Posted on 05/30/2006 11:33:14 AM PDT by S0122017
Controversy over claims in favour of GM corn 09:25 29 May 2006
A LEADING researcher into scientific ethics is calling for the withdrawal of a paper published in the British Food Journal two years ago purporting to show that consumers preferred genetically modified to non-GM sweetcorn. The study, carried out at a farm store in Canada, claimed that sales of the GM crop were 50 per cent higher. The journal later awarded the study a prize as its "most outstanding paper" of 2004.
Now the campaign group GMWatch has published a photograph that it says shows a large sign suspended above the non-GM corn during the study that asked: "Would you eat wormy sweetcorn?" The GM corn, it claims, was labelled as "quality sweetcorn". The paper (vol 105, p 700) claims that the corn was marked simply as either genetically engineered or regular.
If this is the case, "it is grounds for the journal to retract the article," says Richard Jennings, who studies research conduct at the University of Cambridge. Journal editor Chris Griffith of the University of Wales Institute in Cardiff has refused to withdraw the paper, but says he is willing to publish a letter condemning it followed by a response from the lead author, Doug Powell of Kansas State University.
How can genetically engineered food not be safe. It may not have the same nutrients or taste the same, but not safe??? I don't get it.
It depends on what genes you're splicing in and the possible unintended consequences thereof. As far as I know, they've been pretty modest in what they've done so far, but the capability of snipping things together this way leads to the potential to do something dangerous.
For example, I forget what crop it was, but some years ago they put a bit of Brazil nut genetics into another food crop for...I dunno. Drought resistance or something. Unfortunately, some people (like me) are intensely allergic to Brazil nuts and had a reaction to it.
Most of the anti-GM people are nutcakes. But inside their nutcakery is a genuine germ of risk.
Others are doing research into using GM crops as a way to introduce vaccinations. A positive benefit, but a technology which, if turned to the dark side ....
We have been genetically modifying food since we started cultivation.
Amen. With world hunger a continuous problem, the eco-freaks won't stand for such methods. People starve because of the liberals' mindset of "no".............
It helps baseball players hit more homeruns.
That is disingenuous. The difference between altering the nature of a plant by cross-breeding it with a cousin that has a desirable property and being able to snip out bits of genetic code and drop them into an entirely unrelated organism is...so vast as to make the comparison meaningless. They've managed to put a bit of tomato gene into a mouse (or was it the other way around?).
What do you think the chances are for cross-breeding a mouse and a tomato the old-fashioned way?
Franken-food.
Bwwwaaaa hahahahahahahahah.....
If it tastes good, and doesn't give me gas and/or the S##ts, I'll eat it.
Look at "killer bees" -- which were a relatively modest cross-breeding of Brazilian honeybees with a more aggressive, healthier African variety. Plenty of unintended consequences, once the new variety escaped into the wild.
With GM stuff, you're directly playing around with the genome, which is not fully understood, especially if the GM version begins to interbreed with other plants. The potential for unintended consequences is greater, and the effects might spread very quickly. I saw a story a year or two back, describing a scientific study of how pollen from a small, "controlled" plot of GM plants was found over a surprisingly large area. (Couldn't find the story.)
That isn't to say it will cause problems, but it could -- and the "killer bee" example shows how easy it could be for bad things to get out of the lab.
Is the mouse male or female?
Prion -- Well said. Once in a very rare while the liberals actually do have a legitimate point about something. GM food is one such case.
LilFreeper -- WAPF ping?
So, exactly how did the corn misbehave? :)
It may create something that turns out poisonous, or simply screw up the ecosystem the same way foreign species might do.
The biggest problem is probably that not all of the species that are altered are sterile So if crops are genetically altered in order to produce drugs, the crops might reproduce with nearby fields and you get cornflakes in your bowl which contains those drugs. And drugs can be very dangerous.
I relish the thought of ketsup on my frankenfurter.
"How can genetically engineered food not be safe."
Pharming for Farmaceuticals
The conspiracy-minded anti-GM nutcakes (who overlap the anti-globalist and assorted other nutcakes) like to point to those seed crops which have been engineered to require a certain patented fertilizer to survive. If those escaped and conferred that trait on plants in the wild, worst case would be more species of plant that simply could not grow without products from Monsanto.
I believe less in conspiracy and more in the ability of human beings to screw things up. To put it another way, I'm not worried about corporations, I'm worried that we just don't know what we're doing.
One side isn't cautious enough, and the other side is bristling with paranoia. I hate to come down in the middle of any issue, but we do need to be a little less flip about it, I think.
There are some very real dangers. If it's possible for companies to profit from their own "accidents", the probability of such accidents approaches 1.
The only thing meaningless is placing tomato genes in mice or vice versa. That's just stupid. However, altering the nature of a plant or animal through selection and cross breeding is no different than doing it chemically because the net result is the same.
Genetically modified plants and animals have been around for a hundred years. The only difference in sprinkling pollen grains from one variety of plant over another, thereby giving a plant that does not have those genes a chance to pick them up, or selecting animals for specific traits and breeding them accordingly, with snipping out bits of genetic codes is that you can do more in much less time.
Much of the resistance to GM foods is fomented by fear of evil people doing evil things. It's easy to scare people by supposing something that hasn't happened while ignoring all the benefits. The benefits are many.
The Green Revolution would never have happened without genetically engineering food to be resistant to disease. Millions would have starved in Asia, Africa and South America without Norman Borlaugh genetically modifying food. Back then it could take a lifetime to create these genetic modifications through cross breeding and selection.
By doing this chemically, scientists have been able to make life better for millions. They've even been able to harness a virus now to carry the desired genetic material into the cells for treating disease. Until recent history, diabetics had to rely on insulin made from pigs, not humans. This product contained an extra amino acid and was responsible for all sorts of negative side effects. Scientists eventually developed human insulin by taking the genes that produce insulin and introducing their genetic make up into yeast. The result was a human insulin with no side effects that was affordable.
People will wring their hands over the possibility that someone may attempt to do something immoral with this technology or that some unintended consequences might occur that end up hurting humans. The snipping of bits of genetic code and dropping it into another organism has been going on since the 60's and I cannot think of one instance where something evil has been even tried much less accomplished. I'd say we have a pretty good idea of what we're doing.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.