General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Sorry, Monsanto: The Science Is on Our Side, Not Yours [View all]jeff47
(26,549 posts)Let's say you run a study with 300 rats. All 300 live happily and show no signs of harm. Is the product safe? You don't know.
You've got evidence that it wasn't harmful, but only to rats. And only those 300 rats. And only in the dose you gave those rats. You can't definitively say that the product is safe. All you know is the product is not extremely lethal. To rats.
We declare something "safe" when we've run a lot of studies like that 300 rat study. It doesn't mean it's actually safe. It means it's not so harmful that we happened to see harm in a study.
As a result, you're never going to satisfy everyone that every GMO is safe. On the other hand, if they were highly toxic, it would be very easy to show that. And so far, no one has.
Also, re-read your first sentence. It's a request for funding. Are they going to get funding if they say "Well, everything looks OK, but we want to quintuple check"?