Forgive my rustiness, it has been a few years since my college genetics classes from way back before I switched from biology to CS.
The main goals are usually to reduce the need for synthetic pesticides, herbicides, etc. and increased crop yields.
I am all for that. But the problem i am concerned with is that the customer also eats these incorporated pesticides. Just because something has a biological nature, does not mean it is automatically healthy. What does a large amount of daily ingested natural pesticide do to humans ? Nicotine for example is a natural pesticide present in a plant. It is deadly in large quantities. I am not writing that this by monsanto used incorporated pesticide
(insecticide) is automatically a problem either. What i am writing is that i doubt that long term trials have been done with extensive research what happens to the person eating GM foods. Nobody seems to know or care. And i want to know.
Yeh, modified viruses are handy ways to insert and express genes. Viruses are usually very organism specific, you are not going to catch a plant virus. As a matter of fact, I believe using modified viruses is the most practical ways of creating new GMOs.
True. But i assume normally these specific virus parts like for example reverse transcriptase are denatured as what i have learned it is called.
What i am worried about is that it is pretty obvious now that any virus can jump species when it infects a cell together with other viruses. Then the chance will significantly rise that a new version arises that is able to make the jump to species when the situation presents itself. This situation is created when you consume gm food with virus particles in them and carry a lot of other viruses just from daily life. Add a few contaminated vaccines...
You likely ingest traces of synthetic pesticides daily, we have to apply them in bulk to unmodified crops. The pesticides expressed by GMOs come from the genes of other organisms. I suppose one could say it is "organic pesticide." Again, if done correctly, it can be perfectly safe. What is harmful to a pest or fungus might not be harmful to you and the amount that you ingest after the food has been processed is likely not harmful at that level.
Well, you forget that if used properly, external pesticides should only be present on the skin. I know that large amounts of pesticides can cause an effect that the inner part of the fruit or vegetable is saturated as well with pesticides. As is the case with GM food.
I know this because every time i buy oranges or mandarins and they taste chemically, i throw these away and check the labels from which country they come. Every time in the past i ate a lot of these chemically tasting oranges and mandarins usually from Spain or Greece i would more vulnerable to common colds and other typical infections. After i stopped doing that my immune system and healing returned to higher performance although not as good as it should be(but that's just me). I did some research and did find that some pesticides are capable of slowing down the immune system in some way never really fully explained. I am not writing this is the case with GM food. But i sure think we should first see if large amount of a foreign natural pesticide is dangerous to the human body.
I will admit, Monsanto is one of the most evil companies on the planet. However, they are a necessary evil and many great innovations have been made by them. They are introducing terminator genes to ensure that certain GMOs do not spread unintentionally, which has the "side-effect" of the farmer having to purchase seeds from Monsanto every year.
I do not think monsanto is evil. I do think they are greedy and ignorant people blinded by money. Every of those terminator techniques will fail because all you people forget ever ytime that life is dynamic and is not sequential. A lot is happening at the same time. Everything gets infected by viruses and sometimes viruses share all dna with bacteria, with other cells. It takes time but those gm genes will spread. It is not just pollinating. It is a lot more complex and parallel in action.
GMOs, like all types of organisms that end up being sold as food in the US, are regulated and studies are done to ensure safety prior to them entering the food supply. You have been eating GMOs for a long time.
I doubt it that i have been eating gm food for a long time. I am sure i consumed some. Although i must confess that the meat i eat comes from animals fed with GM food. As such i do eat GM food indirectly. And the only reason why these animals are getting fed GM food is because the US backed cry out from monsanto at the WTO that it was not allowed to sell it's GM food on the EU market. And that monsanto did not want to see any labels used which identify GM food.
GE food is the next agricultural revolution. Many countries use irrational fear of safe GMOs to fan protectionist fever in their population. The US has a massive edge in this field and it has the possibility to not only reduce our reliance on synthetic chemicals and reduction of disease, but also make crop yields so high that food will become even cheaper and fewer people in the world will have to go hungry. In effect, we might finally be able to solve world hunger (if we have the will to do so), which with an exploding world population, will become more important as we must make the most of the agricultural land available to us.
There is no world hunger because of a lack of food. There is world hunger because of political
and economical reasons. That is a big difference. Besides, i see a lot of over weight or obese or FAT people who eat to much. The father of a friend of mine always sad :
All fat people are doing it to themselves. In Auschwitz there where no fat people. With the exception of people with a thyroid problem afcourse. But even people with a thyroid problem where skinny or dead in Auschwitz. Even in locations on the planet where a famine is happening, a few hunderd miles further there are people with to much food, but not helping... Now how can that be...
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