Genetically Modified Food is Wicked and Dangerous In All Respects

[chlamor]

Hope all who enter into this thread will take the time to research this. The first question you might consider is how much energy goes into this process? The next question could be who is involved in this? The next question might be how much pollution has occurred from the Green Revolution which GMO's is merely an extension? Another question might be what is the viral promoter used to 'splice genes'?

So here we go I will post for the next few hours and hope to put this to rest. The essence of GMO's is toxic and life denying.

GM greatly increases the scope and speed of horizontal gene transfer Horizontal gene transfer happens when foreign genetic material jumps into genomes, creating new combinations (recombination) of genes, or new genomes. Horizontal gene transfer and recombination go hand in hand. In nature, that's how, once in a while, new viruses and bacteria that cause disease epidemics are generated, and how antibiotic and drug resistance spread to the disease agents, making infections much more difficult to treat.

Genetic modification is essentially horizontal gene transfer and recombination, speeded up enormously, and totally unlimited in the source of genetic material recombined to make the GMDNA that's inserted into the genomes plants, animals and livestock to create genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

By enhancing both the rate and scope of horizontal gene transfer and recombination, GM has also increased the chance of generating new disease-causing viruses and bacteria. (It is like increasing the odds of getting the right combination of numbers to win a lottery by betting on many different combinations at the same time.) That's not all. Studies on the GM process have shown that the foreign gene inserts invariably damages the genome, scrambling and rearranging DNA sequences, resulting in inappropriate gene expression that can trigger cancer.

The problem with the GM inserts is that they could transfer again into other genomes with all the attendant risks mentioned. There are reasons to believe GM inserts are more likely to undergo horizontal transfer and recombination than natural DNA, chief among which is that the GM inserts (and the GM varieties resulting from them) are structurally unstable, and often contain recombination hotspots (such as the borders of the inserts).

http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/dangerous062204.cfm

[Quakerfriend]

1. Thx for posting this!

This topic gets far too little attention!!!!

I'm an X Biochemist/Nutritionist for the NIH, and in my mind GMOs are one of the single greatest examples of man's inhumanity to man.

In letting the corporations go unchecked on this, George HW Bush, willfully allowed terrorism on our own soil, and single handedly gave the Monsanto's of the world control over our flora/fauna!

[bridgit]

2. in your opinion, quakerfriend, are we by these deeds...

on a track trending toward the reorganization of our cellular make-ups. because my sense is that when we alter known, organic food stuff we may well in time dump out what has been biologic stability for eons now. what may follow? loss of protein uptake? inability to process any & all but gmo'z?

don't much care for gmo'z

:silly:

[chlamor]

3. Frankenfoods Are Not "Substantially Equivalent" to Normal Foods

There seems to be a convenient fiction propagated by corporations, government bureaucrats and academics who depend on grant money from corporations and government, that genes from bacteria are used in producing food crops or that genes from humans are used to produced plant biopharmaceuticals, when, in fact, the genes used are synthetic approximations to the real things. Even the courts seem to have accepted this convenient fiction as fact.

The next generation of GM crops is evolving towards a minimal assembly of active protein domains (domains are active area of proteins that serve as signals for activates such as toxicity or enzyme function or environment sensors for regulation) that are frequently patched together from a number of different proteins. Safety testing is based, once again, on unreal surrogates and the products are not labeled in the marketplace so that subtle changes caused by a few amino acid changes or failure to heed secondary protein modifications such as glycosylation will be difficult to trace as people are adversely affected by consuming the synthetic products in GM crops.

http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/equivelant090304.cfm

[Name removed]

68. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[asthmaticeog]

74. I am none of those things,

and I vigorously object to being a guinea pig for agribusiness food modifaction experiments whose long-term effects are unknown and unknowable. Macrobiotic food zealots can certainly be irritating at times, but just because they're annoying and sometimes downright kooky crusaders doesn't mean that their adversaries, like Monsanto, have your best interests and mine in mind. I'll state flatly that they absolutely do not.

[Silverhair]

76. I wish they would gene splice for a truly blue rose.

I think that would be nice to have a rose the blue of a Wyoming sky.

[chlamor]

17. Agribusiness is a Product of Warfare

Agribusiness, biotechnology and war: Wartime profiteering and the disturbing expansion of chemical agriculture

by Brian Tokar

(Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2002 -- CropChoice guest commentary) -- Most of the chemical "tools" taken for granted by modern agribusiness are products of warfare. Is this merely an indirect consequence of the tragic history of the 20th century, or does it suggest that the currently dismal state of our soils, fresh water supplies and rural economies is an outgrowth of agribusiness' emergence from wartime in some important ways? Virtually all of the leading companies that brought us chemical fertilizers and pesticides made their greatest fortunes during wartime. How can this help us understand the ever-deteriorating quality of mass-produced food? And what does it tell us about the new technologies of genetic manipulation that every one of these companies posits as the centerpiece of the current generation of crop "improvement" technologies?

Since the earliest origins of modern industrial agriculture, agribusiness has been at war against all life on earth, including ourselves.

<snip>

During World War I, two German scientists named Haber and Bosch discovered an efficient means for the large-scale chemical synthesis of ammonia and its various nitrate derivatives. The BASF company -- now the world's fourth largest manufacturer of agricultural chemicals -- commercialized this process in 1913, and their products played a central role in the orgy of mass destruction that soon followed. Huge excesses of nitrogenous compounds that accumulated during World War I provided the basis for the beginnings of the mass production of synthetic nitrate fertilizers. DuPont -- now the sole owner of the world's largest seed company, Pioneer HiBred -- was the largest manufacturer of gunpowder in the United States during the early 19th century and the first World War. Monsanto increased its profits 100 fold during the World War, from $80,000 to well over $9 million per year, supplying the chemical precursors for high explosives such as TNT.

<snip>

Of all of Monsanto, DuPont and Dow's agricultural products, genetically engineered food crops might appear to be the least tainted with immediate wartime origins. But this technology emerged from a period when the future of chemical agriculture appeared very much in doubt. With the rapid expansion of the agrochemical industry during the post-World War II era, these companies and their European counterparts had established a profound degree of control over agricultural practices. But as public pressure and the weight of scientific evidence curtailed the use of DDT and many other chlorinated pesticides in the 1970s, executives and corporate scientists saw the potential for limitless advances -- and ever-expanding marketing potential -- in the incorporation of technological advances into the genetics of seeds. During the 1990s, Monsanto alone spent nearly $8 billion acquiring leading commercial seed suppliers in the United States and internationally; DuPont and others quickly followed suit, leading to today's widespread proliferation of genetically engineered food crops.

http://www.cropchoice.com/leadstry925f.html?recid=997

[Mnemosyne]

4. I have just recently begun touching on this subject

(usually focused on mercury) and thus am somewhat ignorant.

Can you or someone here answer a question and help me understand if this is off-track?

I remember reading very long ago about , I think< some type of genetically engineered crops that did not produce seeds. The nearby farmers were worried that their crops were being contaminated and were blown off by the government.

Is this possible? Is this related to GM?

If they do produce such crops wouldn't the cross pollination spread from field to field over the air currents creating major famine?

As I stated, I am ignorant and wish to learn.

Thank you chlamor, great post.

[chlamor]

6. GE and Hybrid Seeds Cannot Be saved-Cross pollination

From year to year and so one is forced to go to the company to buy seed each year. Open pollinated heirloom seeds which are adapted to each region is the way to ensure food sovereignty. Monsanto and the criminals at the FDA do not want people to control their own food source. I could go on endlessly about what these bastards have done throughout the world. Monsanto used Pinkerton agents. Monsanto was spawned as an industrial unit in WW 1 getting off the ground with precursors for explosives. Monsanto concocted agents orange, white and blue which still contaminate the fields in Viet Nam. Monsanto is fumigating Colombia as we speak-War on Drugs BS. Here is more:



Genetic engineering (GE) is a new technology that involves the manipulation of genes. Unlike traditional hybridization techniques that have been used for centuries, genetic engineering allows researchers to break down the species boundaries set up by millions of years of evolution. Never before was it possible to transfer genes from animals to plants or from bacteria to humans. By combining the genes of unrelated species, permanently altering their genetic codes, novel organisms are created that will pass the genetic changes onto their offspring through heredity. There are many unanswered questions about the effects that genetic engineering could have on the health and ecology of our world once released into the environment.

CCOF Has a History of Working to Protect Farmers from GE Contamination.

For years CCOF has opposed the commercialization of GE crops because of the threat they pose to organic and non-organic growers. CCOF has worked hard to ensure that the regulations adhered to by growers throughout California and the rest of the country prohibit the use of genetically engineered products in organic production. The USDA’s National Organic Program Final Rule classifies genetically modified products as an
“excluded method” in organic production.1 CCOF played an instrumental role in ensuring that GMOs were excluded from the Final Rule when it was crafted and written into law.

<snip>

Genetic pollution is already affecting conventional and organic growers.

o USDA has admitted that genetically engineered seeds may have moved outside of field test sites due to animal dispersal. 9 No published studies have examined the extent of the ecological consequences of this impact on natural populations.10 Yet the potential for
economic harm for farmers of genetic pollution are already real and severe.11

o In September 2000, taco shells sold in supermarkets were contaminated with a variety of GE corn (StarLink) engineered with tolerance to glufosinate and to express the pest toxin Bt.12 The GE corn was approved for use in animal feed only, due to EPA concerns about possible human allergic reactions to the problem. Although it was grown on less than 0.5 % of all U.S. corn acres, more than 300 food products were recalled as a result of the contamination. Experts in Iowa estimated that approximately half the state’s corn (roughly 1 billion bushels) could be contaminated. 13

o In September 2002, USDA discovered a Prodigene plot of pharmaceutical corn growing near fields of conventional corn. Fearing that gene flow from the “pharm” corn (engineered with an experimental pig vaccine) had contaminated the food corn, the agency ordered 155 acres destroyed. Government regulators then checked its other fields and discovered that volunteer “pharm” corn from a Nebraska field trial had contaminated soybeans there, resulting in the quarantine and destruction of $3 million worth of beans.14

o In Hawaii, independent laboratory testing results issued in September 2004 found genetically modified organisms in papayas grown on conventional and organic farms. Contamination was also found in the stock of non-genetically engineered seeds being sold
commercially by the University of Hawaii.15

http://www.organicconsumers.org/biod/ccof101404.cfm

[Mnemosyne]

13. It sounds as if we have good reason to fear for

the future chlamor. Am I right? The contamination you have described, followed by the destruction near field sites leads me to believe that air currents definitely would carry the pollen more than just the animals. There is no way to stop what they have started, is there? Will this cause plants to stop producing seeds thus ending their own reproduction? Am I getting this right? Is it that bad or will it become that severe?

It's like with mercury, it is so extensive that they are really not doing much because of the insidiousness with which it has surrounded the planet, it quite possibly is too late as far as I am able to understand after hundreds of hours of reading and asking questions of scientists. I wonder what the effect these nightmare GM foods combined with human toxicity will have? I have a 6 1/2 month old nephew in Mayo now with "Global" defects. It's been 20 years since his mom was directly exposed to mercuric chloride, 34yrs since fetal exposure. There are repercussions for these things years later, too often to innocents.

Could this GM food create genetic damage in future generations as the mercury did?

Earth is in big trouble, which means WE are in bigger trouble. I try to pass on this information, but am accused of being a fanatic.

I am not a fanatic. I am passionate, because I give a damn. Sounds as if you are also. Thank you.

[megatherium]

5. I'm not sure how real these risks are, as opposed to theoretical.

I think the concern with GM masks more serious problems with farming: One is monocropping, when large regions are planted with a single genotype. This can amplify the damage due to unexpected diseases or pests. Another related problem is the loss of genetic diversity of our food crops; diversity protects against disease or pests. (The industry keeps libraries of varieties or strains in freezers, for this reason.) A third problem is overreliance on pesticides and fertilizers (which GM crops can mitigate somewhat).

Other problems that I am concerned about are purely human: the social costs of farming (low wages, for example).

Perhaps the worst problems in farming involve concentrated animal feeding operations (factory farms). These are cruel to animals, produce enormous amounts of toxic waste that destroy streams and destroy the quality of life for persons living in the vicinity, and lead to disease. (For example, some antibiotics have lost their effectiveness because these are used in factory farms to mask unsanitary conditions.) Animals are fed animal biproducts, which have led to transmissible spongiform encephalopathies in the human population (there's reason to believe a significant proportion, perhaps several percent, of the epidemic of Alzheimer's in humans is actually TSEs from animals).

I'm much more concerned about these problems than I am about GM foods. I often buy organic products, which are advertised as non-GM, but I do so because they tend to use high-quality ingredients; mainstream products usually have MSG or corn sweeteners in them.

[dpibel]

28. Small point

You say, "A third problem is overreliance on pesticides and fertilizers (which GM crops can mitigate somewhat)."

One of the most common GMOs is "Roundup ready" corn and soybeans. Those crops don't mitigate the use of pesticides, they enhance it. The plants are resistant to Roundup, which allows the grower to really pour it on, eliminating all competitor plants. They do, however, allows the producer of Roundup to sell more product which is, after all, the most important thing.

There are some GM plants that express the natural insecticide produced by Bt Thuringiensis. Those may mitigate pesticide use somewhat. The downside is: When used as a natural insecticide, a Bt culture is sprayed on the plants. The bugs eat the sprayed leaves and die. The Bt, and its insecticide are dissipated over time or get washed off the plant before anyone eats it. The Bt GM plants, however, express the insectide at the cellular level, so it's inside the plant. You get to eat it.

As for mitigating fertilizer usage, if there's some GM plant out there that uses less fertilizer, I'd be interested to know about it.

For those who claim that GM plants can feed the world, there are studies out (which I'm too lazy to google up right this instant) showing that crop yields are lower from GM seeds.

[megatherium]

31. Yes you're right. (I was thinking of the BT corn.)

I was also thinking some GM crops are designed to grow in harsher conditions (e.g. soils of higher salinity), or to have nitrogen-fixing bacteria in them. But I admit I don't know of specific examples.

I'm certainly not arguing that GM crops are good.

I remember, by the way, 20 years ago in Eugene, Oregon, they had to do extensive spraying of local forests against gypsy moths. Every morning at sun-up the helicopters would spray BT. It was like Apocalypse Now. I kept expecting to hear Ride of the Valkeryies.

[Desertrose]

7. Kick...great post.

Thanks everyone...am kicking this back up. I hope more folks weigh in here.
:hi:

[chlamor]

8. High Chemical Input Agriculture Kills Land and People

All this is happening at a time when high-chemical input based technology
has already mined the soils and ultimately led to the lands gasping for
breath, with the water-guzzling crops (hybrids and Bt cotton) sucking the
groundwater aquifer dry, and with the failure of the markets to rescue the
farmers from a collapse of the farming systems. The tragedy is that the
human cost is entirely being borne by the farmers.

For all these years, the dryland regions of the country, which comprise
nearly 75 per cent of the total cultivable area, have increasingly come
under the hybrid crop varieties. While the crop yields from the hybrid
varieties was surely high, the flip side of these varieties - these were
water-guzzlers - was very conveniently ignored. For the sake of comparison,
let us take the example of rice. In Punjab and Haryana, farmers cultivate
high-yielding varieties of rice. These varieties require about 3000 litres
of water to produce a kilo of grain. Instead of bringing in varieties that
require less water for the water deficit areas of the drylands, hybrid rice
varieties with water requirement exceeding 5000 litres per kilo of grain
were promoted.

Not only rice hybrids, all kind of hybrid varieties < whether it is of
sorghum, maize, cotton, bajra, and vegetables are promoted in the dryland
regions. In addition, agricultural scientists have misled the farmers by
saying that the dryland regions were hungry for chemical fertilisers. The
harmful combination of chemical inputs with water guzzling crops have played
havoc with the drylands turning the lands not only further unproductive but
barren. The water table plummeted, the impact of deficient rainfall became
more pronounced forcing farmers to abandon agriculture and migrate. As if
this was not enough, Bt cotton requiring more water than hybrid cotton, was
knowingly promoted so as to allow the seed industry to make profits. What
happens to the farmers as a result was nobody's concern. And never was.

Fertilisers and pesticides were aggressively promoted, with huge subsidies
being doled out to keep the fertiliser companies afloat, without realising
the resulting devastation these chemical inputs have wrought on the
sustainability of agriculture. At no stage, did the scientists call for a
mid-term correction to rectify the imbalance created through excessive
application of the chemicals.

http://www.organicconsumers.org/corp/suicide080204.cfm

[Snap]

9. Terra Madre

Low input, grazed animals, locally grown.....there's a list.
These are elements of sustainability, when one works toward sustainability one is working toward better possibilities for all living things.

The USDA FDA Monsanto ADM are not working in your best interest, they are only interested in making the machine bigger and faster and more powerful. These guys want to own the food supply, and they are well underway.

[chlamor]

10. 12 Reasons for Africa to Reject GM crops

1. GM Crops will contaminate non-GM crops; co-existence is not possible

GM crops are plants and, as such, they cannot be easily controlled. Pollen can travel long distances by way of wind and insects. Human error and curiosity or simply regular farming practices also help seed to spread. GM crops can therefore never co-exist with non-GM crops of the same species without the risk of contaminating them, especially in Africa where tight controls over seeds and farming is unrealistic. This contamination would have serious implications for small-scale farmers. For instance, it would endanger the indigenous seeds that these farmers have developed over centuries and that they trust and know. Farmers with contaminated fields could also end up being forced to pay royalties to the companies that own the patents on the GM crops that contaminated their fields.

2. GM crops will foster dependence on a corporate seed supply.

Most GM seed manufacturing companies prohibit farmers from saving their on-farm produced seeds for the next season and from sharing them with their neighbours, relatives and friends. This is imposed through elaborate contracts, agreements, and conditions, which are imposed by the multinational GM seed companies. More than 80% of the small-scale farmers in Africa today save their on-farm produced seeds for the next season. Farmers sometimes do this because they do not have enough money to buy new seeds and sometimes because they value their own seed. Also, seed sharing (with neighbours, relatives and friends) is a cultural norm in many African communities. The introduction of GM seeds will jeopardise these traditional and vital practices.

<snip>

4. GM crops will increase the use of chemicals

More than 70 % of all the GM crops currently grown in the world are genetically modified to resist certain herbicides. Farmers that grow these GM crops must use the herbicides sold by the very companies selling the GM seeds. Not surprisingly, studies show that these crops are increasing the use of herbicides, especially as certain weeds develop resistance to the herbicide. Once again, the GM seeds promises huge profits for multinational corporations, but only increasing costs for small-scale farmers in Africa.

<snip>

6. GM crops favour industrial agriculture systems

They are designed for agricultural systems characterised by

· Large farms: In Africa, 80% of the population are small-scale farmers with 0.5­3 acres of land. Appropriate agricultural technologies should help small-scale farmers to diversify and intensify their on-farm enterprises.

· Monocropping: Due to the small size of farms and challenging environmental conditions, monocropping is not favourable to African agriculture.

· Subsidies: While the farmers in the west are highly subsidised,
African farmers do not get any subsidies and cannot even recoup the cost of their crops production.

· Mechanisation: While farming in the developed countries is highly mechanised, most African farmers depend on human and animal power.

· Reliance on external inputs: African farmers cannot afford the high cost of inputs that accompany the growing of transgenic crops. This is one of the main reasons for the failure of the green revolution in Africa.

7. GM crops threaten organic and sustainable farming.

Most of the farmers in Africa practice organic agriculture (by default or by choice). Genetic engineering poses a great threat to such farmers in several ways, including the following:

· Many farmers in Africa rely on Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), a microbe found in the soil that farmers can use as a natural insecticide. The toxin-producing genes of Bt have also been genetically modified into certain crops so that these GM crops constantly express the Bt toxin. The widespread growing of GM Bt crops will encourage the development of resistance to Bt among important crop pests, thus rendering this natural insecticide useless.

· Organic farmers practice mixed cropping and crop rotation. These practices will be threatened by herbicide-tolerant GM crops, which use broad-based herbicides that kill all plants, not just the weeds that farmers may not want.

· Natural fertility is a key factor in organic/sustainable agriculture. The herbicides encouraged by GM crops kill fungi and bacteria essential to soil fertility management.

http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/africa-12.cfm

[chlamor]

11. Got Pus in your Milk?

There is considerable evidence that rBGH appears in the milk of rBGH- treated cows.<7> However, FDA has not developed, and has not required Monsanto to develop, a measuring technique that can distinguish between Monsanto's rBGH product and the cow's natural hormone. This appears to be a violation of law by FDA. Section 512 of the 1968 Animal Drug Amendments to the 1938 Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act requires manufacturers submitting new animal drug applications to provide "a description of practical methods" for analysis and monitoring of drug residues in food.<8> The American Medical Association pointed out in 1991 that it is possible to develop a measuring technique to distinguish between the natural product BGH and the genetically- engineered product rBGH.<9> For reasons that are known only to FDA, the agency has not developed such a technique. Because FDA has not developed the necessary analytic technique, the agency can continue to say that rBGH is indistinguishable from BGH, implying falsely that the two hormones are identical.

<snip>

The Monsanto rBGH product, sold under the trade name Posilac, comes with an insert sheet containing information about the drug. The Posilac insert sheet says, in part, "Cows injected with Posilac are at an increased risk for clinical mastitis (visibly abnormal milk). The number of cows affected with clinical mastitis and the number of cases per cow may increase. In addition, the risk of subclinical mastitis (milk not visibly abnormal) is increased. In some herds, use of Posilac has been associated with increases in somatic cell counts."<11> Somatic cell counts are another name for pus in milk. The insert sheet mentions other health effects of rBGH on cows: "Use of Posilac has been associated with increases in cystic ovaries and disorders of the uterus during the treatment period." And: "Use of Posilac may result in increased digestive disorders such as indigestion, bloat, and diarrhea."

<snip>

There is abundant evidence that, when cows get mastitis, farmers give them antibiotics. Mastitis (or the pus it puts into milk) is a major cause of lost revenues to dairy farmers. According to the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO), FDA has approved use of 30 antibiotics on dairy cows but an additional 50 antibiotics are suspected of being used illegally on dairy cows. A 1988 Illinois survey found over 200 different animal drugs on dairy farms, 58% of them not approved for use on dairy cows. Furthermore, the routine tests that FDA applies to milk nationwide can only detect 4 types of antibiotics, so FDA is not in a position to protect consumers from illegal use of antibiotics (which are sold without prescription at farm supply stores). Antibiotic residues in milk --which seem certain to increase with rBGH use --may cause adverse allergic reactions in some consumers, and very likely will contribute to development of strains of bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics, thus reducing the effectiveness of antibiotic medicinals against human and animal diseases.<12>

http://www.rachel.org/bulletin/index.cfm?St=2

[Desertrose]

44. OK..this is why I quit drinking milk about 20+ years ago

EEEWWW

.....growing up in dairy farm country...I have seen enough first hand that ...well...makes me not want to drink milk from huge farms. I like to think "organic" cows & milk products don't have these problems.....

when I was a kid it was just milk..now, who KNOWS what you're drinking....evidently not the public.

I am shocked. :sarcasm:

[Karenina]

46. It's globalization of

the "ownership" society. And YES, they will poison us ALL and the planet upon which we depend for survival, to achieve their ends.

[Deja Q]

12. Our society is based on money and therefore growth. It's THE abomination!

Once our society cannot feed its expanding population via standard means in order to keep them alive in order to work them to death in the name of profitability, in order to live by the same benign philosophy, it must find ways to expand the amount of food being grown.

And to meddle with God's Creation is far, far worse than two grown men groping each other, all the religious folks can call homosexuals disgusting... wake the hell up for what you are eating will affect you slowly, and the future of this world far more so. Certainly exponentially more than Adam and Fred who moved next door!

[Redstone]

14. Yes it is, but

what else would you expect from Monsanto?

I cannot understand how anybody who works at that evil, soulless company can look at themselves in the mirror and not be siezed with an uncontrollable urge to vomit.

Redstone

[chlamor]

15. The Bad Seed

#666 - The Bad Seed, September 02, 1999
  

Monsanto Corporation of St. Louis has been maneuvering for more than a decade to dominate the world's supply of seed for staple crops (corn, soybeans, potatoes) -- a business plan that Monsanto's critics say is nothing short of diabolical. Monsanto says it is just devilishly good business.

Monsanto has spent upwards of $8 billion in recent years buying numerous U.S. seed companies. As a result, two firms, Monsanto and Pioneer (recently purchased by DuPont), now dominate the U.S. seed business. Monsanto specializes in genetically modified seeds -- seeds having particular properties that Monsanto has patented.

<snip>

The U.S. government is very enthusiastic about these new technologies. From the viewpoint of U.S. foreign policy, genetically modified seeds offer a key advantage over traditional seeds: because genetically modified seeds are patented, it is illegal for a farmer to retain seed from this year's crop to plant next year. To use these patented seeds, farmers must buy new seed from Monsanto every year. Thus a farmer who adopts genetically modified seeds and fails to retain a stock of traditional seeds could become dependent upon a transnational corporation. Nations whose farmers grew dependent upon corporations for seed might forfeit considerable political independence. The Clinton/Gore administration has been aggressively helping Monsanto promote ag-biotech, bypassing U.S. health and safety regulations to promote new, untested gene-altered products.

A key component of the U.S./Monsanto plan to dominate world agriculture with genetically modified seeds is the absence of labeling of genetically engineered foods. All U.S. foods carry labels listing the ingredients: salt, sugar, water, vitamins, etc. But three separate executive agencies -- U.S. Food and Drug Administration, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency -- have ruled that genetically-modified foods deserve an exception: they can be sold without being labeled "genetically modified." This strategy has successfully prevented consumers from exercising informed choice in the marketplace, reducing the likelihood of a consumer revolt, at least in the U.S., at least for now.

http://www.rachel.org/bulletin/index.cfm?St=2

[chlamor]

16. Genetically Altering the Worlds Food

Both inside and outside the U.S., Monsanto is selling two basic varieties of genetically-modified seeds: "Roundup Ready" seeds that have been genetically modified to withstand a heavy soaking with Monsanto's best-selling herbicide, Roundup (glyphosate). And a group of seeds implanted with a Bt gene, which produces a pesticidal toxin in every cell of the resulting plant. Caterpillars that eat any part of such a plant will die, at least until the whole caterpillar population develops "resistance" to the Bt toxin. (For more detail, see REHW #637 and #638.)

Within the U.S., genetically altered crops are rapidly coming into widespread use. In 1995, no genetically-modified crops were grown for commercial sale. Three years later, in 1998, 73 million acres of genetically-modified crops were grown worldwide, more than 50 million acres of them in the U.S. To allow this rapid change to occur with a minimum of resistance from consumers, the FDA has declared that genetically modified foods do not need to be labeled, thus depriving consumers of the opportunity to make an informed choice in the grocery store. You cannot refuse to buy what you cannot identify. It is presently estimated that some 30,000 items in U.S. grocery stores already contain genetically modified organisms.<2>

<snip>


Of particular concern is Monsanto's latest genetic technique called the Technology Protection System, commonly known as "terminator technology." Developed with taxpayer money by the U.S. Department of Agriculture but patented by a Mississippi-based seed company that Monsanto has recently purchased, terminator technology is a genetic technique that renders the seeds of crops sterile after one or two years. This assures that Monsanto's seeds cannot be illegally saved and re-planted year after year.

With terminator technology, anyone who becomes dependent upon Monsanto's genetically-modified seed will have to come back to Monsanto year after year to purchase new seed. By this means, Monsanto will gain a substantial measure of control over the food supply of any nation that widely adopts the company's genetic technologies. It is not a conspiracy, merely a shrewd business venture, but it is clear that Monsanto's goal is effective control of many of the staple crops that presently feed the world.

<snip>

From its own perspective, the U.S. government evidently believes Monsanto's goal is worth supporting. According to Bill Lambrecht of the ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH, when Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern arrived in the U.S. in 1998 for a St. Patrick's Day visit, he was met by Sandy Berger, the director of the U.S. National Security Council. The topic of conversation at lunch was not peace in war-torn Ireland, but Ireland's pivotal vote in a pending European Community decision on Monsanto's genetically modified corn.<3> Lambrecht reports that when Monsanto flew a group of Irish journalists to the U.S. to help them prepare for the debate over genetically modified foods, their trip included a stop in the Oval Office at the White House -- an inner sanctum that few visitors to Washington ever see.

When the French were reluctant to allow Monsanto's seeds to sprout on French soil, Secretary of State Madeline Albright and U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshevsky intervened on Monsanto's behalf. When the French still refused to yield, President Clinton personally took up the matter with French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and gave him "an earful," Lambrecht writes. When that didn't work, Vice- President Gore followed up with a phone call to the French Prime Minister. Ultimately, the French gave in to the steady, high-level pressure.

http://www.rachel.org/bulletin/index.cfm?St=2

[Snap]

32. YOU GO CHLAMOR!!!

Energy issues pale in comparison to this stuff (forget about the religious fantasy squabbles). There are some gung ho grassroots organizations fighting the good fight. Here in Minnesota are a couple:
Land Stewardship Committee
International Institute of Agricultural Trade Policy
Minnesota Institute of Sustainable Agriculture
Minnesota Grazers Conference
there's more...
Google these groups to see where the rubber meets the road.

In these groups you will find a whole passel of Wellstone Democrats.
This food, this land is your medicine.

[JohnyCanuck]

18. Why have we abandoned the precautionary principle for GMOs?

This is an edited version of Michael Meacher's keynote address to the Green Network Conference, Science, Medicine and the Law, 31 January to 2 February 2005, Royal Institute of British Architecture, London, UK, which will be published in issue 26 of Science in Society www.i-sis.org.uk (Michael Meacher is a former UK Labour government enviroment minister).

Note to moderators. www.i-sis.org.uk gives permission to reproduce in full for non profit purposes only any material published on their web site as long as appropriate credit is given along with a link to the web site.

Which science or scientists can you trust?

Nobody disagrees that debate over whether we should go ahead with new technologies should be conducted on the basis of science, but which science? Independent science or industrial science? Let me test out a few examples on you.

Fifteen years ago a lorry driver accidentally tipped 20 tonnes of aluminium sulphate into the public drinking supply in north Cornwall – nearby residents and local doctors are convinced they were poisoned; but two Government enquiries found no evidence. Whom do you believe?

There are childhood leukaemia clusters in villages down the Cumbrian coast – local residents and independent scientists think it is the consequence of chronic exposure to low-level radiation from nearby Sellafield; but the Department of Industry (DTI) and British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) think it is nothing to do with local nuclear power stations – their best explanation is that it is caused by high levels of inward and outward migration. Whom do you believe?

Mark Purdey, a Somerset farmer turned epidemiologist, has produced detailed evidence to show that BSE was caused by farmers spreading Phosmetz, an organohosphate (OP), over the backs of cattle as a prophylaxis, but the Government's MRC Toxicology Unit - funded by the pharmaceutical company Zeneca - apparently refuted this theory. Which company held all rights over the production of Phosmetz? Zeneca. Whom do you believe?

Gulf War Syndrome has been a persistent disabling, and sometimes lethal, condition since the first war in Kuwait in 1991. Both UK and US soldiers and their independent scientific advisers are convinced that the soldiers were poisoned by the OP insecticides that they were liberally sprayed with. But the MOD and chemical companies insist there is no evidence for this. Whom do you believe?

Well, if you have any doubts, look at what has actually happened in the past when Government, in the teeth of overwhelming evidence, have often finally been forced to back track from entrenched positions that they always said were supported scientifically.

Science can quite often get things wrong.

Which science?

Government biologists initially refused to accept that power stations in Britain or Germany could kill fish or trees hundreds of miles away in Scandinavia; later the idea of acidification caused by SO2 was universally accepted.

Government scientists originally did not agree that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were destroying the ozone layer; but during the 1987 negotiations on the Montreal Protocol the industry – ICI and Du Pont – abruptly changed sides, and ministers and scientists soon fell into line alongside them.

The Lawther working party of Government scientists roundly rejected any idea that health-damaging high levels of lead in the blood came overwhelmingly from vehicle exhausts, only to find that after lead-free petrol was introduced, blood-lead levels fell 70%.

The Southwood committee of BSE scientists insisted in 1990 that scrapie in cattle could not cross the species barrier, only to find by 1996 that it did just that. And there are many more examples.
Scientific uncertainty and the precautionary principle

The only way to deal with these problems is by applying the precautionary principle. Perhaps the classic formulation of the precautionary principle was at the Rio Summit in 1992 principle 15: “in order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by states according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.”

That principle survived renegotiation attempts during the Johannesburg Summit in September 2002, and was reaffirmed in the Plan of Implementation that resulted from the Summit.

Why has this not been adopted by scientists and policy-makers? There can be only one reason: cynicism of not disturbing powerful political and economic interests.

It is highly disturbing to realise how long it takes for poisonous chemicals to be banned after scientific evidence emerged that they were harmful.

* Benzene was demonstrated as powerful bone marrow poison in 1897
* Acute respiratory effects of asbestos was identified 1898
* The ability of PCB to induce chloracne was documented in 1898

But it was not until 1960-70s that significant progress was made in restricting damages caused by these agents.

Independent scientists vilified

Efforts were made to discredit independent critics, as in the case of Richard Lacey and Mark Purdey in BSE, & Arpad Pusztai in GM food, and too many other examples.

Data and reports have been regularly suppressed or publishers intimidated, as in the Great Lakes chemical case.

The Southwood Committee on BSE believed a ban on the use of all cattle brains in human food chain might be justified, but considered that politically unfeasible.

There was also incompetence: the Department of Health was not informed by MAFF (the then Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, now disbanded) about the emergence of new disease (BSE) until 17 months after MAFF was first alerted.
Pervasive mistrust of science and scientists

No wonder that there is a pervasive mistrust of science and scientists. But the roots for this go deep.

First, the Rothschild revolution under Thatcher made the funding of science much more subservient to business interests. Over the past two decades, getting finance for scientific inquiry inimical to the commercial and political establishments has become increasingly difficult. The science is owned by a tiny number of very large companies and they only commission research which they believe will further their own commercial interests. And when that turns out not to be the case, as when research turns up results which may be embarrassing to the company, they are most often dubbed “commercially confidential” and never published.

In addition, companies have learned that small investments in endowing chairs, sponsoring research programmes or hiring professors for out-of-hours projects can produce disproportionate payoffs in generating reports, articles, reviews and books, which may not be in the public interest, but certainly benefit corporate bottom lines. The effects of corporate generosity - donating millions for this research laboratory or that scientific programme – can be subtly corrosive. Other universities regard the donor as a pote ntial source of funds and try to ensure nothing is said which might jeopardise big new cash possibilities. And academics raising embarrassing questions (as they should) - such as who is paying for the lab; how independent is the peer review; who profits from the research; is the university's integrity compromised? – would soon learn that keeping their heads down is the best way not to risk their career, let alone future research funding. The message is clear: making money is good, and dissent is stifled. Commerce and the truth don't readily mix.

A second reason why there is such pervasive mistrust of science and scientists is that the scientists staffing the official advisory committees and Government regulatory bodies in a significant number of cases have financial links with the industry they are supposed to be independently advising on and regulating. A recent study found that of the five scientific committees advising ministers on food and safety, 40% of committee members had links with the biotechnology industry, and at least 20% were linked to one of the Big Three – Monsanto, AstraZeneca, or Novartis. Nor is that an accident. The civil servants who select scientists for those bodies tend to look for a preponderant part of the membership, and particularly the chairperson, to be ‘sound', i.e., can be safely relied on not to cause embarrassment to the Government or industry if difficulties arise.

Third, the culture of spin and intimidation is far more pervasive than should ever be allowed. The shocking sacking and vilification of Dr Arpad Pusztai, when he produced GM research results inconvenient to the Government, bio-tech industry and the Americans, was no doubt, deliberately intended as a warning to others if they stepped out of line. And the threats and insinuations made clear to the only two independent scientists on the UK Government's GM Science Panel, Dr Carlo Leifert and Andrew Sterling, demonstrates all too clearly how viciously the Establishment will fight to safeguard its own interests.

And on spin, how many times have we heard the false argument that is still regularly deployed by ACRE, the Government's main GM advisory committee, when it announces that, “there is no evidence that this GM product is any greater risk to human health than its non-GM counterpart”. In fact they have not sought such evidence directly, merely relied on the biotech companies telling them that their GM product was ‘substantially equivalent' to its alleged non-GM analogue.

Fourth, science is not, and never has been, a value-free search for the truth. It is a social construct influenced by a variety of rules, peer group pressures, and personal and cultural expectations. It is developed, like all human thought, from preconceived built-in judgements, assumptions and dogmas, the more powerful because they are often unconsciously held.
So what is to be done?

What all this means is that science can only be fully trusted if it is pursued with the most rigorous procedures that guarantee total independence and freedom from commercial and political bias. That is far too often not the case today. The implications for policy are clear.

One, if the Government truly wants independent research, it has to be prepared to pay for it, not lay down, as it has, that 25% of finance for publicly funded research should come from private sources, thus forcing the universities into the hands of corporate sponsors.

Two, the Government should also require that no member of its advisory committee or regulatory bodies should have any current or recently past financial or commercial link with the industry concerned.

Three, contributors to scientific journals should be required to make full disclosure of current and prior funding sources, so that any conflicts of interest can be exposed and taken into account.

Four, we need above all a Government with the political gumption to stand up to the United States and those demanding calls from the White House, to stand up to the biotech companies, and to stand up to big business, and make clear that there will be no succumbing to dominant political /economic interests, e.g. no growing of GM crops in this country until proper, systematic, independent, peer-reviewed research, which is totally absent at present, has been carried through and made public which demonstrates beyond any reasonable doubt whether GM foods are safe or not.

We should never forget the words of Winston Churchill, who said “Science should be on tap, not on top”.

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/WSoSCYT.php

[chlamor]

20. That's a fantastic article

that I have copied and spread to others. Thanks for turning us onto that. It says a lot and is helpful in strategically unpacking the disinformation.

[chlamor]

19. Biotechnology's Brave New World

Biotechnology’s Brave New World

Monsanto’s aggressive promotion of its biotechnology products, from recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH), to Roundup Ready soybeans and other crops, to its insect-resistant varieties of cotton, is seen by many observers as a continuation of its many decades of ethically questionable practices. “Corporations have personalities, and Monsanto is one of the most malicious,” explains author Peter Sills. “From Monsanto’s herbicides to Santophen disinfectant to BGH, they seem to go out of their way to hurt their workers and hurt kids.”

Originally, Monsanto was one of four chemical companies seeking to bring a synthetic Bovine Growth Hormone, produced in E. coli bacteria genetically engineered to manufacture the bovine protein, to market. Another was American Cyanamid, now owned by American Home Products, which is in the process of merging with Monsanto. Monsanto’s 14-year effort to gain approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to bring recombinant BGH to market was fraught with controversy, including allegations of a concerted effort to suppress information about the hormone’s ill effects. One FDA veterinarian, Richard Burroughs, was fired after he accused both the company and the agency of suppressing and manipulating data to hide the effects of rBGH injections on the health of dairy cows.

<snip>

In 1990, when FDA approval of rBGH appeared imminent, a veterinary pathologist at the University of Vermont’s agricultural research facility released previously suppressed data to two state legislators documenting significantly increased rates of udder infection in cows that had been injected with the then-experimental Monsanto hormone, as well as an unusual incidence of severely deforming birth defects in offspring of rBGH-treated cows. An independent review of the University data by a regional farm advocacy group documented additional cow health problems associated with rBGH, including high incidences of foot and leg injuries, metabolic and reproductive difficulties, and uterine infections. The U.S. Congress’ General Accounting Office (GAO) attempted an inquiry into the case, but was unable to obtain the necessary records from Monsanto and the University to carry out its investigation, particularly with respect to suspected teratogenic and embryotoxic effects. The GAO auditors concluded that cows injected with rBGH had mastitis (udder infection) rates one-third higher than untreated cows, and recommended further research on the risk of elevated antibiotic levels in milk produced using rBGH.

Monsanto’s rBGH was approved by the FDA for commercial sale beginning in 1994. The following year, Mark Kastel of the Wisconsin Farmers Union released a study of Wisconsin farmers’ experiences with the drug. His findings exceeded the 21 potential health problems that Monsanto was required to list on the warning label for its Posilac brand of rBGH. Kastel found widespread reports of spontaneous deaths among rBGH-treated cows, high incidences of udder infections, severe metabolic difficulties and calving problems, and in some cases an inability to successfully wean treated cows off the drug. Many experienced dairy farmers who experimented with rBGH suddenly needed to replace large portions of their herd. Instead of addressing the causes of farmers’ complaints about rBGH, Monsanto went on the offensive, threatening to sue small dairy companies that advertised their products as free of the artificial hormone, and participating in a lawsuit by several dairy industry trade associations against the first and only mandatory labeling law for rBGH in the United States. Still, evidence for the damaging effects of rBGH on the health of both cows and people continued to mount.

<snip>


But the damaging effects of B.t.-secreting “Bollgard” cotton have proved to be much more immediate, enough so that Monsanto and its partners have pulled five million pounds of genetically engineered cotton seed off the market and agreed to a multimillion dollar settlement with farmers in the southern United States. Three farmers who refused to settle with Monsanto were awarded nearly $2 million by the Mississippi Seed Arbitration Council. Not only were plants attacked by the cotton bollworm, which Monsanto claimed they would be resistant to, but germination was spotty, yields were low, and plants were misshapen, according to several published accounts. Some farmers reported crop losses of up to 50 percent. Farmers who planted Monsanto’s Roundup-resistant cotton also reported severe crop failures, including deformed and misshapen bolls that suddenly fell off the plant three quarters of the way through the growing season.

Despite these problems, Monsanto is advancing the use of genetic engineering in agriculture by taking control of many of the largest, most established seed companies in the United States. Monsanto now owns Holdens Foundation Seeds, supplier of germplasm used on 25-35 percent of U.S. maize acreage, and Asgrow Agronomics, which it describes as “the leading soybean breeder, developer and distributor in the United States.” This past spring, Monsanto completed its acquisition of De Kalb Genetics, the second largest seed company in the United States and the ninth largest in the world, as well as Delta and Pine Land, the largest U.S. cotton seed company. With its Delta and Pine acquisition, Monsanto now controls 85 percent of the U.S. cotton seed market.

http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/mar99tokar.htm

[bridgit]

25. open letter to bill & melinda gates

http://lists.kabissa.org/lists/archives/public/pha-exchange/msg01090.html

[chlamor]

30. Awesome letter

Have seen Vandana Shiva on several occasions and she tears the whole gene myth to shreds. Saw her debate 3 professors/scientists and she made these arrogant jerks look like fools. But she did it with grace and cheer. Laughing all the way as her wit and intellect tore apart their slogans and disinformation. I see one of these profs at our local food CoOp all the time and I follow him around the store and razz him. If GMO's are so great why doesn't he seek them out? I'm so naughty, I have fun asking him that.

[bridgit]

49. cool huh? i as well appreciate your posting...

this thread; waaaay not enough attention is being paid to this topic imo. up the road here in sac @ uc davis ag ctr, among other places to be sure, is where we develop such oddities.

all that talent...

:shrug:

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

52. "gene myth"

What's that, exactly?

[chlamor]

55. Gene Myth

Here is a start. Keep in mind the social, political and commercial contexts from which these "theories" arise. Gene theory fits in the framework of capital-hierarchy-industrial modes of thought so it is promoted at Universities and becomes the accepted paradigm. It fits with the Master controllers reductionist view of our world and comports with the BIG SCIENCE view that we can understand the mysteries of Nature if we break it into small pieces and examine HER.

The Gene Myth

One important issue is the difference between the public perception of genetic function and laboratory truth. It pertains to the growing popular image of the gene as the all-determining factor in the human condition, and begins with the thought that if we could only find the gene for a certain disease, then we could find the cure by simply manipulating this gene. The logic then continues: Why stop with diseases? Do genes also determine behavior? If so, should we blame persons for their anti-social behavior, or judge them as victims of their genetic makeup? Should we try to alter the genes of individuals or groups with aberrant or unacceptable behavior?

This line of thinking belongs to what can be called the ‘gene myth,’ namely, a widespread cultural thought form that says, “it’s all in the genes.” The gene myth is deterministic in two senses. The first is puppet determinism, wherein we assume the DNA acts like a puppeteer and we dance on genetic strings like a puppet. If the DNA determines our hair color and what diseases we will have, then perhaps the DNA determines how we will behave and may even control our virtues and vices. The second is Promethean determinism, wherein we assume that once our scientists have learned how DNA works we can then take charge; that is, we can get into the DNA with our scientific tools and modify it so as to guide our own evolutionary future. Puppet determinism presumes that we are victims of our genes, whereas Promethean determinism presumes that we can take charge of our genes. Both belong to the gene myth, and both point to a significant question: Will the concept of genetic determinism—might we call it genetic predestination?—compromise our confidence in free agency?  

To attempt an answer we must ask difficult scientific questions. The most obvious one is: Does the science of molecular biology support the deterministic assumptions of the gene myth? No. For the most part, laboratory scientists see little or no evidence supporting a philosophy of genetic determinism that would alter our understanding of human freedom. At minimum, nurture remains as important as nature.

Here's More:

FRA: What motivated you to write Exploding the Gene Myth?


RH: I have been interested in the kind of damage that I think is inevitably going to be done to people and is already being done to people by turning everything into genetics. And, the reactionary politics -- it's not just the 'gay gene' though that's very important...but it's the general underwriting of a conservative interpretation of what is wrong with society by saying 'well what's wrong is that some people are just defective people'. I mean one way or another it's such a good excuse to frame the issues in terms of individual people's individual's foibles or problems or diseases instead of looking at what's going on in their lives and their surroundings.


FRA: I believe it was Anne Fausto-Sterling who said yesterday...she was bringing up the Genome project. She said that the problem isn't financial. The problem is that The Genome Project has to come up with problems...that in order to get more money they have to come up with problems that they are going to solve...


RH: ...well, that's right. Not only that but they have to move out of the relatively narrow sphere of the relatively few and quite rare health issues that can be readily traced to genes. Ten years ago if you had said 'genes and disease' people would have said 'oh yeah PKU I know about that...and Sickle Cell Anemia I know about that...and then if they were a little more knowledgeable they might say cystic fibrosis or muscular dystrophy but that's about it. Now they have to include things like cancer and heart disease and diabetes and schizophrenia and...

<snip>

FRA: If you talk to people in general about genes, they think, and so did I, that a gene is this locus...it's a spot....


RH: ....Well, the word 'gene' is used very...very fluidly. I mean the fact is that molecular biologists...people doing this work...when they talk to each other don't talk about genes. They talk about DNA sequences. And that's what one is really talking about. One is talking about pieces of chromosomes...pieces of DNA...that are involved in a metabolic network of pathways the result of which is that you get a certain kind of protein. And that protein then is active in one or another way or maybe multiple ways. The so called 'gene' is this sequence and the more people are learning about genes the clearer it is that these sequences need not be, and in general, are not continuous...but it can be this piece...and then skip these...and this piece and then skip this one...and this piece....and somehow the cell knows...and nobody knows how...that it's this piece, and this piece, and this piece...(and forget those two)...that really need to be translated into protein...

<snip>

FRA: It is much more complex. At the conference we were talking about how everybody wants a simple life. We want simple answers. We don't want complexity. I'm talking about society as a whole...we don't want complexity...we want everything neat and tidy. Somebody was describing a piece this man has written describing the Gay Pride March in New York this year as a 'rag tag bunch of filth and lewdness' counterposed with a description of how proud he is to hang with people who dress in suits and ties and shiny black shoes...I mean, you know, this neat and tidy...non-disturbing...kind of thinking allows this type of person to say -- 'oh well, here's the gene...this'll take care of that...this'll take care of that....'


RH: Well you see, after all, the way the history of this has gone is by looking at traits, right?....looking at variation in traits and then trying to figure out how to associate those variations with chromosomes. And, fruitflies are sort of the favorite thing and seeing that, yes, there seems to be some consistency between this trait and something happening on chromosome 4...something that you actually might be able to see because in fruit flies you have large giant chromosomes where you can actually see variation, and so people have this image of a correspondence between traits and genes. Now, we're in a completely different world. You see, the next thing that happened is that most of what people learned about DNA in the early days was from E. coli, which is a bacterium which doesn't have a nucleus...which only has a single circular chromosome and where genes do seem to be continuous pieces of DNA. So, that sort of bore out this model that people had lived with...'oh yes, a gene is a piece of DNA..ah...and that piece of DNA then gets translated into RNA and that gets translated into proteins and fine...that's how it works.' Well, it clearly doesn't in organisms that have nuclei. And with that it all gets much more complicated, much more fluid, much more interesting. But, the sort of, very simple...you know...deterministic arguments that people have in their heads and feel comfortable with...just don't wash.

http://eserver.org/gender/exploding-the-gene-myth.html

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

58. Okaaaaaaaaayyyy...

Looks like you've smacked down that straw man.

[Zynx]

78. That may well be one of the least scientific things I have every read

Congratulations - you rival the "depleted uranium is uber radioactive death because it has a long half life" crowd for general stupidity.

I've also never seen "scientific" articles with fewer footnotes and direct cites of other research.

[Sufi Marmot]

21. I think some of this is misleading...

Disclaimer: My response to the following paragraph should not be taken as either an endorsement or rejection of GM foods.

That's not all. Studies on the GM process have shown that the foreign gene inserts invariably damages the genome, scrambling and rearranging DNA sequences, resulting in inappropriate gene expression that can trigger cancer.

It's true that when you start inserting foreign genes into animal genomes, you sometimes can create genomic rearragements or other types of genetic instability that can lead to improper gene expression and in some cases cancer in that organism. That certainly doesn't happen in every case, and as far as I know that process is irrelevant to the issue of GM food. The DNA in the food you eat is broken down in your digestive system (by enzymes secreted by the pancreas) and I can't imagine a scenario where someone could get cancer from GM foods via the integration of "foreign" genes into human tissue. As far as the digestive system is concerned, DNA is DNA.

To me a more plausible scenario is that the insertion of foreign genes into GM organisms might alter either gene expression or the proteome, wreaking havoc with levels of various nutrients or possibly creating increased levels of toxic/undesirable substances.

-SM

[chlamor]

22. DNA is DNA is DNA

is false. before going into that consider that Watson and Crick in their fraudulent double helix "revelation" openly admitted that they didn't know what 90% of the "stuff" was and/or its function. They promptly labeled this unknowable genetic goo as "junk". Their term not mine. Also shuffling a few plasmids around might be a joy ride for the Gene Giants but it creates nothing other than a mess.

GM DNA IS different and also creates new proteins that are unassimilable by the human body. There is no way that a cancer can be traced to any one thing, or at least it is a rare case, but the accumulation of toxins caused by GM DNA ain't going to help. Many tests have shown toxins accumulating in the gut from eating GM foods.

On an anecdotal note several farmers have noted how deer who use to come onto their fields now avoid them since they began using GM crops. The stuff is poison, as is all industrial "food".

Here's more:
Is GM DNA different from natural DNA?

"DNA is DNA is DNA," said a proponent in a public debate in trying to convince the audience that there is no difference between genetically modified (GM) DNA and natural DNA, "DNA is taken up by cells because it is very nutritious!"

"GM can happen in nature," said another proponent. "Mother Nature got there first."

So, why worry about GM contamination? Why bother setting contamination thresholds for food and feed? Why award patents for the GM DNA on grounds that it is an innovation?

Why don't biotech companies accept liabilities if there's nothing to worry about?

As for GM happening in nature, so does death, but that doesn't justify murder. Radioactive decay happens in nature too, but concentrated and speeded up, it becomes an atom bomb.

GMDNA and natural DNA are indistinguishable according to the most mundane chemistry, i.e., they have the same chemical formula or atomic composition. Apart from that, they are as different as night and day. Natural DNA is made in living organisms; GMDNA is made in the laboratory. Natural DNA has the signature of the species to which it belongs; GMDNA contains bits copied from the DNA of a wide variety of organisms, or simply synthesized in the laboratory. Natural DNA has billions of years of evolution behind it; GMDNA contains genetic material and combinations of genetic material that have never existed.

Furthermore, GMDNA is designed - albeit crudely - to cross species barriers and to jump into genomes. Design features include changes in the genetic code and special ends that enhance recombination, i.e., breaking into genomes and rejoining. GMDNA often contains antibiotic resistance marker genes needed in the process of making GM organisms, but serves no useful function in the GM organism

http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/dangerous062204.cfm

[Sufi Marmot]

24. Structure and function are entirely different...

Just because the function of much DNA isn't clear doesn't mean that we don't know its structure. To my knowledge digestive enzymes don't distinguish between "natural" and "GM" DNA. The very narrow point I was trying to make was that to me it is entirely implausible that humans would get cancer from the integration of ingested GM DNA into human cells above and beyond that of "natural" DNA, since the endo and exonucleases of the digestive system aren't going to distinguish between the two, because they are chemically identical (on a gross level).

-SM

On edit:

GM DNA IS different and also creates new proteins that are unassimilable by the human body. There is no way that a cancer can be traced to any one thing, or at least it is a rare case, but the accumulation of toxins caused by GM DNA ain't going to help. Many tests have shown toxins accumulating in the gut from eating GM foods. Some cancers can indeed be traced to very specific genetic rearragements which create oncogenes - this is the cancer referred to in the original article.

[chlamor]

29. Synergistic and combinative effects

of all "DNA" can never be known. The entirety of Gene Theory is hokey. I work with and debate these "Brainy" PhD's all the time at Cornell. After a few glasses of ale they admit they don't know how any of it works. But of course more studies and more funding will provide the answer. Your "DNA" is not the same as it was thirty seconds ago. Gene theory is mechanistic reductionist arrogance by the men who think they can accurately measure the world and its workings.Here is a book worth reading:
"Exploding the Gene Myth-How Genetic Information is Produced and Manipulated" by Ruth Hubbard and Elijah Wald



Nature is the Law. One would do well to live in accordance with it.

[Sufi Marmot]

36. Sigh...

Actually, for some time now gene theory has been moving away from reductionist approaches to the assessment of how a specific perturbation affects the entire genome or proteome. Someday when you're being successfully treated for cancer you may have a somewhat different appreciation for "hokey" gene theory.

Anywhoo, since we don't yet know everything about these complex regulatory systems, the best we can do is deal with plausibilities based on the data we have in hand at the present time. And the very, very, very narrow point I was trying to make is that of your original list of the potential hazards of genetic modification, while many fall within the realm of plausibility, one does not (at least not to me). Our digestive system is designed to chop up the DNA we ingest from other organisms and integration of ingested DNA of any kind isn't a significant cause of cancer.

-SM, who can't help but wonder at the source of hostility towards biologists.


P.S. Having attended more scientific conferences than I care to recall, I can tell you with some certainty that scientists aren't particularly coherent or lucid thinkers when they've been drinking, so you probably shouldn't mistake their besotted ramblings for reasoned scientific analysis.

[chlamor]

53. The Cure

No Silver Bullets

Address the roots not the symptoms.

If we want to "cure" cancer we will stop blowing mercury into the air, we will stop poisoning our foods (known as the "Green Revolution"), we will stop....

Gene "theory" is a trojan horse. Misplaced enthusiasm for genetic solutions.

Commerce masquerading as human liberation.

How many Superfund sites have been created as a result of the Biotechnicians? How many cancers have been caused as a result?

The antidote needed is one to cure people of the daily hype of biotehnology.

[Sufi Marmot]

69. What % of Superfund sites have biologicals?

How many Superfund sites have been created as the result of Biotechnicians? I can't think of any at the moment, other than maybe one or two sites where biological warfare was tested back before the treaty. Can inform me of others?

It is my understanding that the vast majority of Superfund sites are contaminated with nasty organic chemicals, heavy metals, or radioactive substances. With a few possible exceptions, you should blame the chemists and the physicists for Superfund sites, not biologists.

Mercury in the air? Blame the coal-burning power companies and the conusmers who demand cheap power.

-SM

[chlamor]

65. Gene Myth

Just in case you did not see above post.


The Gene Myth

One important issue is the difference between the public perception of genetic function and laboratory truth. It pertains to the growing popular image of the gene as the all-determining factor in the human condition, and begins with the thought that if we could only find the gene for a certain disease, then we could find the cure by simply manipulating this gene. The logic then continues: Why stop with diseases? Do genes also determine behavior? If so, should we blame persons for their anti-social behavior, or judge them as victims of their genetic makeup? Should we try to alter the genes of individuals or groups with aberrant or unacceptable behavior?

This line of thinking belongs to what can be called the ‘gene myth,’ namely, a widespread cultural thought form that says, “it’s all in the genes.” The gene myth is deterministic in two senses. The first is puppet determinism, wherein we assume the DNA acts like a puppeteer and we dance on genetic strings like a puppet. If the DNA determines our hair color and what diseases we will have, then perhaps the DNA determines how we will behave and may even control our virtues and vices. The second is Promethean determinism, wherein we assume that once our scientists have learned how DNA works we can then take charge; that is, we can get into the DNA with our scientific tools and modify it so as to guide our own evolutionary future. Puppet determinism presumes that we are victims of our genes, whereas Promethean determinism presumes that we can take charge of our genes. Both belong to the gene myth, and both point to a significant question: Will the concept of genetic determinism—might we call it genetic predestination?—compromise our confidence in free agency?  

To attempt an answer we must ask difficult scientific questions. The most obvious one is: Does the science of molecular biology support the deterministic assumptions of the gene myth? No. For the most part, laboratory scientists see little or no evidence supporting a philosophy of genetic determinism that would alter our understanding of human freedom. At minimum, nurture remains as important as nature.


Here's More:

FRA: What motivated you to write Exploding the Gene Myth?


RH: I have been interested in the kind of damage that I think is inevitably going to be done to people and is already being done to people by turning everything into genetics. And, the reactionary politics -- it's not just the 'gay gene' though that's very important...but it's the general underwriting of a conservative interpretation of what is wrong with society by saying 'well what's wrong is that some people are just defective people'. I mean one way or another it's such a good excuse to frame the issues in terms of individual people's individual's foibles or problems or diseases instead of looking at what's going on in their lives and their surroundings.


FRA: I believe it was Anne Fausto-Sterling who said yesterday...she was bringing up the Genome project. She said that the problem isn't financial. The problem is that The Genome Project has to come up with problems...that in order to get more money they have to come up with problems that they are going to solve...


RH: ...well, that's right. Not only that but they have to move out of the relatively narrow sphere of the relatively few and quite rare health issues that can be readily traced to genes. Ten years ago if you had said 'genes and disease' people would have said 'oh yeah PKU I know about that...and Sickle Cell Anemia I know about that...and then if they were a little more knowledgeable they might say cystic fibrosis or muscular dystrophy but that's about it. Now they have to include things like cancer and heart disease and diabetes and schizophrenia and...

<snip>

FRA: If you talk to people in general about genes, they think, and so did I, that a gene is this locus...it's a spot....

RH: ....Well, the word 'gene' is used very...very fluidly. I mean the fact is that molecular biologists...people doing this work...when they talk to each other don't talk about genes. They talk about DNA sequences. And that's what one is really talking about. One is talking about pieces of chromosomes...pieces of DNA...that are involved in a metabolic network of pathways the result of which is that you get a certain kind of protein. And that protein then is active in one or another way or maybe multiple ways. The so called 'gene' is this sequence and the more people are learning about genes the clearer it is that these sequences need not be, and in general, are not continuous...but it can be this piece...and then skip these...and this piece and then skip this one...and this piece....and somehow the cell knows...and nobody knows how...that it's this piece, and this piece, and this piece...(and forget those two)...that really need to be translated into protein...

<snip>

FRA: It is much more complex. At the conference we were talking about how everybody wants a simple life. We want simple answers. We don't want complexity. I'm talking about society as a whole...we don't want complexity...we want everything neat and tidy. Somebody was describing a piece this man has written describing the Gay Pride March in New York this year as a 'rag tag bunch of filth and lewdness' counterposed with a description of how proud he is to hang with people who dress in suits and ties and shiny black shoes...I mean, you know, this neat and tidy...non-disturbing...kind of thinking allows this type of person to say -- 'oh well, here's the gene...this'll take care of that...this'll take care of that....'


RH: Well you see, after all, the way the history of this has gone is by looking at traits, right?....looking at variation in traits and then trying to figure out how to associate those variations with chromosomes. And, fruitflies are sort of the favorite thing and seeing that, yes, there seems to be some consistency between this trait and something happening on chromosome 4...something that you actually might be able to see because in fruit flies you have large giant chromosomes where you can actually see variation, and so people have this image of a correspondence between traits and genes. Now, we're in a completely different world. You see, the next thing that happened is that most of what people learned about DNA in the early days was from E. coli, which is a bacterium which doesn't have a nucleus...which only has a single circular chromosome and where genes do seem to be continuous pieces of DNA. So, that sort of bore out this model that people had lived with...'oh yes, a gene is a piece of DNA..ah...and that piece of DNA then gets translated into RNA and that gets translated into proteins and fine...that's how it works.' Well, it clearly doesn't in organisms that have nuclei. And with that it all gets much more complicated, much more fluid, much more interesting. But, the sort of, very simple...you know...deterministic arguments that people have in their heads and feel comfortable with...just don't wash.

http://eserver.org/gender/exploding-the-gene-myth.html
 

[Sufi Marmot]

73. I'm not sure what the point of this is...

...but, um, yeah, genetics and molecular biology are really complicated, more so than Watson and Crick initially understood. And our understanding of what a "gene" is and how DNA works has matured over the years, and will undoubtedly continue to do so. :shrug:

-SM

[Eloriel]

23. I think

I love you. :loveya:

[Tinoire]

26. Back off my friend

Chlamor is mine lol ;)

Great information in his/her thread and tons in the DU archives!

:hi:

[chlamor]

27. Been Wonderin'

about you.

:hi:

[Desertrose]

45. No.. you BOTH back off!

I claim true love :loveya: for chlamor ;)

Seriously ladies, I think we can share...whaddya think?

:grouphug: :hi::loveya:

I am so glad chlamor is tellin it like it is and sharing incredible information here!!!!

:applause:

[Tinoire]

47. Ok. We'll share.

I'm glad too. Something about people telling it like it is just... warms the old Leftist heart!

Strength in numbers and Solidarnos'!

:applause: :applause: :applause:

:grouphug:

[Desertrose]

50. OK..we'll share

:grouphug: Yup, us old leftists like to tell it (& hear it) like it is.......

How ya doing "T"?? Hope things are better for ya....:loveya::hug:
DR

and while I'm at it...a :kick: up for this thread...think we need to pay a bit more attention to this subject!

:hi:Thanks chlamor :)

[chlamor]

51. Sharing is good

:hi:

[Tinoire]

83. And thank you for sharing all this information.

When I have time, I'll try to add some information to this thread for you. GMOs are a very important issue that a great deal of people will one day regret not having paid enough attention to. I'm glad you're discussing it. :hi:

[Tinoire]

81. Oh. I see. You too now!

;)

Sigh. I guess we'll just have to share... A 21st century intellectual version of a decadent scene out of Cabaret. Time to dust off your Christopher Isherwood novel "I am a Camera" and picture yourself as Peter York in our lovely little hands Chlamor.

And remember, the quicker we get the tea out of the way, the sooner we can get to the gin :evil grin:

WILLKOMMEN

EMCEE
Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome!
Fremde, etranger, stranger.
Gluklich zu sehen, je suis enchante,
Happy to see you, bliebe, reste, stay.

Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome
Im Cabaret, au Cabaret, to Cabaret

(Spoken)
Meine Damen und Herren, Mesdames et Messieurs,
Ladies and Gentlemen! Guden Abend, bon soir,
We geht's? Comment ca va? Do you feel good?
I bet you do!
Ich bin euer Confrecier; je suis votre compere...
I am you host!

Und sagen
Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome
Im Cabaret, au Cabaret, to Cabaret

(spoken)
Leave you troubles outside!
So- life is disappointing? Forget it!
We have no troubles here! Here life is beautiful...
The girls are beautiful...
Even the orchestra is beautiful!

You see? I told you the orchestra is beautiful!

And now presenting the Cabaret Girls!
Rosie! (Rosie is so called because of the color of her
cheeks.) Lulu! (Oh, you like Lulu? Well, too bad!
So does Rosie.)Frenchie! (You know I like to order Frenchie
on the side. On your side Frenchie! Just kidding!)
Texas! (Yes, Texas is from America!But she's a very
cunning linguist!) Fritzie!
(Oh, Fritzie, please, will you stop that!
Already this week we have lost two waiters,
a table and three bottles of champagne up there.)
and Helga! (Helga is the baby. I'm just like a father
to her. So when she's bad, I spank her. And she's
very, very, very, very, very bad.)

Rosie, Lulu, Frenchie, Texas, Fritzie... Und Helga.
Each and every one a virgin! You don't believe me?
Well, don't take my word for it. Go ahead- try Helga!

Outside it is winter. But in here it's so hot.
Every night we have to battle with the girls to keep
them from taking off all their clothings. So don't go
away. Who knows? Tonight we may lose the battle!

KIT KAT GIRLS
Wir sagen
Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome
Im Cabaret, au Cabaret, to Cabaret!

EMCEE
We are here to serve you!
And now presenting the Kit Kat Boys:
Here they are!
Bobby! Victor!
Or is it
Victor! and Bobby...
You know, there's really only one wat to tell the
difference...
I'll show you later.
Hans (Oh Hans, go easy on the sauerkraut!)
Herrman (You know what's funny about Herrman?
There's nothing funny about Herrman!)
And, finally, the toast og Mayfir, Fraulein Sally Bowles!

SALLY
Hello, darlings!

EMCEE
Bliebe, reste, stay!

ALL
Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome

EMCEE
That's Victor.

ALL
Im Cabaret, au Cabaret,
(whispered)
Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome!
Fremde, etranger, stranger.

EMCEE
Hello, stranger!

ALL
Gluklich, zu sehen, je suis enchante,

EMCEE
Enchante, Madame.

All
Happy to see you,
Bliebe, reste, stay!

Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome!
Fremde, etranger, stranger.
Gluklich zu sehen, je suis enchante,
Happy to see you,
Bliebe, reste, stay!
Wir sagen
Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome
Im Cabaret, au Cabaret, to Cabaret

[Cats Against Frist]

101. Uh, what is it about non-GM-loving boys with Frank Zappa avatars?

I was going to post that I loved him, too!!!

:) :loveya: :hi:

[chlamor]

33. Let's not forget the miraculous Golden Rice-More PR Bullshit

The infamous Golden Rice would never solve Vitamin A deficiency
because it only contains 30 microgram of Vit. A per 100 grams of
grain. It is far more inferior compared to carrots (217-434
mcg/100mg), spinach (600mcg) or radish leaves (750mcg). In fact, one
would have to consume 9 kg of cooked rice everyday to reach the RDA.
Whereas eating 2 carrots a day would more than satisfy the
recommendation.

Evidence from around the world, again and again confirms the failure
of GM crops to deliver their promises. In 2002, the first commercial
planting of Bt cotton in India was wiped out while non-GM varieties
performed well, leaving GM planting farmers facing serious financial
losses. A recent report from the UK field experiment clearly proved
that GM crops significantly reduce wildlife, and they also find that
contamination through pollination is many times higher than it was
anticipated. (The Farm Scale Evaluations of spring-sown genetically
modified crops, UK). Scientific evidences all point the uncertainty
and instability of genetic engineering. Moreover, no research has been
conducted to determine the long-term effect of GM crops on our health
and the ecosystem.

http://lists.kabissa.org/lists/archives/public/pha-exchange/msg01090.html


Thanks bridgit

[chlamor]

34. Let's name names:Monsanto and the FDA - Revolving Door

All regulatory agencies are part of the corporate machine. Let's put on the show and pull the wool over the eyes. The FDA is so freakin' corrupted it's gross. Take the power back. It's up to you.

Monsanto employees and government regulatory agencies
employees are the same people!

Date: Tue, 07 Dec 1999 10:43:59 -0600
From: Peter Khaled <[e-mail] >
Subject: Revolving Door - Updated list - FYI

David W. Beier . . .former head of Government Affairs for
Genentech, Inc., . . .now chief domestic policy advisor to Al
Gore, Vice President of the United States.

Linda J. Fisher . . .former Assistant Administrator of the
United States Environmental Protection Agency's Office of
Pollution Prevention, Pesticides, and Toxic Substances, . . .then
became Vice President of Government and Public Affairs for
Monsanto Corporation and now (2001) is Deputy Director
of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Michael A. Friedman, M.D. . . former acting commissioner of
the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
Department of Health and Human Services . . .now senior
vice-president for clinical affairs at G. D. Searle & Co., a
pharmaceutical division of Monsanto Corporation.

L. Val Giddings . . . former biotechnology regulator and
(biosafety) negotiator at the United States Department of
Agriculture (USDA/APHIS), . . .now Vice President for Food &
Agriculture of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO).


Marcia Hale . . . former assistant to the President of the
United States and director for intergovernmental affairs, . .
.now Director of International Government Affairs for Monsanto
Corporation.

Michael (Mickey) Kantor. . . former Secretary of the United
States Department of Commerce and former Trade
Representative of the United States, . . .now member of the
board of directors of Monsanto Corporation.

Josh King . . . former director of production for White House
events, . . . now director of global communication in the
Washington, D.C. office of Monsanto Corporation.

Terry Medley . . . former administrator of the Animal and
Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) of the United States
Department of Agriculture, former chair and vice-chair of the
United States Department of Agriculture Biotechnology Council,
former member of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
food advisory committee, . . . and now Director of Regulatory
and External Affairs of Dupont Corporation's Agricultural
Enterprise.

Margaret Miller . . . former chemical laboratory supervisor for
Monsanto, . . .now Deputy Director of Human Food Safety and
Consultative Services, New Animal Drug Evaluation Office,
Center for Veterinary Medicine in the United States Food and
Drug Administration (FDA).*


Michael Phillips . . . recently with the National Academy of
Science Board on Agriculture . . . now head of regulatory affairs
for the Biotechnology Industry Organization.

William D. Ruckelshaus . . . former chief administrator of the
United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA), . .
.now (and for the past 12 years) a member of the board of
directors of Monsanto Corporation.

Michael Taylor . . . former legal advisor to the United States
Food and Drug Administration (FDA)'s Bureau of Medical
Devices and Bureau of Foods, later executive assistant to the
Commissioner of the FDA, . . . still later a partner at the law
firm of King & Spaulding where he supervised a nine-lawyer
group whose clients included Monsanto Agricultural Company, .
. . still later Deputy Commissioner for Policy at the United
States Food and Drug Administration, . . . and later with the
law firm of King & Spaulding. . . . now head of the
Washington, D.C. office of Monsanto Corporation.*

http://www.purefood.org/Monsanto/revolvedoor.cfm

[LibertyorDeath]

35. Thanks recommended

:kick::kick::kick:

[BiggJawn]

37. Who benefits from Frankenfood? The Stockholders...

...of the Corporations who own the patents on these abominations.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

38. Thank You!

I was just having a conversation with someone about this last night!
Now I have ANOTHER link for him!

You know who you are!
:hi:

[chlamor]

40. Meet the civil rights group that supports Monsanto-Blackwashing

This article is a must read to really see how the PR machine works in depth.



Meet the civil rights group whose rhetoric comes from Wise Use, whose support comes from Monsanto, and whose agenda coincides precisely with that of George W. Bush

A couple of years back I wrote a piece called 'The Fake Parade'. It was about a march at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg that had been widely reported as a protest by poor Third World farmers in support of GMOs. A leading light of the Biotechnology Industry Organisation declared the march "a turning point" because "real, live, developing-world farmers" had begun "speaking for themselves". What they had to say seemed pretty unpalatable to the environmental and development NGOs that have raised concerns over GM crops. A commentary on the march in The (London) Times was headlined, "I do not need white NGOs to speak for me" while, during the march itself, a "Bullshit award" was presented to the Indian environmentalist Vandana Shiva for being "a mouthpiece of western eco-imperialism".

The Fake Parade' showed the march was a charade. For instance, the main "developing-world farmer" quoted by the man from BIO turned out never to have farmed in his life. Instead, Chengal Reddy headed a lobby for big commercial farmers in Andhra Pradesh that aspired to becoming the operational arm of the trade association for the agrochemical companies active in India. Similarly, the "media contact" for the march and for the "Bullshit award" was the daughter of a US lumber industrialist, who had worked out of various free market NGOs, such as the Washington-based Competitive Enterprise Institute. Her specialty was "counter protest".

<snip>

The "principal orator" at Zoellick's press conference was CS Prakash, a biotech professor of Indian origin at Tuskegee University in Alabama. Prakash travels the world promoting GM crops on behalf of the U.S. State Department. He also serves as the principal investigator of a USAID project "to promote biotechnology awareness in Africa". But he is best known for his AgBioWorld campaign, under whose banner he has sent a stream of petitions and press releases in support of GM crops to international bodies and meetings, as well as to science journals and the media. AgBioWorld presents itself as a mainstream science campaign "that has emerged from academic roots and values" but its co-founder and "Deputy President" is Greg Conko of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, whose multi-million dollar budget comes from corporations like Monsanto, Dow Chemical and Exxon/Mobil. CEI was among the organisers of the Cancun event where CORE's Niger Innis handed out awards to the advocates of "lethal eco-imperialism". Conko was also an invited guest at Zoellick's press conference.

Conspicuous in its absence from Zoellick's guest list was the corporation that stood to gain most from the WTO action. But when it came to honoring Bush's election strategist at CORE's celebratory dinner at the New York Hilton, Monsanto was certainly no ghost at the feast. Hugh Grant - not the actor but the CEO of Monsanto - presided as chairman of the occasion. A little black-washing at an MLK event was a PR opportunity too good to pass up, particularly in light of other recent events. Only days before Grant's appearance, news had broken that his company was to pay $1.5 million in penalties under US anti-bribery laws, for passing $50,000 to a senior Indonesian environmental official in an unsuccessful bid to amend or repeal the requirement for an environmental impact statement on new crop varieties.

More at:http://www.socialistfuture.org.uk/TheirSay/Monsanto.htm

[Viva_La_Revolution]

39. Subject: From a Monsanto Victim...

http://www.commonground.ca/iss/0401150/percy_schmeiser....

I’ve been farming since 1947 when I took over from my father. My wife and I are known on the Prairies as seed developers in canola and as seed savers. Hundreds of thousands of farmers save their seed from year to year.

I was also a member of the provincial legislature. I was on many agricultural committees, both on the provincial level and representing the province on the federal level. I was mayor of my community and a councillor for over 25 years. So, all my life I’ve worked for the betterment of farmers and rules, laws and regulations that would benefit them and make their farming operations viable.

The whole issue of GMOs can be divided into three main categories: the first category is the issue of the property rights of farmers versus the intellectual property rights of multinationals like Monsanto. The second issue is the health and danger to our food with the introduction of GMOs. The third issue is the environment.

more at link

I posted this months ago in Science
-http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

[chlamor]

41. Multinational Chemical Cos. to Feed The World?- Does anyone believe this?

The development of GE foods is not being driven by farmers, consumers or less-developed countries but by large multinational chemical companies who have recognised a business opportunity. Six major companies now dominate the production of GE foods worldwide: Monsanto, DuPont, Hoechst, Novartis, Rhône Poulenc and Zeneca. These now style themselves as the ‘Life Sciences’ industry with activities which may span food, food additives and pharmaceuticals as well as their more traditional roles of chemical and pesticide production.

Governments of developed countries are also supporting the introduction of GE foods. In 1994, the Biotechnology and Biological Science Research Council (BBSRC) was formed to replace the Agriculture and Food Research Council in Britain, reflecting a change in emphasis in agricultural research. Many representatives of large corporations sit on Research and Strategy Boards of the BBSRC5 , giving them the ability to influence the research programme. In sharp contrast, consumer and public interest groups (other than the Country Landowners’ Association) are given no such opportunity for input.

<snip>

Modern agricultural systems have caused serious environmental damage, including pollution and health problems through the use of large amounts of chemical inputs, and the erosion of genetic diversity through reliance on a small number of crops and varieties. Small farmers in less developed countries, unable to afford the expensive inputs of intensive agricultural systems, have been prevented from competing with cheap imports and their livelihoods have been placed at risk. National debt burdens have forced poor countries to focus on cash crops, not staple foods. Genetic engineering looks set to perpetuate and intensify many of the problems which have led to present day food insecurity. Corporate control, products designed for a developed world market, packages of expensive seed and inputs coupled with the potential for further environmental harm as a result of genetic pollution mean any benefits will remain concentrated in developed nations.

The complex issues surrounding food provision are unlikely to be solved by a new technological fix. However, by selling GE foods as a panacea to political and social problems, governments and industry may be able to avoid difficult questions while large multinational corporations can look forward to a prosperous future. The promotion of genetic engineering as an essential prerequisite to feed the world of the future is therefore little more than a smokescreen to drive acceptance of the technology in the developed world and the global aspirations of the companies involved.

http://www.genewatch.org/Publications/Briefs/Brief3.htm

[chlamor]

42. Monsanto:Playing God

Monsanto: Playing God

by Sale, Kirkpatrick

Open the article in The Nation Digital Archive

Abstract:

The article focuses on the new corporate campaign by life science company Monsanto Co. to make one feel good about biotechnology. The new Monsanto is "a life sciences company," which means that it is interested in creating, controlling, patenting and profiting from life. "Biology is the key science shared among the company's agriculture, food and health businesses," one of its official reports says, "to create new, integrated ways to improve human health and well-being while protecting the environment and natural systems."

Selections from Full Text:
...And Monsanto-well, Monsanto assures itself a bunch of beholden farmers who not only have to buy seeds from it every year (farmers are warned against saving or selling the seed for replanting) but have to use its pesticides, and only its pesticides, year after year...
...For those interested in the artistry of corporate propaganda, it's available from Monsanto's Environmental Public Affairs A2SP, 800 N. Lindbergh Boulevard, St...
...The old Monsanto was a chemical company, and had been since 1901, but its chemical division was spun off into a separate company m 1997...
...Monsanto: Playing God KIRKPATRICK SALE Robert Shapiro is the sort of guy who calls himself just plain "Bob" in the pages of his glossy annual report...

http://www.nationarchive.com/Summaries/v268i0009_12.htm

[welshTerrier2]

43. great thread ... thanks ...

and perfect timing ... this weekend i have to help my niece write a paper on this topic ... she originally was supposed to take the "pro GMO" side ... we were able to get her switched over to the "anti GMO" side ... as many have pointed out, there is much more to this than just science ... and the politics sure don't smell too good ...

fwiw, here's another thread running on this topic on the recently re-activated Kucinich website: http://www.kucinich.us/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=313

[DemExpat]

48. Thanks for this, chlamor.

:yourock:

DemEx

[chlamor]

54. Monsanto History

Headquartered just outside St. Louis, Missouri, the Monsanto Chemical Company was founded in 1901 by John Francis Queeny. Queeny, a self-educated chemist, brought the technology to manufacture saccharin, the first artificial sweetener, from Germany to the United States. In the 1920s, Monsanto became a leading manufacturer of sulfuric acid and other basic industrial chemicals, and is one of only four companies to be listed among the top ten U.S. chemical companies in every decade since the 1940s.

By the 1940s, plastics and synthetic fabrics had become a centerpiece of Monsanto’s business. In 1947, a French freighter carrying ammonium nitrate fertilizer blew up at a dock 270 feet from Monsanto’s plastics plant outside Galveston, Texas. More than 500 people died in what came to be seen as one of the chemical industry’s first major disasters. The plant was manufacturing styrene and polystyrene plastics, which are still important constituents of food packaging and various consumer products. In the 1980s the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) listed polystyrene as fifth in its ranking of the chemicals whose production generates the most total hazardous waste.

In 1929, the Swann Chemical Company, soon to be purchased by Monsanto, developed polychlori- nated biphenyls (PCBs), which were widely praised for their nonflammability and extreme chemical stability. The most widespread uses were in the electrical equipment industry, which adopted PCBs as a nonflammable coolant for a new generation of transformers. By the 1960s, Monsanto’s growing family of PCBs were also widely used as lubricants, hydraulic fluids, cutting oils, waterproof coatings, and liquid sealants. Evidence of the toxic effects of PCBs appeared as early as the 1930s, and Swedish scientists studying the biological effects of DDT began finding significant concentrations of PCBs in the blood, hair, and fatty tissue of wildlife in the 1960s.

<snip>

Monsanto’s association with dioxin can be traced back to its manufacture of the herbicide 2,4,5-T, beginning in the late 1940s. “Almost immediately, its workers started getting sick with skin rashes, inexplicable pains in the limbs, joints and other parts of the body, weakness, irritability, nervousness and loss of libido,” explains Peter Sills, author of a forthcoming book on dioxin. “Internal memos show that the company knew these men were actually as sick as they claimed, but it kept all that evidence hidden.” An explosion at Monsanto’s Nitro, West Virginia herbicide plant in 1949 drew further attention to these complaints. The contaminant responsible for these conditions was not identified as dioxin until 1957, but the U.S. Army Chemical Corps apparently became interested in this substance as a possible chemical warfare agent. A request filed by the St. Louis Journalism Review under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act revealed nearly 600 pages of reports and correspondence between Monsanto and the Army Chemical Corps on the subject of this herbicide byproduct, going as far back as 1952.

The herbicide Agent Orange, which was used by U.S. military forces to defoliate the rainforest ecosystems of Vietnam during the 1960s, was a mixture of 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D that was available from several sources, but Monsanto’s Agent Orange had concentrations of dioxin many times higher than that produced by Dow Chemical, the defoliant’s other leading manufacturer. This made Monsanto the key defendant in the lawsuit brought by Vietnam War veterans in the United States, who faced an array of debilitating symptoms attributable to Agent Orange exposure. When a $180 million settlement was reached in 1984 between 7 chemical companies and the lawyers for the veterans, the judge ordered Monsanto to pay 45.5 percent of the total.

http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/mar99tokar.htm

[donsu]

56. agree - I avoid them as much as possible

I once asked a Public's manager if Public sold modified corn. he went away and a while later came back and said no.

like I believed him.

I enjoy corn on the cob but stopped eating it yrs. ago because I couldn't be sure if it was modified or not. the only way to be sure is to grow your own, with certified natural seeds.

however, corn/corn products are in a multitude of products. (wish the stores sold organic yellow corn meal). is the cornmeal called Masa? that they make tortias with, organic?

the criminal bushgang told Iraqi farmers they could not save and use their own seeds but had to use US modified seeds that will not reproduce themselves, so the farmers must buy new seeds every yr. aaarrrggghhh

[chlamor]

59. GMO's in pet food

They dump alot of it there as noone wants to eat these toxins. Don't use Hill's "Science" diet, or Purina or Eukanuba if you have pets. Bad for the gut.

[donsu]

57. Monsanto needs to be taken down

where are the terrorists when you need them

[porphyrian]

60. Modern Ludditism

The technology is not the problem, it's the corporations who employ the technology for their own profit that are.

[chlamor]

63. Explain Luddism

Please educate me.

It IS the technology. It has proven to be a disaster.
Give me an example where it has done anything other than create hazards.
I need details.
Tell me what is the viral promoter used in gene splicing?
What is horizontal gene transfer?

Look into this.

[porphyrian]

67. Allow me to use a dictionary for you...

luddite

n 1: any opponent of technological progress 2: one of the 19th century English workmen who destroyed labor-saving machinery that they thought would cause unemployment

Try researching the whole of materials available on genetic modification, not just the ones developed to prove how bad it is. Try speaking with some biologists and geneticists about genetic modification and the processes involved. Once you have thoroughly researched the topic, we'll talk.

[chlamor]

70. You don't understand Luddism-Expand your definition-Learn the History

you understand gene theory. Love that congealed ideology in the dictionary. Now maybe you can look at how you have come to have such a wrongheaded and propagandized view of Luddism. Read on and know who your oppressors are. Do you know the history of the Diggers? I don't just mean dictionary definitions. Do you know about the enclosure of the commons and how that relates to todays corporate control of every phase of our society including the way we misunderstand freedom movements and use the Masters definitions?

These were men who had known modest prosperity when the textile trades were cottage industries, in communities where custom and convention were the secure and comforting warp and woof of the social fabric and had been for centuries, who now were reduced to working for pennies when there was any work to be had.

Forced to send their wives and little children off to factories for the pittances that went to buy food when there was any to be had, they were condemned to a life of soot and filth and rain as black as ink, with sewage for drinking water, and shacks and hovels for shelter starvation and disease so prevalent that a labourer's life expectancy in the industrial cities was not much more than 20 years, and, in all, as one cry from the stocking knitters put it, 'a state of misery wretchedness itself can not depict'. They were men who were victims of giant new factories, many run by never-ceasing steam engines, that allowed a single man or woman (who could endure endless hours, gruelling work and harsh supervision in intolerable conditions) to do the work that two or three hundred men had done just decades before; but moreover, victims of a giant new factory system, in which for the first time the machine became dominant over the human, and the old ideas of what were proper and rewardable modes of work were overturned, the old customs and tenets of honest wages, good goods, and just prices were discarded in place of relations built upon power, wealth, success, and a morality guided by no aim higher or more finely spun than profit.

<snip>

Enter the computer

I have called one of the subtitles of my book on the Luddites 'Lessons For the Computer Age' because I believe that we have much to learn from those brave, bewildered, battered armies that created the fictional all-purpose General Ludd as their hero two centuries ago. We are fighting a much more difficult battle now, here in the Second Industrial Revolution driven by the omnipotent microchip, and we know so much more than they about the awesome power, the awesome destructiveness, of industrialism now that we have seen how it has played itself out in these last two centuries all over the world. But we would do well to examine those early Luddites, our great-great-grandparents, as it were and listen to what their experience has to tell. For example, there comes a time when resistance to machinery is right and just, the only moral act in defiance of an immoral world. Violent resistance, however, quite apart from whatever evil may be inherent in it, will bring down upon you the wrath of governments that have made themselves powerful with the weapons of violence and of corporations that have made themselves powerful with the weapons of social control. Violent resistance escalating to the taking of human lives is, again apart from its inherent evil, misguided and counterproductive and carries with it the absolutely debilitating contradiction that it is imitating the very world it is acting against. For other examples: the reform of this industrial system through the very politics it has set up for its protection and perpetuation is futile, and the Tweedledum- Tweedledee party election game is as much a charade today as it was for the Luddites, whose parliament responded to their pleas by making the smashing of machines a capital offence. But of course the idea of a revolution to supplant the industrial system, in addition to involving unacceptable violence, is clearly futile against nation-states for whom self-protection is a raison d'etre and which have a monopoly on the high tech weaponry of warfare besides.

http://www.aislingmagazine.com/aislingmagazine/articles/TAM24/TheLuddites.html

[chlamor]

71. Who Created that definition

is one who knows nothing about, or doesn't want you to know, the industrial purgatory the people of that era were experiencing. Control the way people get their info and you can control the way they think and act. Technology is never neutral. To think you can understand by looking up a definition is certainly a dubious way of learning.

Lessons from the Luddites

By KIRKPATRICK SALE
1. Technologies are never neutral, and some are hurtful.
2. Industrialism is always a cataclysmic process, destroying the past, roiling the present, making the future uncertain.
3. "Only a people serving an apprenticeship to nature can be trusted with machines."
4. The nation-state, synergistically intertwined with industrialism, will always come to its aid and defense, making revolt futile and reform ineffectual.
5. But resistance to the industrial system, based on some grasp of moral principles and rooted in some sense of moral revulsion, is not only possible but necessary.
6. Politically, resistance to industrialism must force the viability of industrial society into public consciousness and debate.
? What purpose does this machine serve?
? What problem has become so great that it needs this solution?
? Is this invention nothing but, as Thoreau put it, an improved means to an unimproved end?
? Who are the winners?
? Who are the losers?
? Will this invention concentrate or disperse power, encourage or discourage self worth?
? Can society at large afford it?
? Can the biosphere?
7. Philosophically, resistance to industrialism must be embedded in an analysis--an ideology, perhaps--that is morally informed, carefully articulated and widely shared.
? Anthropocentrism must be opposed by the principle of biocentrism and the spiritual identification of the human with all living species and systems.
? Globalism must be opposed by the empowerment of the coherent bioregion and small community.
? Industrial capitalism must be opposed by an ecological and sustainable economy built upon accommodation and commitment to the earth.

[porphyrian]

72. How cute, you can look things up.

Good for you.

[Silverhair]

61. What about my insulin?

Granted, it isn't a food. But I am sure that you are aware that human insulin is now produced by a genetically modified organism.

For the sake of your ideological purity, do you want me to stop taking insulin?

[chlamor]

64. Figured

you'd give it that ideological purity slant. Right there with the "They must be Luddites" nonsense. I've got the Monsanto manual right in front of me. Go for it.

Tell me more about your condition.
Tell me more about the cure.
Any other options?
This is right there with "feeding the world" message that the Bio- techsters promote.

[PaulaFarrell]

79. you should probably switch back to the animal-derivedstuff

There have been reports of people not being able to control their symptoms using it. I'd really investigate it if I was you.

Edit to add this link: Diabetics not told of insulin risk

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,315644,00.html

[Silverhair]

104. Consider this:

According to the article you linked: "...insulin extracted from pigs and cattle in slaughterhouses." Slaughterhouse insulin is limited in amount. It is a byproduct of the meat packing industry. Anything that is limited and in high demand has a very high price.

Synthetic insulin does not have that limitation on the supply and is therefore cheaper. It works fine with me. The lower price is a definate benefit to me. In fact, you may want to study how many people died of lack of insulin when the only supply was the slaughterhouses.

[Silverhair]

62. Impossible to stop.

There are about 200 countries in the world. If you should manage to get it outlawed in the US, and even in Western Europe, there would still be lots of countries that would be very happy to allow research labs to be set up in those countries.

[chlamor]

66. It will stop

and the activists have had great successes against GMO's. Only in America are the sheeple so willing to go to the slaughter. The rest of the world rejects the crap cause they have seen the studies. They tried to dump it on Africa for free and were turned away.

Globalization is inevitable is okay for Thomas Friedman to say but I'm fighting the bastards and in fact this high energy agribusiness pariah is on its way out.

[Silverhair]

75. Yep. Modern day Luddite.

The fact that you post in defense of the Luddites is proof enough of that. Your answer to my insulin question shows that you are not willing to admit to any benefits of genetic modification. You appear completely willing to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

I will readily admit that GM may need better controls. But to stop it completely? NO.

I would bet that if this were at the time of the discovery of fire, you would be against fire.

Yes, an advance in technology may mean that a particular occupation may become obsolete. Change is part of life. No one get any guarantees. But change also opens up other opportunities too. And we do benefit from machines making our clothes. I would hate to have to pay the price for hand woven fabrics as my only choice. It was the assembly line that made cars affordable. And the machines made cloth cheaper, so that the cost of clothes came down, thereby enabling the average person to be better dressed.

Of course, the Luddite ideology requires you to deny any advantage to any technological advance.

[PaulaFarrell]

80. luddite is just a label

People seem to use it when they can't actually argue against what's being said. Technology isn't good just by virtue of being an advance on man's knowledge. Scientists could just choose not to go down certain paths. Think of all the technological inventions that have been tried and thrown out when they were proved to be dangerous - DDT, agent orange, thalidomide. Nobody is saying that all technology is bad, but GM is just a giant experiment with no real benefit. I admit that animal-derived insulin has animal welfare issues, but it would be better to address those issues than to come up with an experimental alternative, the main benefit of which is that the patent-holders make lots of money.

[Silverhair]

82. You are wrong about the insulin.

Cost is a huge factor. Animal insulin was expensive.

Suitability for humans is another. Many people can't use animal insulin just as some people can't use penicillin.

The main benefits of the new insulin are that everyone can use it, and it is much cheaper. If the company makes money from it, I don't mind as they have provided me with a benefit.

GM is a new science. Most science fields do not yield great benefits at first. Look at the early days of electrical study. The benefits were rather limited, but if there had not been those days, there would not be our modern electronics now. I hope you do see modern electronics as a benefit for all.

Same with GM. At this state it is a baby, and needs to mature. But you seem determined to kill it.

[PaulaFarrell]

85. I'd have to argue with that

From what I've read, most people could use animal insulin, but a much greater number have problems with the GM version. It's had for me to compare animal vs GM costs - do you have figures? I find it hard to believe that a technology that cost millions to develop is cheaper than something that's been around for years, unless it was highly subsidised. The problem with GM is not necessarily that it's ineffective, it's that the potential danger far outweighs any potential benefit. We don't need it and we don't know what the long-term effects are. I really do think scientists are playing with fire. I would defintely kill it if I had the chance; ditto nuclear weapons and a few other techmologies.

[Silverhair]

107. Your crystal ball is broken. Get it fixed.

You have no idea of the potential benefits. The science has just started. You are simply afraid of the unknown, unwilling to explore new worlds.

Even nukes have had a beneficial effect. When two nations both have nukes, they are very careful NOT to get involved with a war with each other. Since WWII India & Pakistan have gone to war several times. Since both became nuclear powers, in their latest difficulty they went to pains to avoid a hot war. They solved their difference with diplomacy, because both were scared of war. That is a good thing. (However, that does have a limit. I still prefer nuclear nonproliferation. But that is a topic for a different thread.)The US & the Soviet never went to a hot war. Both were afraid of it. So if you went back in time and killed nukes, you could well be giving the world a hot WWIII.

Regarding insulin. Animal insulin had a limited supply, therefore a high price. Synthetic insulin has a plentiful supply, therefore a lower price. Animal insulin may be cheap now because the demand for it is fairly low. But if the demand is low, it is because most of the demand is being supplied by snyth insulin

[chlamor]

88. Labels

to avoid looking at the totality of the technosphere and what it has done to our world. Pretty sad.

[Silverhair]

105. Yawn. Sounds like you believe the myth of the noble savage.

Sounds like you want us to go back to pre-fire hunting and gathering. Maybe you think that we would all sit around in the lotus position and commune with the universal oneness of nature.

[Zynx]

77. Um, this is a load of psuedo-science garbage.

Much of the information on that site is *MASSIVELY* wrong. That's all I'm going to say - this is the sort of flawed premise argument that is unworthy of debate.

[chlamor]

89. Now we know

Don't bother posting evidence. I guess it must be so.

Can you give some examples of GMO successes?

On Edit: I forgot to genuflect to the God of science on my way out.
Sorry but I need details. Maybe your right. Display the evidence.

[Sufi Marmot]

91. Well, for starters...

Can you give some examples of GMO successes?

Over the last ~25 years or so, a substantial portion of biological knowledge, including a lot of (most?) biomedical research, was accomplished through the use of genetically-modified model organisms. Without GMOs we would understand only a fraction of what we know today about the composition and organization of cells and tissues.

-SM

[chlamor]

92. Where is the example?

What is your favorite GE food?

[Sufi Marmot]

94. Take your pick...

Genetically modified model organisms such as transgenic mice, fruit flies, nematodes, and yeast have all made invaluable contributions to both basic biology and applied biomedical research.

Your reference to GE food is a strawman - it's possible to have serious concerns about the safety and necessity of GM food (which I do) while recognizing that genetic modification itself of certain organisms in certain contexts is not always a bad thing.

-SM

[chlamor]

97. Simplistic gene-centered science

With all due respect and true solidarity "gene therapy" is a ruse, and a well funded one at that. It's in vogue. Wrong questions, wrong answers. I need material, tangible or at least foreseeable results.Do you have a short list of those contributions?
Also, I cannot at the moment locate the document which lists the Superfund sites caused as a result of various Biotech crap but I shall hope to and post it. It is a very energy intensive process as is all industrial science and medicine for that matter. As a culture we are so far off the path and biotech is the latest bad progression on that trail.



The profusion of cancer gene therapy reflects the desperate attempts of the simplistic gene-centred science to cope with the complex reality of the organism. Decades of cancer research focusing on molecular genetics have brought us no closer to understanding the causes of cancer while many cancers have been increasing at alarming rates.

In gene therapy, an artificial construct – consisting in the minimum, of a promoter driving the expression of a gene, and the gene itself - is delivered, either by viral vectors, or as naked DNA into cells. There are two main ways to carry out gene therapy, ex vivo and in vivo. In the ex vivo procedure, the constructs are transfected (or transduced) into cells outside the body, and the resulting transgenic cells are reintroduced into the body. In the in vivo procedure, the constructs are introduced into the body by numerous routes depending on the locating of target cells, emphasizing the ease with which cells take up foreign DNA. These include rubbing on the skin, applying in drops to the eyes, inhalation, swallowing, injection or perfusion into the bloodstream or directly into the tissues such muscle or solid tumours.

Gene therapy involves introducing genes into human cells in order to cure diseases. Billions have been invested, and hundreds of clinical trials carried out since 1990, mostly in the United States, but there has not been a single documented case of the miracle cure that was promised.

It took the death of a healthy teenager Gelsinger in an early phase clinical trial in September 1999 to alert the public to the hazards of gene therapy. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) responded to widespread concern. Clinical trials were suspended. A public enquiry turned up 652 cases of serious adverse events that went unreported, along with seven other deaths. David Baltimore, Nobel laureate and president of the biotech company Caltech with interests in gene therapy, declared, " I disagree we’ve had any benefit from gene therapy trials so far, many of us are now asking, what the hell are we doing putting these things into people?"

Administrative changes were put in place amid calls for more research, and clinical trials resumed with further promises. Although more stringent regulation can tighten up the protocols and ensure quality control, the inherent technical and scientific problems remain unsolved. Some of the necessary research that should have been done long ago is only now being carried out, revealing findings that confirm our worst fears.

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/GMhumans.php

[Sufi Marmot]

102. Actually, my examples didn't mention gene therapy in humans...

Again with the strawmen... :shrug:

You want specific results: An awful lot of what we know about cancer has resulted from the dissection of DNA repair and signal transduction pathways in model organisms. The wnt signalling pathway, for one example. Here's another example, the use of green-fluorescent protein and its derivatives have made an enormous contribution to our understanding of biology, in many fields.

Decades of cancer research focusing on molecular genetics have brought us no closer to understanding the causes of cancer while many cancers have been increasing at alarming rates. :eyes: Here's just one example (one that is keeping my great aunt alive...) of why that statement is absolutely ignorant. Gleevec

-SM

[chlamor]

103. Understanding the causes of cancer

Industrial society.Biotechnology isn't a science it's a social problem and a scheme for venture capital and the extension of chemical companies toxic insanity (the most polluting entities on earth outside US military).

Prevention is the cure.

[chlamor]

93. World's largest study on biotech crops shows significant damage

From: "News Update from The Campaign" , March 21, 2005

The world's largest study on the effects of biotech crops on butterflies and bees has been conducted in the United Kingdom (UK). The study compared fields of genetically engineered canola with fields of commercially grown canola.

More than 150 people worked on the three-year study that was funded by the UK government. One million weeds and two million insects were counted to determine the results of what was the largest study ever on the impact of genetically engineered crops on wildlife.

The disturbing results show a two-thirds reduction of butterfly numbers and bee populations were cut in half in the genetically engineered canola fields. The reduction of these butterflies and bees could have a significant impact on animals up the food chain such as birds.

It should be noted that the Bayer CropScience canola used in the UK experimental study is not being grown commercially in Europe. However, it is currently being grown widely in the United States and Canada.

This is yet another example of the irresponsible behavior of the governments of the United States and Canada in the regulation of genetically engineered crops. Genetically engineered crops have not been adequately tested for their potential impact on wildlife, human health and the environment by the U.S. and Canadian governments.

To benefit the profits of a small number of biotech companies, the U.S. and Canadian governments have turned a blind eye to the potential dangers of these radical gene-altered biotech crops. Citizens living in the U.S. and Canada are a part of the largest feeding experiment ever conduced in human history -- and so are our butterflies, birds and bees.

[chlamor]

95. The Myth that GE is like conventional breeding

I should, right away, dispel the myth that genetic engineering is just like conventional breeding techniques. It is not. Genetic engineering bypasses conventional breeding by using the artificially constructed vectors to multiply copies of genes, and in many cases, to carry and smuggle genes into cells. Once inside cells, these vectors slot themselves into the host genome. In this way, transgenic organisms are made carrying the desired transgenes. The insertion of foreign genes into the host genome has long been known to have many harmful and fatal effects including cancer; and this is born out by the low success rate of creating desired transgenic organisms. Typically, a large number of eggs or embryos have to be injected or infected with the vector to obtain a few organisms that successfully express the transgene.

The most common vectors used in genetic engineering biotechnology are a chimaeric recombination of natural genetic parasites from different sources, including viruses causing cancers and other diseases in animals and plants, with their pathogenic functions `crippled', and tagged with one or more antibiotic resistance `marker' genes, so that cells transformed with the vector can be selected.

For example, the vector most widely used in plant genetic engineering is derived from a tumour-inducing plasmid carried by the soil bacterium Agrobacterium tumefaciens. In animals, vectors are constructed from retroviruses causing cancers and other diseases. A vector currently used in fish has a framework from the Moloney marine leukaemic virus, which causes leukaemia in mice, but can infect all mammalian cells. It has bits from the Rous Sarcoma virus, causing sarcomas in chickens, and from the vesicular stomatitis virus, causing oral lesions in cattle, horses, pigs and humans.

Such mosaic vectors are particularly hazardous. Unlike natural parasitic genetic elements which have various degrees of host specificity, vectors used in genetic engineering, partly by design, and partly on account of their mosaic character, have the ability to overcome species barriers, and to infect a wide range of species.

http://www.ratical.org/co-globalize/MaeWanHo/UnholyAlli.html

[slutticus]

98. I've been biting my tounge....or......my fingers.....whatever

Most of the shit on that page made me cringe.



It's truly misleading.

It would take too much time to rip it to shreds...I have better things to do.

[chlamor]

99. More problems w/genetically alterd crops and products

Farmers facing problems with
genetically altered crops and products


• In Oregon, a genetically engineered Klebsiella soil bacteria, intended to aid in the decomposition of wood chips, unexpectedly caused catastrophic soil infertility. 70% of plants grown in soil containing the novel bacteria die shortly after germination.
• In USA, rBGH-a genetically engineered growth hormone intended to boost milk production, has increased health problems for cows including higher mortality rates, lower calving rates, and increased mastitis. It has also created carcinogens in milk supply.
• In Scotland, Canada, and Denmark, genetically engineered oil-seed rape (canola) has been found to interbreed with related wild weeds within one season opening up the possibility of novel super weeds which are resistant to conventional weed control methods.
• 1996/7 yield of genetically altered Bt cotton was lower than natural cotton crops. In USA, farmers complained of massive pest infestations from insects the cotton was supposed to resist. Others suffered malformed cotton plants. In Australia, cotton growers rated the crop as very poor value; the 30,000 hectares of Bt cotton planted was only 60% effective.
• In Canada, an unprecedented 60,000 bags of genetically altered canola seed were recalled in Spring 1997, after the seed was found to be accidentally genetically contaminated with an unapproved variety of herbicide-tolerant gene-altered seed. Some farmers who did sow GM crops in 1997 reported a 50% reduction in yield compared to conventional canola.
• In Brazil, 1997 soybean crops were kept free of genetic engineering. They sold out in record time. In contrast, Canada could not guarantee its 1997 canola crop was GE-free, therefore Japan and EU refused Canadian crops. 1996 exports of canola were worth $180 million, but zero in 1997
• Oil-seed rape plants genetically engineered to ward off insect pests have been found to threaten bees, shortening their lives and impairing their ability to recognise flower smells.
• Pioneer Hybrid seed company genetically altered soybeans by adding a gene from a Brazil nut. The intention was to enhance its nutritional value, but the bean never reached the market because some individuals suffered allergic reactions to the novel soybean.
• In Canada, supposedly disabled viral genes inserted into a cucumber have recombined with other viral material to produce reactivated viruses capable of infecting other plants. This has prompted US Department of Agriculture to propose new restrictions on GE crops amid fears that viral genes inserted in millions of plants will cause new human illness.
• In USA, over 800,000 acres of herbicide resistant GE cotton were planted in 1997. The US Dept. of Agriculture is concerned about complaints from farmers in Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Louisiana who reported that bolls were falling off their plants. Crop failure was apparently a problem in hundreds of thousands of acres, with farmers reporting losses of up to US$1 million.

http://www.naturallaw.org.nz/genetics/NZStory/farmers.asp

[chlamor]

100. References- Composting is good-Humanure

Structural and regulatory mechanisms of the DNA and nutritional quality of foods

Genetic engineering can interfere with crucial DNA self-regulatory mechanisms.

Biotechnology advocates have claimed that because very similar DNA structures and sequences are shared by virtually all life forms on earth, the process of transferring genes between species will be inherently safe. This is a gross simplification of genetic function. It overlooks the complexity of regulatory mechanisms which are specific to each species. These regulatory mechanisms are known to be disrupted by genetic engineering. This disruption can introduce new toxins into food or degrade the nutritional quality of food by altering the timing or concentrations at which a particular protein is expressed.

http://www.naturallaw.org.nz/genetics/NZStory/farmers.asp

http://www.naturallaw.org.nz/genetics/HandBook/5.htm

Scientific references:
• Mutant weeds raise fear of disaster for farmers. Dobson, R. Sunday Times, May 26, 1996.
• The risk of crop transgene spread. Mikkelsen, T.R. et al., Nature, 380:31, March 7, 1996.
• Research Notes, Genetic Crops. (The transgenic leap). Community Nutrition Institute (CNI), 12 Jan 1996.
• Foreign DNA sequences are received by a wild-type strain of Aspergillus niger after co-culture with transgenic higher plants. Hoffman, T., Golz, C. and Schieder, O. Curr. Genet. 27, 70-76, 1994.
• Gene dispersal from transgenic potatoes to conspecifics. Skogsmyr, I. Theor. appl. Gene., 88, 770-774, 94.
• Ecological risks of transgenic crops. Abbot, R.J. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 9, 280-282, 1994.
• Risk assessment: do we let history repeat itself? de Zoeten, G. Phytopathology, 81, 585-586, 1991.
• OSU study finds genetic altering of bacterium upsets natural order. Hill, R.L. The Oregonian, August 8, 1994
• The effects of genetically engineered micro-organisms on soil food-webs. Holmes, M.T., Ingham, E.R. Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America (Supplement), 75, 97, 1994.
• Herbicide-tolerant crops. Union of Concerned Scientists, Gene Exchange, 5(1), 6-8, 1994.
• Environmental concerns with the development of herbicide-tolerant plants. Goldburg, R.J. Weed Technology, 6, 647-652, 1994.
• Inheritance and stability of resistance to Bt in diamond black moth. Hama, H. et al., Applied Entomology and Zoology 27, 355-362, 1992.
• Fear of genetically modified foods, Walker, M.C., (CEO Iceland Foods), The Times, 24 January 1997
• Mississippi investigating Monsanto's cotton, Memphis Commercial Appeal, 8 August 1997.
• The Bt Report, The Australian Cotton Grower, January-February 1997
• Boll worms chew a hole in gene-engineered cotton, Nature, 382, 25 July 1996.
• Seed recall raises biosafety questions, Manitoba Co-Operator, 24 April 1997.
• Flavr Savr tomato not available. Waterbury, J.P., Wisconsin State Journal, Money page 6B, 28 May 1996.
• Sting in the tail for bees. Crabb, C. New Scientist, 16 August 1997.

[Silverhair]

109. Especially since he would not listen anyway.

He has an agenda, and will not accept any science that conflicts it. In his own way, he is much like the people who will not accept the scientific evidence of evolution.

[chlamor]

111. Monsanto Uses enormous amounts of energy creating wastelands all along

the way. As usual you have provided no examples or evidence. I'm all ears.

Monsanto's Record-The VERY short version:
-Used 17.6 million giga-joules in 1996
-33.1 million pounds of hazardous chemicals 1996
-2.8 billion pounds of carbon dioxide plus more emissions at jointly owned plants-1996
-31 registered Superfund sites, the actual total is about 102, that doesn't include sites it contaminated when it was merely a chemical company pre-1997

Surrounding St. Louis area is second only to Seveso,Italy in dioxin contaminated sites.
Lived there-First hand experience.

Go down Hall St. where the truckers bring in cargo. Ask them how many of their fellow workers have died from cancers. Find out who Russell Bliss is. Find out who dumped the dioxin all over Hall St. and all over the metropolitan area. Ask these workers and their families about the Gene Giant.

Progress

[Silverhair]

112. You have already proven yourself a Luddite.

In particular you have a hard-on for Monsanto. You mix up GM and Monsanto as if they were the same. They aren't. All of my comments have been about GM, not Monsanto. I won't defend Monsanto. I don't need to. They are NOT the only company doing GM research.

And since you are ready to throw out the baby with the bathwater; since you deny ANY possible benefit from ANY GM, then I feel free to disregard your claims as likely bogus and ridicule your stance. I simply have no respect for Luddites. BTW - the Luddites lost in England. They were not able to stop the mechanical looms.

I rely upon Scientific American and Discover magazines to keep me up on what is happening in the sciences. They have had some articles on GM, as had Reason magazine. I found their articles to be credible. The two science magazines have excellent reputations for their science. I accept them as having more credibility than you.

[chlamor]

114. Corrupt corporate science in Academia-Follow the Money

Who is funding? What is the social context? The political context? Science as unbiased is laughable.

I've posted numerous hazardous consequences and failures of GM. GM hasn't worked even under its own definitions.

What do you think is the best example of a GMO success?
Pesticide reduction? Nope
Feed the World? HAHAHAHA-AAARGH

Keep on with the labels it is a time honored tradition.

In the meantime here is a copy of bits from JohnyCanucks post-Have you read this?

Which science?

Government biologists initially refused to accept that power stations in Britain or Germany could kill fish or trees hundreds of miles away in Scandinavia; later the idea of acidification caused by SO2 was universally accepted.

Government scientists originally did not agree that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were destroying the ozone layer; but during the 1987 negotiations on the Montreal Protocol the industry – ICI and Du Pont – abruptly changed sides, and ministers and scientists soon fell into line alongside them.

The Lawther working party of Government scientists roundly rejected any idea that health-damaging high levels of lead in the blood came overwhelmingly from vehicle exhausts, only to find that after lead-free petrol was introduced, blood-lead levels fell 70%.

The Southwood committee of BSE scientists insisted in 1990 that scrapie in cattle could not cross the species barrier, only to find by 1996 that it did just that. And there are many more examples.
Scientific uncertainty and the precautionary principle

The only way to deal with these problems is by applying the precautionary principle. Perhaps the classic formulation of the precautionary principle was at the Rio Summit in 1992 principle 15: “in order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by states according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.”

That principle survived renegotiation attempts during the Johannesburg Summit in September 2002, and was reaffirmed in the Plan of Implementation that resulted from the Summit.

Why has this not been adopted by scientists and policy-makers? There can be only one reason: cynicism of not disturbing powerful political and economic interests.

It is highly disturbing to realise how long it takes for poisonous chemicals to be banned after scientific evidence emerged that they were harmful.

Independent scientists vilified

Efforts were made to discredit independent critics, as in the case of Richard Lacey and Mark Purdey in BSE, & Arpad Pusztai in GM food, and too many other examples.

Data and reports have been regularly suppressed or publishers intimidated, as in the Great Lakes chemical case.

The Southwood Committee on BSE believed a ban on the use of all cattle brains in human food chain might be justified, but considered that politically unfeasible.

There was also incompetence: the Department of Health was not informed by MAFF (the then Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, now disbanded) about the emergence of new disease (BSE) until 17 months after MAFF was first alerted.
Pervasive mistrust of science and scientists

No wonder that there is a pervasive mistrust of science and scientists. But the roots for this go deep.

First, the Rothschild revolution under Thatcher made the funding of science much more subservient to business interests. Over the past two decades, getting finance for scientific inquiry inimical to the commercial and political establishments has become increasingly difficult. The science is owned by a tiny number of very large companies and they only commission research which they believe will further their own commercial interests. And when that turns out not to be the case, as when research turns up results which may be embarrassing to the company, they are most often dubbed “commercially confidential” and never published.

In addition, companies have learned that small investments in endowing chairs, sponsoring research programmes or hiring professors for out-of-hours projects can produce disproportionate payoffs in generating reports, articles, reviews and books, which may not be in the public interest, but certainly benefit corporate bottom lines. The effects of corporate generosity - donating millions for this research laboratory or that scientific programme – can be subtly corrosive. Other universities regard the donor as a pote ntial source of funds and try to ensure nothing is said which might jeopardise big new cash possibilities. And academics raising embarrassing questions (as they should) - such as who is paying for the lab; how independent is the peer review; who profits from the research; is the university's integrity compromised? – would soon learn that keeping their heads down is the best way not to risk their career, let alone future research funding. The message is clear: making money is good, and dissent is stifled. Commerce and the truth don't readily mix.

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/WSoSCYT.php

[Silverhair]

115. Standard Luddite answer w/ tinfoil hat mixed in. Yawn.

Sorry, I simply don't buy into all the conspiracy theory BS.

[Tinoire]

84. "US declares Iraqis can't save seeds"-Pay Monsanto or die

"US declares Iraqis can't save seeds"-Pay Monsanto or die

"As part of sweeping "economic restructuring" implemented by the Bush Administration in Iraq, Iraqi farmers will no longer be permitted to save their seeds, which include seeds the Iraqis themselves have developed over hundreds of years. Instead, they will be forced to buy seeds from US corporations. That is because in recent years, transnational corporations have patented and now own many seed varieties originated or developed by indigenous peoples. In a short time, Iraq will be living under the new American credo:
Pay Monsanto, or starve ."

"The American Administrator of the Iraqi CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) government, Paul Bremer, updated Iraq's intellectual property law to 'meet current internationally-recognized standards of protection'. The updated law makes saving seeds for next year's harvest, practiced by 97% of Iraqi farmers in 2002, and is the standard farming practice for thousands of years across human civilizations, to be now illegal.. Instead, farmers will have to obtain a yearly license for genetically modified (GM) seeds from American corporations. These GM seeds have typically been modified from seeds developed over thousands of generations by indigenous farmers like the Iraqis, and shared freely like agricultural 'open source.'"
According to Order 81, paragraph 66 - , issued by L. Paul Bremer , the people in Iraq are now prohibited from saving seeds and may only plant seeds for their food from licensed, authorized U.S. distributors.

The paragraph states, "Farmers shall be prohibited from re-using seeds of protected varieties or any variety mentioned in items 1 and 2 of paragraph of Article 14 of this chapter."

Written in massively intricate legalese, Order 81 directs the reader at Article 14, paragraph 2 to paragraph of Article 4, which states any variety that is different from any other known variety may be registered in any country and become a protected variety of seed - thus defaulting it into the "protected class" of seeds and prohibiting the Iraqis from reusing them the following season. Every year, the Iraqis must destroy any seed they have, and repurchase seeds from an authorized supplier, or face fines, penalties and/or jail time."
www.globalresearch.ca/articles/KHA501A.html

[bloom]

108. That by itself

is enough to make me hate it.



Seems like people in Europe have been all over this for years.

Not so much in the news over here - or when there is - it's a defense.

[Vladimir]

86. The real problem isn't the technology, its the system

At the risk of being branded old-skool, its about the capitalism, not the technology. Almost all technological advances have the potential to be used for good or ill ends - witness nuclear power - that is not a distinguishing feature in itself. The real problem with GM foods today is that in the big-business, neo-liberal framework in which they are used, there can be no confidence that either:

a) Safeguards exist to minimise or eliminate the harmful effects of the technology

b) The technology will be used for the benefit of humanity and not the profiteering of the fat-cat corporate suits.

Scientific advances, GM included, are an opportunity, but they have to be managed democratically, with the aim to use them in a productive manner. The ability to genetically modify a crop is not evil or dangerous in itself, but the indiscriminate spread of GMs throughout the third world with the intent to tie their agriculture and food production to the interests of Western corporations most surely is.

[chlamor]

87. Technology is never neutral

On Edit: The technology and the system are one and the same

Lessons from the Luddites

By KIRKPATRICK SALE
1. Technologies are never neutral, and some are hurtful.
2. Industrialism is always a cataclysmic process, destroying the past, roiling the present, making the future uncertain.
3. "Only a people serving an apprenticeship to nature can be trusted with machines."
4. The nation-state, synergistically intertwined with industrialism, will always come to its aid and defense, making revolt futile and reform ineffectual.
5. But resistance to the industrial system, based on some grasp of moral principles and rooted in some sense of moral revulsion, is not only possible but necessary.
6. Politically, resistance to industrialism must force the viability of industrial society into public consciousness and debate.
? What purpose does this machine serve?
? What problem has become so great that it needs this solution?
? Is this invention nothing but, as Thoreau put it, an improved means to an unimproved end?
? Who are the winners?
? Who are the losers?
? Will this invention concentrate or disperse power, encourage or discourage self worth?
? Can society at large afford it?
? Can the biosphere?
7. Philosophically, resistance to industrialism must be embedded in an analysis--an ideology, perhaps--that is morally informed, carefully articulated and widely shared.
? Anthropocentrism must be opposed by the principle of biocentrism and the spiritual identification of the human with all living species and systems.
? Globalism must be opposed by the empowerment of the coherent bioregion and small community.
? Industrial capitalism must be opposed by an ecological and sustainable economy built upon accommodation and commitment to the earth.

[Shadowen]

118. "Technology is never neutral"

Bull.

A knife is technology. Tell me how that isn't neutral. It can be used to cut cheese or kill someone. It's all in the user, not the tech.

"Technology" is the practical application of scientific knowledge. Anything that is created by humans is a form of technology. "Technology is never neutral" is therefore a load of codswallop. "And some are hurtful" is particularly amusing. Might as well say that "people are never neutral, and some are hurtful". From a certain point of view, perhaps accurate (in that no one is ever truly "neutral" on everything), but it's a truism. Truisms are the useless children of hindsight.

And for God's sake quit repeating yourself within a thread.

[chlamor]

119. Technology

is not just tools and gadgets.

Spiteful rhetoric seems to be the essence of your post.

What is the water like in Silicon Valley?

On Edit: Maybe you could go through several of Sale's points?

The blue sky is turning brown. Just a neutral matter?
There are consequences-Resource extraction.
Who was displaced for the coltan in the cell phone?
What creatures habitat was destroyed so you and I could be contentious in cyberland?

300 lbs of ore for the copper that goes into one computer-Tailings
Nuclear Waste
Who controls?

[Vladimir]

124. You'll forgive me if I regard industrialism as one of humanity's

great triumphs - I am a communist after all. That does not mean, however, that there aren't valid environmental points to be borne in mind with its implementation - I absolutely agree that the preservation of ecobalance is necessary to our own survival as much as anything else for example - but to suggest that we would all be better off in some pre-industrialist commune is counter-productive I am afraid. As much as anything, it represents (exemplified by point 2) a fear of the unknown and in that sense the worst kind of 'conservativism' there is. And when your author talks about morality - what morality? This biocentrism he speaks of is the same sort of thing that is invoked by opponents of animal testing of drugs, a process which saves thousands if not millions of lives every day. I neither can nor want to 'spiritually' identify with 'all living species', if for no other reason than because my primary concern is, and has to be, towards my fellow human beings who are daily exploited and abused by the jackboot of the neo-liberal dogma across the world.

We must actively embrace technology and technological changes while seeking to place them in a framework that exploits these advances to the betterment of humanity - i.e. a socialist framework.

[chlamor]

125. I suspect

we have many confluences of interest. I do disagree that we should actively embrace technology. We should question it as it has its own imperative. Low tech solutions yes.
Look at the water in Silicon Valley and the cancer rates.
Communism and capitalism are the same in the sense that they are machine manufactured systematic modes. Marx too thrilled to the sight of the machine and was in the thrall of mass production. The evidence points to industialism as a wrecking ball and there is quite a toxic legacy.

your posts in this thread are perhaps the only ones that in disagreement that were not simply venomous. GMOs are a scourge and every example has proven to be a disaster. We must consider all angles and degrees of energy consumption when we consider a technology. How are the children in the Congo harmed by the manufacture and use of cell phones? Howe have we damaged the fragile systems of many waterways with our dams which only serve to satisfy our energy lusT-short term. What are the unforeseen consequences?
we blindly embrace our technologies and are paying a high price. The cheap toys of Empire further distract us and eviscerate us from the source of all our strength and well being-The Land.
I have no fear of the unknown just a deep respect and reverence for ALL creatures and humans are destroying their habitats at alarming rates. For a deeper reading on this I suggest Rutgers biologist David Ehrenfeld's book "The Arrogance of Humanism".
We are but a strand in the web and are in our arrogance destroying the entire fabric.

[chlamor]

90. Humanity is destroying the natural world-Bees and Butterflies

15,000+ species going extinct due to a variety of factors. Progress-Development-Capitalism-Overpopulation-Big Technology-Human Arrogance-Warfare-Big Science-Gadgets
It's all connected.

A TALE OF TWO BOTANIES


Plants, shaped into incredible diversity by 3.8 billion years of evolution, make possible all life, underpin every ecosystem, and are resilient against almost any threat – except human destructiveness. From botany came the genetics of Mendel and Lamarck, formalizing the patient plant-breeding that's created 10,000 years of agriculture.


Now, however, in the name of feeding a growing human population, the process of biological evolution is being transformed. A St. Louis firm is practicing a completely different kind of botany which, in the Cartesian tradition of reducing complex wholes to simple parts, strives to alter isolated genes while disregarding the interactive totality of ecosystems. Seeking what Sir Francis Bacon called "the enlarging of the bounds of Human Empire, to the effecting of all things possible," its ambition is to replace nature's wisdom with people's cleverness; to treat nature not as model and mentor but as a set of limits to be evaded when inconvenient; not to study nature but to restructure it.

As biophysicist Dr. Donella Meadows notes, the new botany aims to align the development of plants not with their evolutionary success but with their economic success: survival not of the fittest but of the fattest, those best able to profit from wide sales of monopolized products. (High-yield, open-pollinated seeds abound; the new crops were created not because they're productive but because they're patentable.) Their economic value is mainly oriented not toward helping subsistence farmers to feed themselves but toward feeding more livestock for the already overfed rich. Most worryingly, the transformation of plant genetics is being accelerated from the measured pace of biological evolution to the speed of next quarter's earnings report. Such haste makes it impossible to foresee and forestall: unintended consequences appear only later, when they may not be fixable, because novel lifeforms aren't recallable.

In nature, all experiments are rigorously tested over eons. Single mutations venture into an unforgiving ecosystem and test their mettle. Whatever doesn't work gets recalled by the Manufacturer. What's alive today is what worked; only successes yield progeny. But in the brave new world of artifice, organisms are briefly tested by their creators in laboratory and field (no government agency systematically tests for nor certifies their long-term safety), then mass-marketed worldwide. The USDA has already approved about 50 genetically engineered crops for unlimited release; US researchers have tested about 4,500 more. Just during 1995­99, the non-Chinese farmland planted to such new crops expanded from zero to an eighth of a billion acres, about the size of Germany. Over half the world's soybeans and a third of the corn now contain genes spliced in from other forms of life. You've probably eaten some lately – unwittingly, since our government prohibits their labeling. The official assumption is that they're different enough to patent but similar enough to make identical food, so Europe's insistence on labeling, to let people choose what they're eating, is considered an irrational barrier to free trade.

Since evolution is a fundamental process, it must occur at every scale at which it's physically possible, down to and including the nanoecosystem of the genome. Shotgunning alien genes into the genome is thus like introducing exotic species into an ecosystem. (Such invasives are among the top threats to global biodiversity today.) It's unwise to assume, as "genetic engineers" generally do, that 90+% of the genome is "garbage" or "junk" because they don't know its function. That mysterious, messy, ancient stuff is the context that influences how genes express traits. It's the genetic version of biodiversity, which in larger ecosystems is the source of resilience and endurance.

Transgenics
The results, too, are more worrisome than those of mere mechanical tinkering, because unlike mechanical contrivances, genetically modified organisms reproduce, genes spread, and mistakes literally take on a life of their own, extending like Africanized bees. Herbicide-resistance genes may escape to make "superweeds." Insecticide-making genes may kill beyond their intended targets. Both these problems have already occurred; their ecological effects are not yet known. Among other recent unpleasant surprises, spliced genes seem unusually likely to spread to other organisms. Canola pollen can waft spliced genes more than a mile, and common crops can hybridize with completely unrelated weeds. Gene-spliced Bt insecticide in corn pollen kills Monarch butterflies; that insecticide, unlike its natural forbear, can build up in soil; and corn borers' resistance to it is apparently a dominant trait, so planned anti-resistance procedures won't work.

http://www.global-vision.org/worldviews/lovins1.html

[chlamor]

96. Most widely used vector from tumor-inducing plasmid

For example, the vector most widely used in plant genetic engineering is derived from a tumour-inducing plasmid carried by the soil bacterium Agrobacterium tumefaciens. In animals, vectors are constructed from retroviruses causing cancers and other diseases. A vector currently used in fish has a framework from the Moloney marine leukaemic virus, which causes leukaemia in mice, but can infect all mammalian cells. It has bits from the Rous Sarcoma virus, causing sarcomas in chickens, and from the vesicular stomatitis virus, causing oral lesions in cattle, horses, pigs and humans.

http://www.ratical.org/co-globalize/MaeWanHo/UnholyAlli.html

[Cha]

106. I like your comment in

your profile!

I was stating my case against gmo the other day on DU..so thanks for your energy on this very important issue.

I looked back and saw you were very active on that other thread about gmo..http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3435905

Thanks for this..it is only one of the most important subjects of our lives!

P.S. It's amazing how many people don't see through this corporate takeover of our food supply. They don't have any valid arguments for gmo..it's all..they "can't be bothered"..yeah right!

[chlamor]

110. Monsanto Uses enormous amounts of energy creating wastelands all along

the way.
Monsanto's Record-The VERY short version:
-Used 17.6 million giga-joules in 1996
-33.1 million pounds of hazardous chemicals 1996
-2.8 billion pounds of carbon dioxide plus more emissions at jointly owned plants-1996
-31 registered Superfund sites, the actual total is about 102, that doesn't include sites it contaminated when it was merely a chemical company pre-1997

[Cha]

113. Anniston, Alabama!

SNIP~

"The story of Anniston is a cautionary tale. Monsanto's internal documents, many of which are being posted here for the first time for the world to finally see, uncover a shocking story of corporate deception and dangerous secrets. As The Washington Post revealed , Monsanto hid its advanced knowledge of the health effects and vast PCB pollution problems from the public and - most importantly - from its closest neighbors, the people of Anniston. While the documents provide a glimpse into Monsanto's corporate culture, a spokesperson for a Monsanto spin-off corporation, Solutia, has repeatedly asserted that the company is "really pretty proud of what we did" and that Monsanto "did what any company would do, even today."

More at..
http://www.chemicalindustryarchives.org/dirtysecrets/annistonindepth/intro.asp

[chlamor]

117. But Now they are "Life Science"

Trust us.

These are the terrorists that impact our daily lives.

[Cha]

120. Grass roots level of rejecting gm seeds..

SNIPS~

"In communities from Berkeley, Petaluma and Sebastopol, California to five townships in Pennsylvania to the City of Boston, Massachusetts coalitions of parents, farmers and environmentalists have gotten local legislators to pass an array of anti-biotech resolutions. Some, like the one passed unanimously by Boston City Council in March, urge the federal government to require labeling of genetically engineered foods. Others, like Sebastopol's, support federal legislation calling a moratorium on genetically modified organisms unless they are proven safe. The resolutions are non-binding, but they are meant to educate the public and send a strong message to the biotech corporations and the federal government. Community activists have been convening town meetings and participating in the local political process, often helping to draft the measures. Activists say they are reclaiming the political process.

"What we've been trying to accomplish in different parts of the country is local democracy," explains Dave Henson Director of the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center in Sonoma County, California. "We can't do this at the national level because corporations control the political process," adds Henson who has been involved in various local initiatives as well as national strategizing.

"The real truth is that GMOs cost more and yield less."
-- Bill Christison


More at..
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=572

[chlamor]

121. Maine's First GMO-Free Zone! 5 More New England Towns vs GMOs

Maine's First GMO-Free Zone!  posted: April 5

BROOKLIN, MAINE – Brooklin voters approved an article on the town meeting warrant declaring Brooklin a Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO)-Free Zone. The vote in Brooklin is the 98th resolution opposing genetic engineering to be passed in New England and the first to declare a voluntary moratorium on the planting of GMOs. The Brooklin vote was also the first such vote of any kind on the GMO issue by a municipality in Maine. The article was developed by a handful of local residents who later sought assistance from the six-month old farmer advocacy group GE Free Maine.

For full story please see GE Free Maine's Press Release and the Bangor Daily News' Coverage

<snip>


Five more New England towns vs. GMOs  posted: March 29

Five more towns, four in Vermont and one in New Hampshire, adopted resolutions at their annual town meetings supporting a moratorium on GMOs, as well as protection for farmers against the legal maneuvers of biotech seed companies. In Vermont, the towns of Springfield, Barnet, Waterville and Shrewsbury passed resolutions, for a total of 83 towns now on record against genetic engineering of food and crops. In New Hampshire, Warner became the second town to vote on the issue, following the effort in Henniker last year. There are now 97 New England towns that have passed resolutions opposing genetic engineering.

Major controversies have arisen in Maine, where most town meetings occur much later in the spring, with state officials falsely instructing town officers that anti-GMO resolutions are in conflict with agricultural “Best Management Practices” enshrined under the state’s “Right to Farm” law. Stay tuned for more news, or see www.gefreemaine.org

<snip>

GE-Free Lawn Signs Sprouting Across Vermont  posted: October 15


Bright red and white GE-Free VT lawn signs have been appearing across the state, and are now available at locations throughout Vermont. Go to gefreevt.org for a complete list of distribution sites.

“State legislators may have passed a GE seed registration and labeling law last session,” said one dairy farmer who posted a lawn sign in front of his farm, “But it does not do nearly enough to stop the planting of GMO’s in the state or protect farmers who do not grow GE crops from contamination by their neighbors that do. I am making the transition over to organic milk production and I don’t want my investment threatened by contamination. We have enough problems staying in this business as it is.

http://www.nerage.org/

[Cha]

122. Sweet! And now to Mexico..

SNIP~

"OVENTIC, Chiapas, Mexico April 28 -- A visible sigh of
relief flowed through the crowd of tense Chol and Tzeltal men and women when
the tiny test strip indicating genetic contamination once again indicated
the corn sample was pure. "We are happy that our corn is still natural,"
explained one young woman after the first six samples were tested. "There is
still much that we need to learn about these genetic modifications, but we
do not want what the big corporations are sending because we want our food
to be pure and our corn to be natural."

More at..
http://www.organicconsumers.org/chiapas/zapatistas050404.cfm

I feel for these people in Mexico, too, because I saw a Special on Mexican farmers on PBS that showed how much pride and energy they put into their crops and they didn't want gmo contaminating their land and precious food source!

[chlamor]

116. In the fields-Not in the Lab

[chlamor]

123. Monsanto World Headquarters- St. Louis, Mo.

Written in massively intricate legalese, Order 81 directs the reader at Article 14, paragraph 2 to paragraph of Article 4, which states any variety that is different from any other known variety may be registered in any country and become a protected variety of seed - thus defaulting it into the "protected class" of seeds and prohibiting the Iraqis from reusing them the following season. Every year, the Iraqis must destroy any seed they have, and repurchase seeds from an authorized supplier, or face fines, penalties and/or jail time."
www.globalresearch.ca/articles/KHA501A.html

Guess who wins the elections?

Monsanto World Headquarters
800 North Lindbergh Boulevard
St. Louis, Missouri 63167
Phone:[phone]

[Karenina]

126. WHAT is not to get?

It's ALL about CONTROL. :puke:

How many guesses do I get? :think:

[Zhade]

127. All-organic, anti-high fructose corn syrup KICK!

"High fruit sugar starch syrup" - insane.

[chlamor]

128. Genetic Engineering: False Promises

By confronting myth with reality, the objective of this book is to challenge the false promises made by the genetic engineering industry. The industry has promised that genetically engineered crops will move agriculture away from a dependence on chemical inputs, increase productivity, decrease input costs, and help reduce environmental problems (Office of Technology Assessment 1992). By challenging the myths of biotechnology, we expose genetic engineering for what it really is: another technological fix or "magic bullet" aimed at circumventing the environmental problems of agriculture (which are the outcome of an earlier round of technological fixes) without questioning the flawed assumptions that gave rise to the problems in the first place (Hindmarsh 1991). Biotechnology promotes single gene solutions for problems derived from ecologically unstable monoculture systems designed on industrial models of efficiency. Such a unilateral and reductionist approach has already proven ecologically unsound in the case of pesticides, whose promoters espoused a reductionist approach, using one chemical­one pest as opposed to the one gene­one pest approach now promoted by biotechnology.

The alliance of reductionist science and multinational monopolistic industry will take agriculture further down a misguided road. Biotechnology perceives agricultural problems as genetic deficiencies of organisms and treats nature as a commodity, while in the process making farmers more dependent on an agribusiness sector that increasingly concentrates power over the food system.

http://www.foodfirst.org/pubs/books/geagriculture.html

Genetic Engineering in Agriculture: The Myths, Environmental Risks, and Alternatives
Miguel A. Altieri, Ph.D.

ISBN 0-935028-85-4
April 2001
$10.00, paperback
108 pages

"A key problem facing the public is that biotechnology companies and associated scientific bodies are making false promises that genetic engineering will move agriculture away from a dependence on chemical inputs, reduce environmental problems, and solve world hunger. Such promises are founded on philosophical and scientific premises that are fundamentally flawed, and these premises need to be exposed and criticized in order to advance toward a truly sustainable agriculture."
--from the introduction