iamcal.com Since May 2000

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What is the problem with GM foods? Are they supposed to be unhealthy to eat? And then there's the bit about African countries refusing GM food aid? What's that all about?

think of GM as Frankenscience

it's taking something natural, from nature and fucking with it.

Like was done with dogs, or sheep, or cows, or wheat, or carrots or any of the other things that mankind has shaped "naturally" over the course of a few generations by selective breeding. Only quicker. (And glow in the dark).

Or on a different track, it's like insulin for diabetics, which used to come from pigs before "frankenscience" figured out how to splice insulin production genes into a microorganism and get it to produce safe, cheap insulin. Damn those scientists and their betterment of mankind!

Oh and the "Franken" is redundant, it's just "Science". :)

On the downside I think some people are worried that GM food will escape and somehow fuck up the ecosystem. A mutually exclusive worry being that a lot of the proposed GM crops for the third world are "naturally" second generation sterile, which prevents the poor people from "stealing" that type of crop and growing it each year. Instead they will have to buy new seed from the manufacturers.

Ah well. It's all fun and games.

(Until someone loses an eye)



(and then finds a spare one growing on the back of a mouse)

Selective breeding is a fuck sight different from genetic modifying, che. Suggesting that it is purely 'science' and of as much good/zero fallout as insulin is glib in the extreme.

There is a natural food chain in nature (hence 'nature') that we only understand in passing. Introduction of unnatural plants into that chain could have far reaching consequences that may well be irreversible and catastrophic. Once plants are established in the food chain of this kind, the repercussions may be significant, and the chances of controlling it slim. Everything evolves, and the evolution of artificially modified organisms in teh natural world is untested.

Every time humans mess with shit they don't understand, bad things come of it.

Damn those scientists and their betterment of mankind!

Your flippancy is dangerously close to abject ignorance.

(and then finds a spare one growing on the back of a mouse)

hahaha

Brock: it is "science"
To call it "frankenscience" is leading "in the extreme"
How can anyone make any kind of objective observation on something already labelled "Frankenscience". I was merely pointing out that the "franken" part was passing a judgement.

Oh please. There's nothing wrong with GM foods and you know it. I suppose you wouldn't let your kids have the MMR jabs either. Pffft. If it wasn't safe the government wouldn't allow it, like second-hand smoking.

And despite what it might seem, I have no strong opinion either way on GM, the jury is still out.

And like the dead beegee I probably was a little glib.

I think that we already cause such invironmental devastation just with commercial farming in the first place, what significant harm can GM cause? If we can make vegetables that are of superior quality nutritionally, then surely we would be helping the situation and not harming it since we would need to eat less of the quality stuff to get the same benefits?

over 75% of the world's sheep come from a single farm in suffolk.
and carrots are orange only because that colour was deemed attractive a few centuries ago-- "naturally" they come in a wide range of colours, eg purple, green, yellow, brown. (and can still be found in those colours in some EU countries eg belgium)
virtually everything you eat now (in UK, USA, Aus, EU) is GM: nearly everything is "flavour-enhanced" by whopping in huge amounts of sugar derived from corn/maize, and that's been predominantly GM for about a decade now. nearly all your wheat is also GM.

but the big risks of GM food are:
1. we don't understand what we really need to eat, in order to function well. even simple things like EPA, come in huge range of variations naturally and they are not readily substitutable for each other- for example the plant EPAs are near-useless for us since they are all short-chain and we need long-chain for proper neural growth/maintenance.
2. ALL plants are "GM" in the sense that they exchange genes, naturally. but slowly. this has only been conclusively proven in the wild in the last few years but has been pointed to by the cleverer botanists for quite some time now. the problem with us creating huge changes quickly and releasing them is that if the resultant plant is not great for us AND it then naturally spreads into the environment, we can not UNintroduce it. "cane toad syndrome". every single "controlled/isolated" GM experiment that's been checked has been found to have spread into the surrounding unGM crops... seeds and pollen and spores and so on blow much farther and much higher and much wider than the Standards say they do -- they've been found in the stratosphere, for example.
3. several GM-outcomes where known-positive substances are expressed in plants which don't "naturally" do so have been found to be negative for humans in their newly expressed form...

summary: it offers real possibilities for improving "nature". but it's a risk, and it's currently a huge and fundamentally uncontrolled and irreversible risk for the global food environment.

Did someone spell environmental with an 'i'?

tobacco, interestingly, is one of the most active plants for swapping genes with other species. that's why you see it so often used as the starting point for GM testing.

i have a vague theory that/wondering if   its propensity for mungling DNA is why it tends to cause cancer (which arises from mungled DNA) in smokers

Thanks Salty :)

virtually everything you eat now (in UK, USA, Aus, EU) is GM: nearly everything is "flavour-enhanced" by whopping in huge amounts of sugar derived from corn/maize, and that's been predominantly GM for about a decade now. nearly all your wheat is also GM.

did you just pull those stats out of your head?

If he wasnt correct, someone would have said "pulled those stats out of his ass"

Is the whole "Holland making carrots orange in a celebration of patriotism a few hundred years ago" true or just a lovely urban myth?

Oh also on the GM list is vegetarian cheese and tomato paste, both of which I have eaten for many years (as a poor substitue for meat and blood).

"over 75% of the world's sheep come from a single farm in suffolk."

That farm needs a more robust fence

Actually Sul I am iffy about MMR jabs and vaccines in general. As I don't have any kids to vaccinate I don't have to worry about that now.

sul, nope. read your breakfast's/lunch's/dinner's ingredients lists.

che, orange: holland- didn't know that one! true?
fence: bloody oath. "good fences make good sheep"

rm, mmr i have a problem with, as it's not medically necessary to bundle the 3 vaccinations (it exists for publicly declared reasons of cost (usu reported as £14/child) and MD convenience) and there are way too many instances of kids going near catatonic immediately afterwards. autism appears to be very closely related to whole-brain immune-system inflammation (in that 100% of examined autistic kids' biopsies/autopsies so far show whole-brain immune-system inflammation, and a primary but not well publicised symptom of autism is auto-immune overreaction (obvious eg: diarrhea, but also at blood/lab test level)), and overloading people's immune systems tends to cause auto-immune overreactions. this week, people are making noises about bundling another vaccine (chickenpox -- i had no idea UKians weren't immunised as children) with teh existing 3-in-1, again for cost reasons. grave concern.

/rant

how is veggie cheese GM?

I think that we already cause such invironmental devastation just with commercial farming in the first place, what significant harm can GM cause?

Yeah, fuck it. Why not. If we;ve fucked up 1% of it, we may as well fuck up all of it, eh?

Jesus. I hope you never, ever, get ina position of power for logic like that needs to be euthanised.

And, actually che, Frankenscience is an excellent word for it. It alludes to a story you may have heard of where a scientist tried to combine the good elements of several natural things in order to make one better/superior example.

Unfortunately, the scientist didn't do enough research or have enough understanding of the consequences and instead of a perfect being created a monster that he couldn't control.

At this stage of GM's conception, we haven't strayed from that story line one bit. The risks of the outcome being a monster that we cannot control are extremely high indeed.


If we can make vegetables that are of superior quality nutritionally, then surely we would be helping the situation and not harming it since we would need to eat less of the quality stuff to get the same benefits?

God. The earth is not there as our personal garden for our use, It is not ours, we are part of a natural cycle. A small part, I might add. To change something for our (perceived and guessed, as Salti says) gains without any idea of the consequences of these crops getting into the food chain (and whether any consequences are reversible) is highly irresponsible. TO think that as long as it doesn't affect us or lowers our use of the earth resources = good is fucking kindergarten logic.

And fucking kindergarten is illegal.

We mess with things we don't understand and people and animals die. Look at the great Chinese sparrow cull (wikipedia has a good article). They killed massive amounts of sparrows to save the corn crops, then found out that sparrows don't eat much corn, but eat the locusts that were on the corn. They had a massive locust infestation for three years and millions of people died of starvation as the locusts ate all the corn.

It is called a food chain for a reason. The links are ALL necessary.

You are assuming that GM is going to be a bad thing. What if it could be a good thing? We learn by messing with things and sometimes, some things DO get better. One can't stop trying things just because it MIGHT be bad. You always seem to see the pile of dung. All I was saying is that compared to the damage that is ALREADY being done, GM is a small issue. I wasn't implying that we should say "Oh fuck it, we're ruining it already so we may as well go the whole hog". You are very aggressive. Just calm down. Try to argue a point without becoming verbally abusive.

See Salties reply : that was what I was looking for - an informative, rational and civilized response - not a spitting tirade about how I should be euthanised. Please try to learn how to argue without attacking people personally.

We know GM is a bad thing


GM crops are already infecting non GM crops. Remember when you change one part of an eco system you affect all of it.

becuase GM is being released into the wild without control, indoor testing, NOBDY has any ideas of the long term effects.

Thank you. Understood. ^^ see how it's done Brock?.

Also : God. The earth is not there as our personal garden for our use, It is not ours, we are part of a natural cycle.

We live on this planet and we have to eat. I really don't see what's wrong with trying to make our food better. If indeed it IS better and doesn't cause unnecessary harm. Thanks to Salties post I now understand the risks involved. Ta.
I still feel that with the right knowledge and controls we COULD produce superior food for the future. I'm not going to bleat "Natural good, GM ba-a-ad" just because it's the idea of the day. It would be wonderful to end the food problem on this planet.

why is it making our food better?
what is wrong with it now??????

there is NO food problem on this planet.
problems realted to starvation, poverty .... are 9/10 due to politics

Food has become nutritionally deficient. Oranges with no vitamin C for example - that serve only to provide bulk in the digestive system, and energy from the fructose.

what oranges have no vitamin c syl?

is it because of all the chemicals people spray on them?
or something else humans have done to fuck with nature?

That's a moot point. What's done is done.