how about genetic manipulation? (page 3)

acadian

Hello All !

So are G.M.O.s safe ?

Follow this link and you tell me.

Monsanto's Secret Study Shows Health Hazards of New GE Corn

Acadian

stillajwexelder

Yes totally safe ; stop whining and get it eaten

Claims and Facts

The marketing of genetic engineering inspires visions of perfect health, long life, and miracle foods. The reality is that these claims are often completely unsubstantiated and sometimes simply wrong.

Claim: Genetic engineering is necessary to feed the world.

Fact: Hunger in the world is caused by poverty, by the simple inability to buy food, not by lack of supply.

Claim: Genetic engineering will help developing countries.

Fact: Biotech companies patent their seeds. To protect their investment, the farmers that use the seed sign a contract which prohibits saving, reselling, or exchanging seed. The family farms of the poorer nations depend on saved seed for survival. Biotech companies also patent other people's seeds, like basmati rice, neem, and quinoa, taking advantage of indigenous knowledge and centuries of selective breeding by small farmers without giving anything in return. The same companies, backed by the U.S. government, proposed to protect their seed patents through the terminator technology. A terminator seed will grow, but the seeds it produces are sterile. Any nation that buys such seeds will swiftly lose any vestige of agricultural self-sufficiency. Furthermore, genetically engineered seeds are designed for agribusiness farming, not for the capabilities of the small family farms of the developing nations. How are they to buy and distribute the required chemical inputs?

Claim: Genetic engineering will reduce the use of herbicides.

Fact: Genetic engineering develops crops with resistance to specific herbicides. For example, Roundup Ready(tm) crops survive spraying with RoundUp(tm). On the one hand, this allows the farmer to use more herbicide. On the other hand, this leads to herbicide-resistant weeds.

Claim: Genetic engineering will reduce the use of pesticides.

Fact: This claim is based on the sowing of crops genetically engineered to produce their own pesticides. Such crops produce the pesticide continuously in every cell. Some of these crops (the Bt potato, for example) are actually classified as pesticides by the EPA. The net outcome of sowing pesticide-producing crops is an vast increase in pesticides.

Claim: Genetic engineering is environmentally friendly.

Fact: The increased quantities of herbicides and pesticides noted above is one strike against this claim. Pollen from genetically engineered crops can be transferred to cultivated and wild relatives over a mile away. This threatens the future of organic crops. It can pass herbicide resistance genes from GE crops to weedy relatives, necessitating the development of more herbicides. Also, the huge areas of genetically identical crops will influence the evolution of local pests and wildlife, and through the food chain, the whole ecology.

Claim: Genetically engineered foods are just like natural foods.

Fact: There is no natural mechanism for getting insect DNA into potatoes or flounder DNA into tomatoes. Genetically engineered foods are engineered to be different from natural foods. Why else all the patents? This claim is empty sales talk.

Claim: Genetic engineering is simply an extension of traditional crossbreeding.

Fact: Crossbreeding cannot transfer genes across species barriers. Genetic engineering transfers genes between species that could never be crossbred. Also, crossbreeding lets nature manage the delicate activity of combining the DNA of the parents to form the DNA of the child. Genetic engineering shoots the new gene into the host organism without reference to any holistic principle at all.

Claim: Genetic engineering is safe.

Fact: Safety comes from accumulated experience. In the case of genetic engineering, there has not been the time or the public debate essential for accumulating sufficient experience to justify any broad claim to safety.

There is a vast domain of ignorance at the root of the technology:

The technique for inserting a DNA fragment is sloppy, unpredictable and imprecise.
The effect of the insertion on the biochemistry of the host organism is unknown.
The effect of the genetically engineered organism on the environment is unknown.
The effect of eating genetically engineered foods is unknown.
There is no basis for meaningful risk assessment.
There is no recovery plan in case of disaster.
It is not even clear who, if anyone, will be legally liable for negative consequences.

There is no consensus among scientists on the safety or on the risks associated with genetic engineering in agriculture. The international community is deeply divided on the issue. The claim to safety is a marketing slogan. It has no scientific basis.

The claims for genetic engineering are overblown and misleading. And the polls show that people are suspicious.

Acadian

LouBelle

tetrapod - Perhaps I used the word 'clone' wrong. I mean to clone an actual whole person. I'm not talking about sorting out a defect or something like that.

DannyBloem

Hi Accadian,

Thank you for the info about GM food. I still feel that GM is very important and that it is part of a totally different future. I never claimed that all GM foods will be safe or that there will never be any risks or even disasters. There will probably be. That still is not a reason IMHO to stop researching ths subject.

GM food is not nessesary safe. True, just the same as natural food.

Fact: Safety comes from accumulated experience. In the case of genetic engineering, there has not been the time or the public debate essential for accumulating sufficient experience to justify any broad claim to safety.

The only way to know how safe it is, is to try and experiment with it. Public debade will not help to determine the savety. Experimenting will. And that is just my view, that experimenting is very important.

Danny

acadian

Hi Danny,

As a consumer, one of the problems I have with G.M. foods is that the lable dosent have to say if its G.M. or not, so as consumers were not given a choice, and that bothers me, and i'm sure it bothers others who would rather not use those products.

like the old saying says "If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Thare ain't nothing wrong with our food, plain and simple GREED !!!

Kind Regards
Acadian

DannyBloem

As a consumer, one of the problems I have with G.M. foods is that the lable dosent have to say if its G.M. or not, so as consumers were not given a choice, and that bothers me, and i'm sure it bothers others who would rather not use those products.

This is maybe something that should be done. The consumer must have the choice. But there are more things that should be told on the label then.

like the old saying says "If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

I think with a attitude like that we would still be living in the middle ages

Thare ain't nothing wrong with our food, plain and simple GREED !!!

Of course there is a lot of greed involved, although this has not so much to do with GM. I mean GM is not the source it is used wrongly in some cases, as many other things.

Danny

acadian

One thing I've finding with this GM issue is that the companies providing these seeds are trying to create laws that make it illegal to save seeds.

I grow and gather the food i eat, i save seed for the next yr. but now companies liks Monsanto and others are trying to control that aspect of our lives. ( they use what is called a "terminator gene " to serilize any seed produced. )

Don't beleive, check out Iraq's new laws one says you can't save seeds, Why ?

Next they'll charge us for collecting rain water ( I collect rain water ) so far it's free.

Acadian

DannyBloem

The major organs have relatively simple, specialist functions, ergo; the genetic engineering of these organs is relatively simple. It is when we get on to the brain and intelligence that the story gets a little more complex.

Researchers believe they have begun to identify the genes that give us our intelligence. However, there is a huge debate about how much 'intelligence' is derived from genes and how much from environmental influences. The jury is still out on whether our cognitive abilities are purely genetic, the most likely scenario is that it is a combination of factors that give us our 'intelligence'.

However, if we can identify the 'genius gene' it may be possible to override the influence of our environment. We could use present technologies such as PDG to choose only those embryos that demonstrate the desired gene sequences or we could genetically engineer embryos to include certain chosen traits, say musicality or enhanced language skills. Another avenue might be to use stem cells to implant the required genes into an adult to enhance there mental capacity. Experimentation is quite advanced in the area of treatment for neurological disease and disorder and it is not such a huge leap to foresee the use of this technology for the enhancement of brain functions.

googlemagoogle

i am pro g.m., i really don't understand why people are afraid of it. i think it might be because of some scifi movies...

and for organic versus g.m. - manipulated plants STILL are organic. you could also slowly manipulate the plant by other means, like crossing it with other plants. genetic manimulation is much faster and offers a lot more possibilities.

the claim/fact list above is pretty biased i'd say. i could also make a list like this:

claim: medicine is necessary to cure diseases.
fact: many deseases could be avoided by sufficient hygiene.

i also never understood why people are so scared about chemistry, when chemical processes are as natural as anything.

how about genetic manipulation?

Claims and Facts

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