Black Swan Author: Genetically Modified Organisms Risk Global Ruin 432
KentuckyFC writes It's 20 years since the FDA approved the Flavr Savr tomato for human consumption, the first genetically engineered food to gain this status. Today, roughly 85 per cent of corn and 90 per cent of soybeans produced in the US are genetically modified. So it's easy to imagine that the scientific debate over the safety of genetically modified organisms has been largely settled. Not for Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan and several academic colleagues who say that the risks have been vastly underestimated. They say that genetically modified organisms threaten harm on a global scale, both to ecosystems and to human health. That's different from many conventional risks that threaten harm on a local scale, like nuclear energy for example. They argue that this global threat means that the precautionary principle ought to be applied to severely limit the way genetically modified organisms can be used.
You mean the same precautionary principle that led (Score:3, Insightful)
You mean the same precautionary principle that led the US government to indoctrinate a generation of kids in the food pyramid, leading to generational highs of sugar intake and obesity, and probably millions of early death, because scientists thought that fat might be responsible for heart disease?
Be careful with anything that starts with "ignore evidence to begin with"
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As a child who was indoctrinated under the food pyramid, I can categorically tell you that I completely ignored it.
Of course, I'm also not obese, so perhaps you are on to something.
Seriously, though, how much impact did that program really have? I think the real issue with sugar intake is that sugar (or HFCS) is cheap, is tasty, and is in everything. Also, unlike say arsenic, any bad effects are usually deferred. That seems like the actual issue, and is probably why there are still obesity today.
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Except low-carb diets actually work, and extreme no-carb diets seem to work but have side effects. This suggests that the general wisdom of "load yourself up on grains, eat little meat" is not actually healthy.
Sugars and starches absorb immediately as energy. Proteins and fats are useful for structure, but also derivable as energy. Processing protein and fat requires a great deal more effort than processing sugar, which simply hits the blood and triggers insulin, binding it into glycogen.
It's often co
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It is connected. There's a lot of sugar in processed foods today because they took the fats out and had to do something to make it not taste like salted cardboard.
Then there's all of those people who consumed great quantities of artery clogging transfats because they were told it was the 'healthy choice' and butter would kill them.
But note the people who made those claims aren't paying for the stents and bypasses.
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I think the real issue with sugar intake is that sugar (or HFCS) is cheap, is tasty, and is in everything. Also, unlike say arsenic, any bad effects are usually deferred. That seems like the actual issue, and is probably why there are still obesity today.
You might find this interesting: Sugar: The Bitter Truth [youtube.com] by Robert H. Lustig, MD, UCSF Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology. It's about 90 minutes, but worth the watch. He describes how Fructose (from wherever, sugar, HFCS, etc...) is metabolized by the liver in a similar fashion as alcohol, but w/o the physical limitations of consuming too much alcohol, and raises triglycerides and cholesterol, etc...
oooh GMO is to oscary u guys! (Score:5, Informative)
What they don't bother to put in TFS is that the 85% of corn and 90% of soybeans currently running modified genes are only modified to make them immune to glyphosate (aka "Roundup-ready"). There only real risk is that maybe by some huge stroke of bad luck, some other plant (a weed, say) picks up glyphosate resistance from these genes. The thing about that fear tactic is that it's not too unlikely that pest plants will eventually pick up glyphosate resistance anyway, and it's not really a scary prospect since glyphosate is only relied on for farming, and if it stops working they can move on to a different herbicide for us to debate over.
Making glyphosate resistant corn? Probably going to have 0 repercussions, and the worst-case scenario is not unlike the chemical resistance issues we face in almost every other area of biology (i.e. penicillin resistant bacteria). Making a corn-tomato-hemp hybrid that grows a foot a day and re-roots itself whenever it's cut down? OK maybe we should talk that one through a little more. Scare mongering with the "GMO will make our planet a Mad-Max wasteland of anarchy" is really unproductive.
Re:oooh GMO is to oscary u guys! (Score:5, Interesting)
it's not too unlikely that pest plants will eventually pick up glyphosate resistance anyway
Plenty of weeds have already done that [wikipedia.org]. So far, all of these weeds resist glyphosate via a completely different mechanism from the way GMO plants do it.
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No, it's only the plants who are protected by intellectual property laws and belong to evil corporations which threaten to end human civilization.
And shame on you for wanting to known if the food you eat has been licensed from the company that invented Agent Orange and dioxin, right? I mean, stupid people...
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No, it's only the plants who are protected by intellectual property laws and belong to evil corporations which threaten to end human civilization.
The patent for glyphosate (Roundup) has already expired. The patent on the gene for "Roundup-Ready" herbicide resistance expires in a few months.
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And shame on you for wanting to known if the food you eat has been licensed from the company that invented Agent Orange and dioxin, right? I mean, stupid people...
Actually, that is pretty stupid. AO was 70 years ago, almost certainly made under the reign of a completely different set of directors and C?Os, and made under contract (as in, has fuck all to do with their regular commercial operations in the first place.)
One mistake (especially one that only turns out to be a mistake in retrospect) does not define a company with the size and history of a Monsanto. Pretending that something they did three quarters of a century ago has any bearing on their modern operatio
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Monoculture is bad, remember?
GMO does not imply monoculture. GMO soybeans all have the gene for glyphosate resistance, but otherwise have a large amount of genetic variation.
Re:oooh GMO is to oscary u guys! (Score:5, Insightful)
I didn't read the thing, so I'm just guessing, but I suspect that the problem isn't with any given genetic modification, but with the unknown factor of how those modifications will impact the environment in the context of being spread throughout the world and replacing other varieties of the same crop. Nassim Nicholas Taleb is very interested in the concept of risk, particularly regarding unforeseen outcomes and consequences.
So the idea probably isn't simply, "this specific genetic modification is bad" or "all genetic modifications are bad", but something like, "If we aren't careful with genetic modification and how it's applied on a global scale, what are the chances that someone, at some point, will screw something up really badly and cause a catastrophe?"
Now, it may even be that some of the possible causes of danger are indirect. Do these practices encourage a mono-culture in agriculture, where farmers are all using the same genetic strain of seeds and the same farming methods? Mono-cultures generally tend to make any kind of failure or unforeseen consequence more serious. If there's a disease that attacks the crops, you're less likely to find a resistant strain if everyone is using the same strain. If it turns out that a certain farming method is causing a certain kind of environmental damage, the effect will be amplified if everyone is using that same method.
It may be that the argument, then, is not about whether the plants are genetically modified, but more about global farming mono-culture. However, I'd expect that part of his argument would be that more "natural" methods of farming have been tested more thoroughly, and their global consequences are therefore more well known. Effecting a change in farming methods to any method which is novel, and therefore much less well-tested, is much more likely to have unforeseen consequences. Effecting such a change on a global level could be disastrous. Even if we can't see any way in which such a disaster would happen, unforeseen consequences are inherently unforeseen. The global biosphere is enormously complex, and unforeseen consequences are likely.
Of course, that's what I would guess this is about, but I don't want to actually read the paper.
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Exactly. And that doesn't even cover the potentially disastrous effect of having a handful of companies own the intellectual property to major foodstuffs.
I guarantee, that no matter how reasonable or conservative your thoughts, if you even suggest the possibility that there might be a reaso
Re:oooh GMO is to oscary u guys! (Score:4, Interesting)
And that doesn't even cover the potentially disastrous effect of having a handful of companies own the intellectual property to major foodstuffs.
Also, frankly, that those handful of companies stand to make so much money from these crops. Not to get all conspiracy-theory, but if you have a couple of companies controlling global agriculture, and they're making billions of dollars from these GMO crops, and then they discover there might possibly be a problem, their motivations are all pointed at burying that problem rather than bringing it to light.
And this is part of what's become very scary about "how the world works" now. We've gotten very good at manipulation and propaganda. If someone comes out saying that GMOs are bad, there are a bunch of very good propaganda spin doctors for hire who can make those people look like crackpots. They can't convince everyone, but they can convince enough people to gridlock the debate. Meanwhile, these companies can send lobbyists and campaign contributions to all the politicians they want, and make sure the laws are rewritten to help them out.
Now I'm not saying that GMOs are bad and dangerous. However, I do think that it should be pointed out that, if they were dangerous, some very wealthy companies would devote a lot of resources to hiding/obscuring that fact, and they would be largely successful. This is, in itself, grounds for concern. And not just regarding genetically modified food.
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Which is an argument from pure and total ignorance.
No, it's an argument about the nature of ignorance. Again, we're talking about risk assessment, not genetics, and Taleb has made compelling arguments to the effect that we misunderstand how risk should be calculated. For example, you say, "the end results are exactly the same," and we can grant you for the sake of argument that there is absolutely no difference in the results, as far as we can tell, for any test that we can think to use to look for differences. But now we have to assess the risk of "what
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Scare mongering with the "GMO will make our planet a Mad-Max wasteland of anarchy" is really unproductive.
Also, is that really what he's doing? From the summary, it seems like he's just advising greater caution because he believes that the risk has been underestimated.
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What they don't bother to put in TFS is that the 85% of corn and 90% of soybeans currently running modified genes are only modified to make them immune to glyphosate (aka "Roundup-ready"). The only real risk is that maybe by some huge stroke of bad luck, some other plant (a weed, say) picks up glyphosate resistance from these genes.
And you have a 30 year longitudinal study to back up that bald assertion?
I'm all in favor... (Score:3, Insightful)
of extensive testing, trials, heck, even labeling. But after 20 years of GMO products, and absolutely no significantly measurable negative ecological/human impacts, I'm thinking maybe we should turn down the rhetoric a bit and continue on.
Sure, there are risks with mono-culture corps (see: Bananas). And yeah, farmers who use excessive herbicides are dumb.
But if there were truly a significant health risk in GMOs in general, we should have seen it develop by now. Odds are though that there will be some GMO products that aren't safe and that there will be some GMO products that enable dumb farming practices. But the exact same statement is true if you remove the letters "GMO".
-Rick
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And yeah, farmers who use excessive herbicides are dumb.
What I love is that the anti-GMO crowd is all about how bad herbicides are. Then they go on and freak out about plants that have been modified so that fewer herbicides are necessary.
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On top of that, glyphosphate is one of the least toxic herbacides out there that generally breaks down relatively quickly in the environment.
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Sorry, that's just not true. Higher levels of it have been found in the internal organs of chronically ill people.
http://omicsonline.org/open-ac... [omicsonline.org]
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Except, those GMO plants often require higher levels of herbicides and pesticides
http://www.reuters.com/article... [reuters.com]
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You know what the alternative to roundup is? Depending on your climate/crop/competing plants it's a cocktail of 2-5 different herbicides that are significantly more risky to humans and the environment and must be sprayed more often.
So yeah, roundup ready crops lead to lower levels of herbicide usage by anyone with half a brain on a traditional farm.
-Rick
Re:I'm all in favor... (Score:4, Insightful)
and absolutely no significantly measurable negative ecological/human impacts
You should try reading the actual paper. Taleb's precautionary principle comes from the acknowledgement that tiny, insignificant changes can become huge changes quite quickly, and quite suddenly, and that risk is a much more complex thing than most modern scientists acknowledge. That's the whole point of his warnings regarding Black Swan events. If you only look at the here-and-now small dangers and never prepare for the extended big ones, it's the big ones that get you in the end.
Even better, read Taleb's later book "Antifragile". He lays out the wisdom of some more ancient thought patterns that the West has eschewed to its detriment.
I'm starting to think that Western culture (especially the modern evolution of it) is a giant case of Aspberger's syndrome. Technically proficient and able to endlessly sort details but lacking in wisdom or deeper understanding.
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And the other key part is that the danger of potential consequences should be weighed against the expected benefit. Eg. if we are about to starve because a disease is wiping out corn, it's better to risk with GMO corn that to have no corn. And likewise we shouldn't introduce potentially huge unknown risks that could take decades to show -- like trans fat, if we can even trace those back -- for small benefits like 10% lower price or slightly longer shelf life.
But you're right, we in the modern society are un
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I'm starting to think that Western culture (especially the modern evolution of it) is a giant case of Aspberger's syndrome. Technically proficient and able to endlessly sort details but lacking in wisdom or deeper understanding.
Someone posted a partial quote and this link in another thread. You might find it interesting and relevant with-regard-to the above sentiment: The Death of Expertise [tomnichols.net]
I think it applies to a great many of the posts here on /. ...
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Someone posted a partial quote and this link in another thread. You might find it interesting and relevant with-regard-to the above sentiment: The Death of Expertise [tomnichols.net]
I think it applies to a great many of the posts here on /. ...
Yes. Thanks for the link--interesting. I'll have to digest that a bit. He talks of the death OF expertise, while "Death by expert" is a phrase that keeps crossing my mind when I think about our civilization's trajectory. All those experts out there clamoring for buy-in, and sneering at the clueless masses... but if anything, the 20th and 21st century have shown us that experts are remarkably bad decision-makers. Obsessive knowledge of a specialty leads to myopic thinking. In the courtroom of life experts sh
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For example, I once sat on a murder trial as a juror. During that time, various experts were brought in to testify on various aspects of the case, particularly th
Re:I'm all in favor... (Score:5, Insightful)
Taleb's precautionary principle comes from the acknowledgement that tiny, insignificant changes can become huge changes quite quickly, and quite suddenly, and that risk is a much more complex thing than most modern scientists acknowledge.
Most modern scientists fail to acknowledge this threat because this idea is bullshit. I think the great irony of the Precautionary Principle is that the advocates don't eat their own dog food. For if they did, then they would have to rule out use of the Precautionary Principle on the grounds that the harm caused by the rule inherently can't be quantified or understood
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Also, go back and analyze the banking crisis with your bullshit logic and see how far you get before your brain explodes.
The banking crisis is easily explained by conflict of interest. It wasn't in the interest of the many involved parties to avoid a banking crisis, because they profited from it, it was their job to ignore it, a
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Re:I'm all in favor... (Score:1)
by Impy the Impiuos Imp (442658) Alter Relationship on Monday October 27, 2014 @04:41PM (#48245065) Journal
"Ancient thought patterns" have done nothing to move people beyond simple huts. It is reality itself sorely in need of modern asskicking as it is reality that gives disease and starvation.
Huts? You see... this is the sort of idiocy I'm talking about. Maleducated nitwits who think everything important was conceived of after 1914 or something.
A question, Mr Impy: Where doe
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Wrong question. We do know that if an unapproved or undesired strain does get out, we won't be able to get it back. It has happened several times so far including one crop that is claimed to have only ever been grown under controlled conditions on a small plot. The roundup ready gene has spread to a number of weeds now that grow wild at the roadside.
So we now have real evidence that if a poorly chosen modification is made, it will spread and we will not be able to rein it in at all. THAT is a black swan eve
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That isn't how evolution works.
Roundup ready corn isn't breeding with crab grass to make roundup ready crab grass.
Genetic mutations are largely a constant. Every generation will continue to exhibit mutations, the vast majority of which have no impact on procreation and are either carried on, or not.
At some point in time, over a large enough scale, some weeds have mutated to be resistant to round up. Since some weeds were resistant, and others were not, when sprayed with roundup, those that aren't die. since
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Genetic mutations are largely a constant. Every generation will continue to exhibit mutations, the vast majority of which have no impact on procreation and are either carried on, or not.
But any effort to create a protein or change regulation changes the metabolism, which can be a selection pressure when competing for resources with native strains that don't spend the energy to make those proteins. For example, genetic alterations in bacteria for DNA computing elements [discovermagazine.com]) can disappear rapidly in a culture, so
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> of extensive testing, trials, heck, even labeling. But after 20 years of GMO products, and absolutely no significantly measurable negative ecological/human impacts,
Actually, we are currently in the middle of a population crisis with our bees. So just blissfully assuming that there have been no consequences is probably just wishful thinking on your part.
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Whoa nellie! That's not exactly true.
In areas where Roundup-ready corn has established hegemony, such massive quantities of pesticides have to be used that half a dozen studies have shown sick people with high concentrations of those pesticides in their internal organs.
http://www.reuters.com/article... [reuters.com]
There is actually a growing body of scientific literature that raises questions about the dire
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You do realize of course that effectively /every/ piece of produce, foul, pork, and beef you eat is the product of GMO, right? Hell, your cat and dog are GMOs.
Not all of which was created in a petre dish, but all have been selectively bread to favor specific qualities that allow us to get more from them.
For example, Corn was modified to have 2-3 tassels per stalk long before Monsanto got involved.
Tomatos, like the Wisconsin-80 took years of grafting and breeding to get a plant that was able to excel in Wisc
Why would I assume it has been settled? (Score:4, Interesting)
In a world where shit like aspartame is railroaded through approval because of political connections, why in the fuck would I assume anything is "settled", just because it is commonly sold and used?
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Mod parent up !
The other problem with GMO is that we don't have long term studies, i.e. 100 years, to _really_ know ALL of the effects.
Re:Why would I assume it has been settled? (Score:4, Insightful)
QUestion on dietary restrictions (Score:3)
For example, if something, say corn, is genetically modified to have DNA from a non-kosher animal in it does that food item also become non-kosher? The same could be asked of if the restriction was vegetarian or vegan. How exactly would that work out?
Re:QUestion on dietary restrictions (Score:4, Insightful)
For example, if something, say corn, is genetically modified to have DNA from a non-kosher animal in it does that food item also become non-kosher? The same could be asked of if the restriction was vegetarian or vegan. How exactly would that work out?
If you manage to engineer bacon-corn, you will face far more risk from the hordes beating their way to your door demanding the seeds than you will from the Kosher observers who protest.
A mathematician commenting on biology (Score:5, Insightful)
The first half of the paper (dealing with statistics) is all well and logical.
The second half (dealing with GMO) makes several unfounded claims with no citation. Why does the author assume that GMOs have a non-zero risk of causing global catastrophe? Without any justification for that statement, you can just as easily claim that *not* using GMOs have a non-zero risk of causing global catastrophe.
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We could argue that everything has a non-zero risk of causing global catastrophe. Which I suppose just backs up your point ;)
I think you nailed it there (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the proposition that NOT using GMOs risks global catastrophe might have more odds in its favor than using GMOs.
Consider:
Bananas, citrus, chocolate, coffee are all threatened by pathogens or climate change. There are some credible pathogen threats to wheat as well.
In the case of citrus, the ONLY (**ONLY**) resistant variety to citrus greening disease, out of ALL the citrus varieties on the plant, is a GMO variety that has genes from spinach spliced in.
So we have a case of, worldwide collapse of citrus production, OR GMO citrus.
I think I'll take the GMO citrus, thank you very much. If I were a Florida planter, and I weren't worried about anti-GMO hysteria, I'd be replacing my citrus orchards (as they die) with GMO plants.
As I referred to above, similar threats are either now or are poised to decimate bananas, coffee, chocolate, and wheat, though I'm not so sure that the naturally resistant variety situation is so dire in those cases.
Best,
-PeterM
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The risk is (meaningfully, not formally) non-zero because GMOs ride the most potent distribution mechanism in existence for free -- natural replication and multiplication. An error in a nuclear reactor doesn't affect other nuclear reactors, but a "faulty" GM organism with potentially bad consequences (for us) can be everywhere just a few generations down. And unlike a computer virus for example, we may not be equipped to deal with the spread in the material worlds.
A fair question would be why that is differ
Betcha he has a new scary book on the way (Score:2)
" Today, roughly 85 per cent of corn and 90 per cent of soybeans produced in the US are genetically modified. "
Yet we still exist. Why don't I have tentacles and nine eyes yet?
And furthermore, I recently had another vaccination, for shingles.
And the biologist on the author list is....? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:And the biologist on the author list is....? (Score:4, Insightful)
They didn't invent the precautionary principle. It's been around for a while. The idea is that you have to prove something is safe before you do it. Sounds reasonable to the layperson, but of course it's an impossible burden to meet (see "proving a negative")
11 billion people soon we have no choice (Score:3)
11 billion people is the current population projection for humanity, and that's a projection you can have some real confidence in. So the question is do you take the best means the incoming billions off the table or do we get cracking and throw everything we have at the problem. Pretty sure if we don't solve the problem nature in her usual fashion will do so for us.
This book is BS (Score:3)
- Computers: might give rise to an artificial intelligence that will destroy everything. Ban them.
- Agriculture: might cause people to lose their natural aggressiveness so they'll be easily conquered by the alien invaders. Ban agriculture.
- Fire: might cause the global firestorm that will destroy all the life. Ban it.
- Stone tools: they might spark the fire that will destroy all the life. Ban it.
- Medicine: might cause humanity to lose natural immunity to diseases. Ban it.
And so on.
Precautionary principle at work. (Score:3)
Let me demonstrate the authors' "precautionary principle", which says that if an action has even a slight or unknowable risk of causing absolutely devastating harm, you shouldn't do it.
If I leave the house tomorrow morning, there is a chance I might get run over by a truck and killed -- as far as I'm concerned, that's the ultimate in devastating harm. In contrast, the benefits of me leaving the house on a given day (earning some money, keeping my job, seeing the sun) are modest. Therefore I should just stay in bed.
It's ridiculous, but that is *exactly* the argument they're using against GMOs.
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If only that were true.
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You forgot your mandatory optional fearless medication, citizen. Please step into the nearest confession booth so that you can be happy. Only commie mutant traitors are afraid.
The computer is your friend.
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It's interesting to discuss certainty in the context of the author of The Black Swan. His book is about how people do a piss-poor job of preparing for never-before-seen scenarios.
Like how they design skyscrapers to resist ground-level bombing and natural disasters, but until 9/11 there wasn't any engineering attention to jet-fuel temperature fires damaging the superstructure(there is in new buildings now).
I disagree with his hypothesis. The abstract doesn't articulate some particular case, but just some "
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No, sorry, you have to have a justifiable concern, even if questionable, to object to something. "It could be bad, maybe, we just don't know" isn't enough.
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We're engaging in rapid development on a production server with no backup what-so-ever.
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Yep, there's a sharp divide among us peoples on the left involved in environmentalism between those who see our environmental stability as crucial to human happiness and preserving natural beauty for future generations versus those who think "natural=good" "unnatural=bad". We put up with the latter group because a lot of times the goal is the same(save our national parks, keep our drinking water free of contaminants, limit global warming) and allies are necessary to win elections.
But we also have to repeat
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I agree, the pro-GMO astroturfers are the worst fear-mongering shills I've ever seen.
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Nonsense. Again. (Score:5, Insightful)
And we've been comparing apples to oranges for just as long.
Re:Nonsense. Again. (Score:4, Insightful)
And we've been comparing apples to oranges for just as long.
Actually, before there were apples and oranges, there were some people cultivating a variety of bushes with barely edible fruit and wondering if there was any way to get them to ripen larger, taste better, and spoil slower. 500+ years later, here we are, comparing apples to oranges (neither of which existed in its current form back then).
Or, were you trying to make a joke?
Re:Nonsense. Again. (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, before there were apples and oranges, there were some people cultivating a variety of bushes with barely edible fruit and wondering if there was any way to get them to ripen larger, taste better, and spoil slower. 500+ years later, here we are, comparing apples to oranges (neither of which existed in its current form back then).
This is not even remotely the same thing as modern gene-splicing. People have NOT, for thousands of years, implated jellyfish genes into food crops, and set them loose in the wild. Talk about comparing apples to oranges! You're comparing kittens to fireflies.
Wait! Never mind. They've crossed those, too. (Actually it wasn't fireflies, but some kind of bioluminescent bacteria, if I remember correctly.)
Apples and oranges indeed. Comparing this to gene splicing between unrelated organisms really is more like comparing bacteria to kittens.
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Re:Nonsense. Again. (Score:5, Insightful)
If the same happened to a GM food then it'd be banned quicker than you can say "paracetomoxyfrusebendroneomycin".
Re:Nonsense. Again. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, the modern gene-splicing is much safer.
Tee hee
Do you know that wheat lost most of its protein content due to selective breeding?
Do you realize that this was the desired outcome? Other varieties of wheat still exist. We don't use them for most things on purpose.
Maize lost most of its fat content due to a genetic error (so its wild predecessors are much healthier).
But we cultivated the less-healthy kind on purpose. And if you made it healthier, it wouldn't taste as sweet.
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Do you realize that this was the desired outcome? Other varieties of wheat still exist. We don't use them for most things on purpose.
Modern wheat has much lower protein content than it would be possible with a healthy genome. Also, modern wheat plants are little Frankenstein monsters with highly polyploid genomes riddled with mobile elements. Turns out that higher protein content can be achieved by fixing some of the problems caused by inbreeding during selection: http://www.researchgate.net/pu... [researchgate.net]
But no, that's eviiiiiil GMO and natural breeding can't be wrong.
But we cultivated the less-healthy kind on purpose. And if you made it healthier, it wouldn't taste as sweet.
Not modern "we". Maize was cultured by Native Americans and its loss of fat
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it's still just DNA. who cares where it came from, what's important it what it does!...
What's important is "what it does" in combination with other DNA and mutates in ways that almost certainly would not have occurred without invasive genetic modification. Not to mention "what it does" in combination with other organisms and with its environment.
The point here is that the interactions of the systems we're dicking with are so complex that we have no possible way of even predicting the outcomes, never mind controlling them. If you're not into reading what Taleb has to say, you might want to at
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Actually yes, because we now know that transgenic processes occur in nature too.
Re:Nonsense. Again. (Score:4, Funny)
Have you compared the size of a pig and a glow worm ?
I think a glow worm would be pretty well fucked if a pig stood on it...
Re:Nonsense. Again. (Score:4, Insightful)
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What is the difference between selective breeding and genetic modification?... nothing.
GM is more efficient at selecting genes but no qualitative difference.
BTW, mother nature has been doing GM for millions of years and randomly inserting genes across all types of organisms and so far, that seems to be working out just fine.
So please, Keep Calm and Don't Panic.
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TL;DR: You waived your hands like OP, but it's still not a magic trick.
Re:Nonsense. Again. (Score:5, Insightful)
Here they come. There is an absolute army of pro-GMO astroturfers who set their RSS feeds to trigger a fire alarm whenever GMOs are mentioned. They admit this.
You are not allowed to suggest there are dangers to GMOs. You are not allowed to point out any studies that suggest there are dangers to GMOs, because they will answer, "It's just one study" or, "It was a flawed study" or, "The researcher is being paid by the global anti-GMO elite!". You are not allowed to know whether the food you buy is licensed by Monsanto. You are not allowed to object to intellectual property laws being applied to basic foodstuffs. You are not allowed to know whether what you feed your family is made from GMO products for any reason whatsoever. If you say, "As a consumer, I want to know the provenance of the food I eat," they will say, "You are stupid and bad and anti-science". They will compare you to anti-vaxxers, Nazis, Michael Vick, Nickelback and Stalin if you suggest that GMO foods should be labeled as such. They will tell you that companies should not be allowed to label their food as "Contains no GMOs" if it does not in fact contain no GMOs because that would be unfair to the chemical industry.
They use approximately the same sealion techniques as GamerGate. They will politely ask the same questions, over and over, saying "Where is your proof!" and when you show them the proof, they will say, "Those scientists are all being paid by Al Gore/Whole Foods/PETA;/George Soros/or the worldwide cabal of billionaire organic farmers.
They will come by the dozens. You cannot win. I'm telling you, leave this one alone.
Re: (Score:3)
The greatest danger from GMO technology is that it enables malice. If ISIS taps the House of Saud bank account deeply enough, it could come up with an Ebola-rabies-common cold doomsday virus much faster and more certainly than by hybridization.
Fortunately, the same technology allows us to develop treatments to diseases, malicious or natural, correspondingly faster than before:
http://www.iflscience.com/heal... [iflscience.com]
We can't put the toothpaste back into the tube. Our 'recusing' from GMO technology would do nothing
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh, for chrissake:
http://omicsonline.org/open-ac... [omicsonline.org]
http://www.theatlantic.com/hea... [theatlantic.com] (this one is notable because the author received death threats immediately after publication)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05... [nytimes.com]
Did I call it or what? My first post in this comments section predicted that I would be compared to anti-vaxxers. If I were to continue, I guarantee I would soon be compared to racists, Nazis and worse.
Look, I don
Re:Monsanto is evil, but your anti-GMO screed is F (Score:4, Informative)
The first reference doesn't talk about evils of GMO, but about the evils of a particular herbicide. The second one talks about miRNA and how genetic material transfers directly from the food we eat into our bodies. This is not by itself pro- or anti-GMO, it's merely a strong point that supports proper testing of GMO foods - something that, admittedly, Monsanto has long argued unnecessary. Again, this doesn't make any particular GMO dangerous, it merely prompts at what should we look at when testing such organisms for consumption by humans and livestock. The third reference shows some fallout from RoundUp-resistance genes jumping from crops to weeds. Again, this doesn't show any danger ingerent in GMOs themselves, but in a particular modification. Just as software development techniques can be used for good and bad, the genetic modifications can be used for good and bad. We need to learn how to use them for good. DUH :)
Has Monstanto been demonstrably lying through its teeth to the public, repeatedly? Sure. There's no news here.
Re: (Score:3)
Oh no, glyphosates(round-up) and some GMO crops in some study show a possible statistical correlation with negative health factors! We should quickly abandon all of modern agriculture to make sure we don't destroy the health of western civilization! Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees.
GMO foods are have been ubiquitous in the western diet for multiple generations already. How to health factors and benchmarks for those generations compare to the ones prior to them? They are radically better. GMO f
Re: (Score:3)
You might want to loosen the tin foil on your head a bit.
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What is the difference between selective breeding and genetic modification?
For starters, you can't breed a jellyfish with a zebrafish, no matter how kinky they are. But you can take the flourescent genes from a jellyfish, put them in a zebrafish, and make Glofish.
Re: (Score:2)
What is the difference between selective breeding and genetic modification?... nothing.
Wrong. Genetic modification allows for a greater range of modification in a shorter time than can be achieved with selective breeding.
As Ben Parker wisely noted many years ago, "With great power comes great responsibility". Does our current food industry collectively have the great responsibility to wisely handle the great power of GMO? They have pretty clearly demonstrated that they do not.
Re:Nonsense. Again. (Score:4, Informative)
Billions of times a day, natural processes substitute random genes from all different kinds of organisms.
Natural selection takes care of it.
We are not in a Frankenstein movie... more like Rube Goldberg.
Re:Nonsense. Again. (Score:5, Funny)
Hey. I like this approach.
For everyone that believes GMO's are EVIIIIIILLLL, if they ever want a dog or cat for a pet they should only be allowed the choice to take a wolf or a tiger home....
Re: (Score:2)
Or should that be, "Hay! it worked for Sigfried and Roy!"?
Re:Nonsense. Again. (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, because your dog Sniffles is actually the product of genesplicing of a dog and fish genes and requires massive amounts of pesticides to live.
So, SHUT UP YOU ANTI-GMO PEOPLE. You are stupid, and wrong and want people to starve because you would like to know the provenance of the food you give your families.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh sh8t, we are....Creationists!? See, there is a Creator, and we are him (or her).
Re: (Score:2)
Because changing things slowly over decades is exactly the same thing as changing it in a single generation, only you don't get any warning that you're about to screw up big time coupled with the ability to make changes that would otherwise be astronomically unlikely.
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It is like working with several programs through an interface as opposed to changing the code directly. Hope you put in a try catch.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Because we have never made something we thought was absolutely safe and then had decades of remediation and lawsuits when it turned out to be a very bad idea.
The people who pit asbestos in everything thought it was 'just a mineral' and a non-toxic one at that, so what could go wrong with that durable, effective, and fireproof insulation?
Re: (Score:2)
I am not saying that GMO stuff will be totally harmless. But it isn't any worse than non-GMO stuff, like asbestos.
As such, it does not need to be outlawed, just reasonably regulated (and that does not mean labels that will encourage fear).
Re: (Score:2)
will randomly create something dangerous
How about intentionally create sometime dangerous in an unforeseen way? There are plenty of examples of that, for instance did you know that peanut allergies spiked after companies started roasting peanuts at a higher temperature in order to get them roasted faster? Turns out the increased temperature causes a protein to denature to a form that has a higher allergenicity than before. Not that that stopped anyone from doing it. More profits to be made selling cheap
Re: (Score:2)
Peanut allergies are also higher in people whos mothers did not eat peanuts for fear of it affecting their babies.
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I skimmed the paper and the paper is a bit air-headed and unfocused when it comes to the biology.
They are a bit implicit, but it appears that their main failure scenario depends on the idea that with GMO you get huge monocultures where agriculture is dominated by relatively untested species, which could be susceptible to plant diseases. This is true, as far as I know. And I suppose that the risk of global catastrophic outcomes could very well be real.
They also seem to assume that with non-GMO breeding techn
Re: (Score:2)
...or better yet: "The Africanized Swan".
Africanized swans: (Score:4, Funny)
Nasty. Swans are already mean as all get out and now you want to genetically engineer them with African bee dna, so they behave like killer bees.
Black swan: Cygnus atratus
Africanized honey bee: Apis mellifera adansonii
Africanized Black Swan: Cygnus atratus adansonii (variety: Winged Death).
Attacks in flocks of thousands and chases you for miles. Almost as bad as sharks with lasers, but can fly and travel on land. Doctor Evil would be proud.