www(.)wesupportorganic(.)com/2014/02/new-research-gmo-food-far-worse-than-we-think(.)html Please help! My friend just posted this, and has a habit of posting so much "anti-GMO" stuff that it drives me insane, but I can't seem to formulate my thoughts into a coherent argument. Any help you can offer would be FANTASTIC!
so their research is a cell line. That’s nice, but there’s a reason that the LD50 is tested on rodents and not on cell lines, and that reason is is that cell lines do not behave like a full organism. To check how things are properly metabolised in vivo, you need to test it in vivo.
I’m also looking for they study, because honestly you can find a study for basically everything if you want to really dig into it. All the links in this site link back to something called ‘greenmedinfo’. To say that that’s not pubmed is an understatement. Especially after I found this article here. I have said it before, I will say it again: PEOPLE WHO ARE PEDDLING A SINGLE CURE FOR ALL KNOWN TYPES OF CANCER ARE QUACKS.
But back to the topic at hand:
if you want to have an argument about GMO plants with your friend, here are some of the pros and cons:
- monopolysation. This is a HUGE problem, especially with Monsanto and it’s an important point where legislative action needs to be taken.
- environmental impact. Keyword here being horizontal gene transfer. Yes it can happen. People are working on it to prevent it.
- enforced use of herbicides. That’s something that especially happens with that Roundup stuff because you can basically throw it on all the time without harming your crop. This is a problem, people are working on it.
- better harvests. Let’s face it, we have to feed all these people somehow and we’re running out of farm-able land quickly.
- additional nutrients. Ties into the point above, we can breed plants that not just feed a lot of people, but feed them things they need, like vitamins normally absent in the plant.
- less use of pesticides. No seriously, this is a thing and the reason why pesticides are build into the plant (like a lot of plants do naturally, what do you think nicotine is?). The idea is to make the plant have it’s own defense so that you don’t have to help from outside.
- Faster development of new traits. This can be a huge thing with the climate change as making plants stress resistant can be done much faster this way
- diet foods. I mean diet as in ‘food for people with celiac disease’ or similar, because you can literally cut the gluten gene out of a plant with minimal effort.
And entirely aside from that, going for GMOs in general: if you’re diabetic you’ve benefited from GMOs. If you’ve had growth hormones in your life, you have benefited from GMOs. If you’re hemophile and get treated with clotting factors, you have benefited from GMOs. GMOs are a possible way to gain biofuel without using food for it. Medical research is carried out on transgene animals. GMOs are more than crops and they’re vitally important in those areas. People might not know, but depriving us of all GMOs is going to do way more harm than good.
So, bottomline: We do not currently have proof that GMO crops pose any more danger to health than regular crops. (here, here).
Do we need more research? Trick question, we always do. But a lot of what people are doing right now is demonizing the entire thing when really the problem is the firms behind it (MONSANTO) and the lack of adequate information. People are half informed and half emotional and that is a shitty base to make a reasonable decision on.