Posted on 11/03/2012 6:26:28 AM PDT by Renfield
Point taken about the Internet. However, given a decent education and the ability to cross-check statements, it is really possible to find truth via the Internet. You can even research the researchers, now. I’m not advocating taking the first hit on a simple search and considering it factual or reputable. If that was the implication, I apologize. It can and does take time, especially w/o a specialty education in a given field.
I worked at a major business library and a university library back when they were switching from the Dewey Decimal System to Library of Congress Classification system. It was a great foundation lesson in keyword search before there was an Internet. In the beginning of the public access Internet, it helped a lot before the advanced search algorithms were available to everyone. It still helps to drill down into a subject or a person.
I do not have the exact dates at hand, but IIRC, GMO has been around and in the food supply for meat animals and for humans for at least a couple of decades already (someone will provide the exact amount of time, I am certain). I’m not sure it is still an *experiment*, more like a fait d’accompli. As for coffee, humans have been drinking it for so long that I think it can be included in “generally regarded as safe”. Same for tea and lots of other plants that contain caffeine. OTOH, some metabolisms and conditions may react differently to various alkaloids.
Most of us have been ingesting processed foods all our lives. I recall a study a few years ago that found that the preservatives in food might be responsible for people today seeming younger at the same age their grandparents were considered old, as well as perhaps adding years to our lives. Might be true, might not, but bears some further investigation, IMO.
I think people are leery of change and that may be a hard-wired survival attribute. One of the downsides of all this instant communication is that we can scare ourselves and each other much more quickly than could happen previously.
But, for me, the Internet provides access to medical and scientific studies that at least allow me to know more than I ever could before. It has only been the past 5-6 years or so that I began to discern an ideological edge to the various scientific papers available from credentialed researchers. I do understand the potential for swallowing propaganda. That is why I really try to _learn_ what I am studying and to integrate it with what I already know, can observe or cross-check.
Prior to the Internet, one had to go to a major university library and work through the ready reference librarian. I actually did that, more than once in the past. The hardest part was getting into the library unless you were a student/staff. There was a time, 40 years ago, when you could phone a reference librarian at a major urban public library and get a timely response. I have many reference books and encyclopedia that are by now out of date and the Internet allows me to access more recent findings.It is a lot cheaper, too, of course.
My first reaction to the Internet was that I now had some access to previously out of reach stores of knowledge. It was exhilarating.
I guess I was a nerd before there was a term for it.
Really? Please provide a link to this study.
And, today, we live longer, healthier lives than at any other time in human history.
You are smart enough not to confuse correlation with causality.
Oh, good grief. People have been eating genetically modified food for centuries, and we’re still looking for the deleterious effects of our actions since we keep living longer and healthier lives. If genetically modified foods were bad for us, we would have seen the effects a long time ago. It’s pretty hard to claim that GM food is hurting us, or killing us, as we continually eat more of it and live longer and healthier lives. But you go ahead and try.
I want to continue to have choices. I want GMO food to be identified as such. I don't want the government to be in bed with Monsanto and ADM.
You can’t really be so foolish as to believe that the Egyptians didn’t genetically modify their food stock plants can you?
That seed which sprouted after all those years obviously came from a line of plants that had been altered thousands, even tens of thousands, of times. To think you somehow have a ‘original’ wheat seed stock is to display flaming ignorance. The original seed stock probably had a ‘shelf’ life of little more than a year.
Eat what you want, in fact I encourage those who think ‘organic’ is the best food to eat lots of it. I have relatives raising same and getting wealthy from such foolishness.
I myself stay with the inorganic foods.
How interesting about absorption of genes.
Once thru the stomach wall, how are they then carried into the chromosomes and then expressed? Are humans capable of expressing a plant gene? Where would it fit in the chromosome?
We are influenced by drugs or hormones because we have receptors for those molecules, AFAIK. How do the genes get into the chromosomes? I was under the impression that process required a carrier virus. Why would genes from a GMO food enter a chromosome as opposed to one from a *naturally occurring* (albeit manipulated over time) gene present in a grain?
We take various medications by various routes depending on which is most effective or faster &/or where the product is required inside the body in order to work effectively. THAT was my question: my understanding is that genes are ineffective unless inserted into a chromosomes. I do not see the mechanism that would accomplish that through ingestion, especially given a processed product subjected to heat (and some forms of grains are subjected to chemicals, as well) and then digested via stomach acid.
I can understand an allergic reaction to a foreign protein. Genes code for protein formation. I would suspect a reaction to a grain to be allergenic, rather than caused by the inherent genes inside the grain.
You are obviously well trained in the sciences.
I sincerely thank you for fighting ignorance by bringing truth to the discussion.
Since at least the 1970’s farmers have tried to have the different foodstuffs labeled as to country of origin (COO). All without success, not even close. More than 40 years and we are not one step closer today than back then.
Why should American farmers have to compete with foods produced in questionable conditions, processed in processing plants considered substandard by any reasonable standard, transported by unsanitary trucks, and the consumer not be made aware?
I’m not sure that something which poses a much smaller ‘threat’, if any, to our health will have a different outcome.
This article expresses itself as a concern over a “xeno”-gene in regards to it being a gene-mimic for an enzyme needed for human life.
Without more scientific information, which is what the article is asking for, we really don't know what this ‘suppression” gene is? Or if it crosses the blood-barrier can it pose as a toxic gene to humans and does or will the body recognize it?
Selecting the best seeds to plant the next year is a long way from altering DNA to produce insecticide and make the plant resistant to Roundup.
You saw in my post the “unintended consequences” of inserting a gene to generate more Vit A. Most docs don’t recognize the symptoms of Vit A overdose.
I would really like to see, at a minimum, multi-generation studies with rodents before we introduce GMO foods on a vast scale.
Not many years ago I thought the anti-GMO crowd to be a bunch of silly luddites.
Not foolish. I say, “Err on the side of caution”.
I wish people could disagree on FR without name calling or flinging insults.
We differ. I don’t know your credentials, but I have scientific training as well. I read more medical journals than any of the physicians who treat me.
Thank you!
I will be doing some research on this as soon as my current workload subsides a bit. We also have a new puppy, which means I don’t dare get involved in web things unless someone else is on puppy patrol.
This is fascinating and I will now say that perhaps transgenic experimentation ought to be slowed down a lot until we know more.
Can you suggest some resources for this sort of information?
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