GMO Tropes vs. GMO Science

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I would imagine that Monsanto does concentrate on more modern pesticides.

One thing I wonder about the "natural pesticides" is how long do they persist in the environment? That is, how quickly do they break down into harmless chemicals?

And how does that compare to the more modern pesticides?

The ends are the same; the means are just different.



This boils down to what genes they are introducing. Nobody is deliberately injecting harmful genes (eg. genes that might cause allergic reactions in a significant number of people) from one plant into another plant. The genes from the bacillus thuringiensis are carefuly picked by professional scientists who know what they are doing (or at least knows more about it than random people on the internet).

Pretty much every serious producer tests the result thoroughly to make sure it's safe.



People have also bred on spontaneous mutations (you know, genes that are not "naturally" found in that organism) for generations. There are numerous examples, such as sheep wool, myostatin deficiency. Cauliflower, cabbage and broccoli are all a result of unnatural selection from the same plant. Lastly, crossbreeding has been practiced for thousands of years to introduce new genes.



Good. Anti GMO activists are exactly like anti vaccine activists or 9/11 "truthers".



George Washington was a product of his time, but did a decent job representing the newly founded republic. The US didn't become great because of anyone on mt. Rushmore, but because of capitalists like Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Branson, Gates, and Ford.

To quote Penn Jillette: "We should be skeptical to governments [corporations probably count as well], but we shouldn't just make sh!t up".

But the ends are not the same.

Selective breeding will introduce genes from another variety or from a closely related species in to the genome of the plant. Genetic engineering techniques could do that (I understand that there is currently some work going on to do that in limited cases), but the real effort is to introduce genes from very different sources that could never be introduced into the genome via selective breeding.



This particular issue is not about safety, but about the correct use of the terminology. The incorrect use of the terminology shows a definite lack of understanding of the science involved.



But from other strains or from closely related plants.



The US became great largely because of its foundation on such great Classical Liberal developments such as Capitalism and the US Constitution. (Remember that Classical Liberalism is not the mis-named liberalism of today.)

No offense, but that's the "appeal to nature" fallacy. You can't use whether something is "natural" or not to determine if it's right or wrong.



You modify DNA to get desired traits; there's nothing more to it.




I'm familiar with the terminology used in the US. Most democrats are still social-liberalists, and most neocons are still conservatists in the traditional sense (market liberalism is not synonymous with classical liberalism).

And the problem is...? DNA is DNA. All known life uses the same basic genetic language. A gene from a bacterium is not meaningfully different from a gene from a sheep, and the exact source organism of a gene to introduce into GMO crops or livestock is completely irrelevant. If you believe otherwise, it's because you don't understand biology.


I'm a biologist. Equating selective breeding with GMO is not an abuse of terminology and indicates a clearer understanding of the science involved than people who think there's some magical division between taxa that should prevent genes being crossed between distantly related organisms.


Whether from algae or a bacterium or a potato, genes are genes. Nothing in the fundamental nature of the gene tags it as belonging to one branch or another on the tree of life.

Where did I make any claim that it was wrong?

What I said was that it is ignorant to confuse the two. It has nothing to do with whether using it is right or wrong.



The term GMO is used strictly to refer to organisms who's DNA has been modified with the use of certain techniques. If you did not use those techniques, than it is not a GMO and it is a gross error to refer to it as a GMO or to talk like they are the same. They are not.

It has nothing to do with right or wrong or with healthy or not healthy. It has to do with the proper use of the language.

The term GMO only refers to organisms who's DNA was modified with the use of modern genetic engineering techniques. If you can't understand that, then you don't understand language.

Think about it like this: If the term GMO could be used to refer to the selective breeding, then we wouldn't need the term at all. There would be no use in having yet another term to refer to the same thing. The term GMO is used to allow us to differentiate between organisms who's genomes were modified by modern genetic engineering techniques and those that weren't.



Then why don't you understand the meaning of the term GMO?



Genes can indeed cross between even unrelated species and it is known as either horizontal gene transfer or lateral gene transfer. Would you call that selective breeding? I sure wouldn't make that mistake.



I didn't claim that there is a significant difference.

Get this straight. The term GMO refers ONLY to organisms who's genomes have been modified by the modern genetic engineering techniques. There were no GMOs before those techniques were invented.

The late Dr Norman Borlaug is well known around the world for his work in wheat. In the mid 1940s in Mexico, he crossbred their wheat which was too tall and fragile with a Japanese dwarf wheat to produce a wheat that didn't have a problem with the heads breaking off before harvest. That wheat was not a GMO wheat.

If on the other hand, he had the modern techniques of genetic engineering available to him and he used those techniques to introduce the genes from the Japanese dwarf wheat into the Mexican wheat, then that wheat would be a GMO wheat.

Use the modern genetic engineering techniques and it is a GMO. Don't use them and it isn't a GMO even if the results are exactly the same.

The term GMO simply refers to whether or not certain techniques were used, nothing more and nothing less. It says nothing at all about the source of the genes. It just so happens that the genes that we typically see introduced are from completely different sources.

Oh, right. Autistic forum. Getting hung up on terminology is par for the course here.

Language (especially English language) is filled with redundancies and discrepancies. Arguing by virtue of trying to maintain perfect consistency and parsimony in language misses the point.

On purely pedantic grounds, yes: "genetic engineering" refers to a specific set of techniques. It does not, however, refer to the outcome itself - as you demonstrated with your dwarf wheat example. When GMO advocates refer to it as equivalent to selective breeding, this outcomes-based approach is what they're thinking of. They say the two are "equivalent" because the outcomes and risk levels are equivalent, and those are the relevant considerations in food production (not too many people care all that much about the process behind the food).

Though scientists never found side effects in GMOs, but most people are still choose to nature food. who knows GMOs will cause some unknown problems.
But recombinant DNA technology benefits human life indeed.

i'm not entirely happy about ingesting BT toxin. i'd also rather GMO products be labeled. why is monsanto fighting labeling? people deserve a choice, be it based on the best science or not.

As I understand it, BT only works in an alkaline stomach. Your stomach isn't at all alkaline. It can't affect you at all.

In addition to that, you aren't aware of it, but a great many plants that you do eat do produce their own pesticides as well. Are you ready to give up foods like parsley, celery, mushrooms, cabbage, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, pepper, basil, fennel, nutmeg, mace, pineapple, cocoa, honey, apples, carrots, cherries, pears, lettuce, plums, grapes, potatoes, and apricots? And that's just a few.

The list is from a journal paper: Bruce N Ames, Margie Profet, and Lois Swirsky Gold, Dietary pesticides (99.99% all natural), Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, Vol 87, pp 7777-7781, October 1990.