[TheForge] OT: GM foods OT:

[Bruce Freeman]

I'm no expert and don't want get in the middle of this, but I DON'T
see the argument here about genes migrating between plant species.
Soybeans and corn are "Roundup  Ready" today.  Maybe ragweed, or worse
weeds, will be "Roundup  Ready" tomorrow!  This happens.  Monsanto
doesn't want to admit it happens, but it happens.

On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 8:39 PM, peter fels <artgawk at thegrid.net> wrote:
>
> On May 26, 2011, at 5:18 PM, CGRAF wrote:
>
>> On 5/26/2011 2:24 PM, peter fels wrote:
>>> Stop and think a sec Mike and Andy
>>> ...Food and Drug is under enormous public pressure.
>>> To get a GM food passed for general use, the testing is VERY extensive,
>>> subject to scientific and public scrutiny and the hard eyes of industry liability lawyers.
>>> The testing starts in vitro..then goes through animal testing..rats through monkeys...
>>> Then to slowly increasing numbers of people. It takes years and a whole lot of money.
>>> By the time a product gets to the public, it has been tested as extensively as they know how.
>>> Go look up the testing protocol before you say " continents at a time" .
>>>
>>
>>
>> I am not faulting the testing at all. The stuff is probably fine.
>
> Probably not...surely a mixed bag.
>
>> I am also aware of things like R22 that passed muster originally on
>> safety specs, it was not poisonous like the ammonia  it replaced nor
>> explosive like the propane it replaced. It only took 50 or so YEARS for
>> us to figure out that just maybe it was screwing with the ozone.
>
> It's a game of learn as you go and hope the unscreened mistakes aren't catastrophic.
> Will ozone depletion cause more deaths than propane and ammonia in that time span?
>>
>> How about thalidomide or my own personal favorite DES?
>
> Thalidimide and it's modifications are now critical medications for select diseases.
> The kind of cancer i had was associated with DES.
> Mixed bags. Overall to our advantage.
>
>> Aspirin was bad for you, or at least for kids and was replaced with
>> acetaminophen, which supposedly now has problems.
>
> It's said that aspirin would never make it past the FDA today.
> Risk/reward ratios need to be considered out front.
> The general public doesn't do that.
>>
>> They used to give pure O2 to "blue babies" until thirty and forty year
>> old people started going blind from it.
>
> How many of them would have died?
>>
>> It just takes a while to find out about this type of thing. Problems
>> only show up after years, maybe decades and with a data set far
>> exceeding anything the FDA can have in its testing phase.
>
> Agreed...but only sometimes and not all that often.
>>
>>  My gripe is with the extent that the GMO type food will replace a
>> naturally diverse seed supply.
>> One fungus or other plant disease and the potato famine will look like a
>> cake walk. Remember when cities planted forests of Dutch Elm trees along
>> the streets.( Milwaukee lost thousands of them in about three years.)
>
> The problem here is monoculture, not the GM plants themselves, and much easier to solve.
>
>> They don't any more. Here it is about five lots before a species repeats.
>>
>> My feelings about homogenizing the food supply is governed by the same
>> thing as my dislike of overlarge and powerful government.
>> One mistake or misfortune by or to either effects a lot more people a
>> lot worse than 5 or 6 hundred million small but differing mistakes are
>> likely to.
>>
>> Diversity in almost all cases is a safer and probably more productive
>> course in the long run.
>
> Yessir!
>>
>> Mike Graf
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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-- 
Bruce
NJ