added so that it glows under black light.
FYI, junk DNA is still junk.
What are we being lied to about, and who is doing the lying? The Japanese decision to not buy US wheat has all of the earmarks of a protectionist decision, veiled behind hysterical concern over targeted genetic modification. The experience with "pink slime" only illustrated just how scientifically illiterate our population is. Some journalists (who have their own far-left and vegetarianism extremist agenda) showed the process of how "pink slime" is made, stressed how gross it is, squawked about all of the chemicals used in it (ammonia--a necessary source of nitrogen--as I recall). Never mind that the chemicals used are all food-grade. Never mind that meat processing is never pretty. When the agenda-driven journalists got their hands on it, they managed to make "pink slime" sound as wholesome as Soylent Green.
Scientists do not lie. But journalists love to sensationalize, and are rarely accurate.
I have a few tech rules I could apply to this issue, courtesy Microsoft.
Biological science has little similarity with tech.
If someone claims to know the truth, it is not science. They may have much to bolster the claim, but evaluating approaching the truth is a judgment that is wrong 1 time in 20 by most scientific standards and being wrong 5% of the time is not good enough for my food. If the claim is there is no difference between the foods effect on people, and the food is different in the environment than non GMO food there is a scientific problem with Epistemology.
Scientists do not claim to have "the truth." What we do is observe and describe reality as well as we can. We are often criticized for using words such as "could, might, possibly", but we speak that way because we know that our interpretations of our observations of reality may have to be revised as new information is revealed.
Now, as for the "1 in 20"... that has a very specific meaning. It means that a controlled experiment was conducted, and that the sample measurements were different from the control in a statistically significant manner. We interpret that to mean that there is a 95% chance that the difference is real, and not a statistical fluke. If I rerun the experiment two more times, and the measurements are statistically different, then I accept the results as valid--the difference is real. But if I run the experiment, and I don't achieve that 95% certainty level again, then that one statistically significant result was a fluke. Statistics like this only work when something is different. So, if I feed rats specifically targeted GMO food, and there is never a statistically significant difference in any health measure between the controls and the samples, then I cannot talk about a 95% certainty, because it does not exist. The control and sample groups are the same.
There is a lot we don’t know about GMO food, we’ll know more in the future. I would expect when we know the human genome and have clear models of what things do to it, like the difference between a particular GMO modification and it’s “natural” analogue we’ll be on our way to perfecting individual diets and modifying them to the particular person to optimize health.
It is true that there is a lot we don't know about GMO food, and that is true whether the food is genetically modified by selective breeding, by being blasted with strong doses of radiation, or by making a single planned modification. However, we know far more about targeted modification than we do about the haphazard modifications that we have used for millenia. If you can safely eat Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) when it is on the surface of corn, there is no reason to think that inserting a single well-characterized gene of Bt into corn will cause corn to be unsafe.
I do not think there will ever be diets tailored for maximum health. Human beings evolved to eat and survive on a wide variety of foods. Since we can extract needed nutrients from so many sources, it is unlikely that an "optimal" diet will ever be found. Your best bet for proper nutrition is to eat as many different foods in your diet as you can, fruit, veggies, grains, meats, etc.
Thanks for taking the time, I disagree of course, but that is the nature of discourse and the advancement of thought.
The Japanese do not want what exactly happened in Washington to effect their crops...that is hardly an over reaction. The promise was the crops would not get into the main population of wheat...GMO wheat would not escape and it did. Scientists, companies and governments made that promise. I doubt anyone really believed them, but it was a valid concern. To reduce that to a protectionist decision is “silly”, and what gets the scientific reputation into the e coli ridden toilet. They don’t trust it. They are a technologically advanced culture and don’t trust it. There should be bells going off in your head. An alarm of sorts, maybe not a klaxon horn, but an alarm. Scientifically, in the psych realms, you ignore the evidence you don’t want to see in favor of that which you believe.
I want to know when you treat my beef with ammonia to get that last bit of use out of what used to be crap food that no one could sell. I’m not in the food markets of a third world country, if the price goes down after I find out how it’s made, that is strictly economics.
Scientists lie, journalists lie, and pretty much everyone lies. Trying to find out why, how and when are the issues. Scientific lies can be the typical, I did this experiment and it clearly shows that x is the cause for y. The further the distance from tautology in the realms of x and y, the more important it is to clearly show the epistemology of the statements.
You have said GMO are for the most part safe. Is the actual statement “We have seen no effect on studies with 200,000 rats livers compositions that were exposed to varying levels of GMOs in a double blind study.” Implicit in that is that rats are similar to people, the important effects are seen by the experimenters etc.
When scientists overstate the studies, because of their bias on how the population will react is a problem. Conflated in the GMO arguments are: They are proven safe, there is not difference between splicing a gene and Mendellian meddling, you’re all too stupid to understand so we won’t just tell you...
You have said they are safe, but you have to use a definition that is short term, based on rats, and a limited number of what you believe are indicators of “safe”, like cause tumors etc.
If you cut a sound are the wrong place, it does not continue to be music. How do you know that a gene cut is not the same? What is a clear interference of the pattern that makes it work and does the splicing interfere with that pattern? We know some of what makes music special to us, but we really are a the very beginnings of genetic cut and paste. Variety in the environmental testing over millennia is not replicated in genetic cut and paste. We don’t do that but that does not mean it is unimportant or that species did not suffer from those changes.
I do not think there will ever be diets tailored for maximum health. Human beings evolved to eat and survive on a wide variety of foods. Since we can extract needed nutrients from so many sources, it is unlikely that an “optimal” diet will ever be found. Your best bet for proper nutrition is to eat as many different foods in your diet as you can, fruit, veggies, grains, meats, etc.<<
This is your money statement. You know you don’t know what is required in an “optimal” diet, so you recommend variety. You don’t know what is required in an optimal diet, so you hedge your bet by saying just eat a bunch of different stuff. As a nutritional tout, that is an interesting bet. So you would not recommend someone eat only GMO foods, even though it is “safe”?
Of course without labeling we can’t know even know that.
DK
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