Reply #45: Is the second link I provided in post #38 not working for you? [View All]

[snowFLAKE]

If not, let me know and I can email the information separately.

Basically, plants produce a huge number of "built-in" pesticides themselves - particularly in "organic"-grown foods where no artificial pesticides are provided. These "natural" pesticides are every bit as dangerous to human health as "artificial" pesticides - for example, nicotine is hardly a benign compound. Furthermore, these pesticides have all the cancer-causing properties of some of the nastier organic chemicals used as pesticides.

Therefore, a "rationale" reason for implanting a gene to manufacture pesticide in a crop is to avoid the use of both the "spray-on" artificial pesticides that widely contaminate the environment as well as keeping the plants from producing their own noxious pesticides. Further, the pesticides introduced into crops are indeed "OK" for humans to consume - the Bt gene, for example, produces a protein that binds to certain forms of complex carbohydrates found on the surfaces of the cells that line the guts of certain insects. Upon binding, the toxin can then kill the insect, otherwise it is harmless. Humans do not have the particular carbohydrate that serves as a binding epitope for the Bt protein, therefore it is simply digested in the human gut like all of the other myriad types of proteins that you eat every day. What is the long-term effects of ingesting this pesticide? Well, if you're an Atkins diet aficionado, then I suppose that the slightly increased protein intake is a good thing.