Thread: Genetically Modified Food is Really, Really Bad for Rats - and Maybe YOU!!!

I remember when starting a thread about a highly controversial topic took more than two lines of "I hate it, it sucks, I don't like it".

Lots of things are bad for rats. Aspartame can cause cancer for them. It doesn't mean it does the same thing for us.

There of lots of different methods and reasons for genetically modifying foods. They're all different, and I highly doubt they would all cause the same problem.

Also, everything's bad for us these days

Originally Posted by Marvo

I remember when starting a thread about a highly controversial topic took more than two lines of "I hate it, it sucks, I don't like it".

And your point is?

Originally Posted by Indeed

Lots of things are bad for rats. Aspartame can cause cancer for them. It doesn't mean it does the same thing for us.

There of lots of different methods and reasons for genetically modifying foods. They're all different, and I highly doubt they would all cause the same problem.

Also, everything's bad for us these days

I understand what you are saying but it does sound concerning when Dr Michael Antoniou, molecular biologist, King's College London says, 'This research shows an extraordinary number of tumors developing earlier and more aggressively - particularly in female animals. I am shocked by the extreme negative health impacts. We can expect that the consumption of GM maize and the herbicide Roundup, impacts seriously on human health.'

And France's Jose Bove, vice-chairman of the European Parliament's commission for agriculture and known as a fierce opponent of GM, called for an immediate suspension of all EU cultivation and import authorisations of GM crops doesn't sound too good either.

Yes there are lots of bad things these days, but who knows what the effects will be in the long term, I think I did read somewhere not so long ago that there has been an explosion of cancer in the US inrecent years. Pure conjecture of course but something must be responsible.

My main concern is the there's the obvious fact that GMO's are monopolized patents, and the US government is supporting it. It's going to drive up the price of food in the same way that medicine gets ridiculous here.

I'm not a fan of monsanto or of roundup in my food, but that article seems pretty sensationalist. I smell strong bias, need to find other sources...

If you actually read the article you'll find that the rats were fed GM crops and chemical fertiliser.

I find it very unlikely that GM crops inherently cause cancer. They're just making proteins found in other plants.

Thanks for the article. I am not saying no problem exists, but I see a few issues with the info. First, the poor rats were being feed round-up herbaside. How can we evaluate the effect of the modified food if the rats ALSO receive a known toxin? Second, that type of tumor is extreamly common in rats. I mean extreamly common! I raise rats for pets, and they eat normal bulk food like oats and pasta. I have had them more often than not develop tumors. The tumors are like those pictured and can get to be the same size as the rat. So, the pictures may look freaky, but are only pictures of a common ailment amongst rats.

One thing you all may not know, is that almost every food crop we eat was genetically modified back in the early part of the century, or mid century. The process made giant versions of the wild crops and much healthier crop, so every type of food and garden flower were modified. It is a basic process of poisoning the parent with Cholchicine. The parent gets warped and half killed. Crossing two plants poisoned this way, sometimes causes an off spring with two sets of every dna starnd. It is called tetraploidy. The offspring, are more than healthy, they are the supermen of there species. It was impossable to compete with tetraploid crops, and they were easy to make, so everyone did it. That is true, almost every plant used by man has allready been seriously genetically modified many, many decades ago.

I may be exagerating, maybe some of those little purple potatoes, or some garden grown plants are not modified, but I would guess way more than half of the harvested plants underwent this process. It was to good to be true. Instead of tomatoe the size of golf balls, you could make them the size of soft balls.

Well, the obvious next step would be to isolate the GM corn and fertilizer, and compare each independently to a control group. If they are claiming that the corn itself contains dangerous levels of fertilizer as sold, and that that causes health issues, then that's a different matter - however they did not isolate that variable (come on scientists, I'm a college freshman in CS). As it is though, this does not provide a valid argument against genetically modified foods.

Originally Posted by sivason

Second, that type of tumor is extreamly common in rats. I mean extreamly common! I raise rats for pets, and they eat normal bulk food like oats and pasta. I have had them more often than not develop tumors. The tumors are like those pictured and can get to be the same size as the rat. So, the pictures may look freaky, but are only pictures of a common ailment amongst rats.

Yeah, anybody with a moderate degree of scepticism would call bullshit as soon as they read the first words of that headline. "Rats fed GM crops grow horrifying tumours"... so what? Rats fed normal rat diets grow horrifying tumours.

It's easy to miss if you're not thinking too hard about it, but especially funny is the shocking fact that 50% of the male rats die earlier than expected.

I remember reading an article a while back and they did a survey to find out the worlds most evil corporation and Monsanto was listed number one by far. If you know me, you know I love all the new technology and I am in favor of things like genetically modified stuff. However that company is crazy, I wouldn't trust them with anything.

They pay off scientist to get results they want, they bully farmers and they bribe corrupt politicians. A lot of their stuff has been banned from countries.

It's a shame people conflate GM, which is positive knowledge and technology, with Monsanto, which is a company. GM has probably saved hundreds of millions of lives.

Xei....I know where you're at with this, but you know tens of years ago doctors were endorsing cigarettes right? The European Union only allows a certain amount GMO's and the others wont even touch their soil. In other countries (US) those same GMO's that your government has deemed harmful in some way (rather to the animal or it's consumer) our countries have okayed it. For every hundreds of millions of lives you think it's saved in the short term, it has either damaged or profited by that many lives equally....and that number will continue to grow as long as it becomes a patented (damn near unregulated) product.

If a company claims they save X amount of lives because of a product they own a monopoly over.....why should I believe in that? Why wouldn't a product get to them in the first place? Why are people refusing handouts from other countries because it's making them more sick than the supposed cure? And no, I'm not talking about that BS site in the OP. I'm talking about products that have basically legalized animal cruelty.


Things just don't add up bro. I'm not a mathematician like yourself, but when I see a country that has a high percentage of overweight people with cancer that feels like it needs to modify food just to help out other people, then something is wrong. You can't trust a skinny cook, but you can't trust one with a microscope either.

Yes, I know food has been GMO'd...but it's not the same as picking the sweetest apple that originated in china, and it's not the same as picking female Marry J plants to get the most THC....people are breaking down genetic code and putting bacteria in plants without even knowing what the end results will be.

But we've never failed with unknowns right? Aerosols, CFCs, Carbon Emissions, Plastics.....all that jazz...those products have saved hundreds of millions of lives.....and doomed the entire planet.

That is the worrying thing, that they take the stance it is all safe and so none of it should be tested. And in some regards they have succeeded in convincing the US government that it doesn't need to be tested.

Originally Posted by Auron

But we've never failed with unknowns right? Aerosols, CFCs, Carbon Emissions, Plastics.....all that jazz...those products have saved hundreds of millions of lives.....and doomed the entire planet.

Hahahahahahahahhaha

Good joke.

Originally Posted by Xei

If you actually read the article you'll find that the rats were fed GM crops and chemical fertiliser.

I find it very unlikely that GM crops inherently cause cancer. They're just making proteins found in other plants.

I briefly read the artcle very quickly and it crossed my mind too. They must have found traces of the herbicide on all samples of the GM corn that they were going to feed the rats so they had to include that chemical compound in thier study. But it then makes it a vague study in the sense that the study does not determine whether it is GM corn or the herbicide is at fault. The article was poorly written from this viewpoint as it is saying that GM food is the cause. It could well be that the herbicide maybe at fault. I remember clearly when my father used to use paraquat as a herbicide to spray on his crops. It is now known today to be very bad for a human's health and is not allowed to be used as a herbicide in certain countries.

They made a plant one time (corn, I think) that was supposed to create a pestacide to protect it from pest bugs. Turned out it killed ALL of the pollinating bugs, like bees and others. It had to be destroyed, but had the pollen got out into the system, it would have been a disaster.

The big problem, is that some GM plants may be a wonderful thing for man kind, tetraploidy plants sure were, but some have the potential to cause mass mahiem. The companies want to rush the products into production. So, some bad ones can get out, in the rush to earn money. Also, many of them pass the traits through pollen to their off-spring, so plants tested in say Mexico, with no regulation, could spread to the US by pollenation.

Some interesting info regarding the study

Originally Posted by Auron

Xei....I know where you're at with this, but you know tens of years ago doctors were endorsing cigarettes right?

Yes... then they were overturned by the mass of evidence. Decades ago doctors were also endorsing exercise. I didn't even apeal to doctors in the first place so... I really don't see your point.

The European Union only allows a certain amount GMO's and the others wont even touch their soil. In other countries (US) those same GMO's that your government has deemed harmful in some way (rather to the animal or it's consumer) our countries have okayed it. For every hundreds of millions of lives you think it's saved in the short term, it has either damaged or profited by that many lives equally....and that number will continue to grow as long as it becomes a patented (damn near unregulated) product.

I don't think, I know. And it will continue to save them indefinitely.

I know the EU is squeamish about GM technology, but could you please give some specific circumstances where the GM crop was designed for something benign but actually proven dangerous? The EU rejects a lot of stuff on the basis of the (often vague and flawed) principle that something needs to be 'proven' harmless, not because it has been proven dangerous.

If a company claims they save X amount of lives because of a product they own a monopoly over.....why should I believe in that?

Again... I never appealed to the testimony of companies? Companies aren't renowned for being honest. They're not scientists.

Why are people refusing handouts from other countries because it's making them more sick than the supposed cure? And no, I'm not talking about that BS site in the OP. I'm talking about products that have basically legalized animal cruelty.

It's a technology. Technology isn't inherently good or bad; a technology is simply power. Atomic energy isn't inherently bad; it's just that evil people have used the technology to make bombs. In exactly the same way, I'm saying that GM isn't inherently dangerous. Obviously if you design it to do something immoral, you'll get an immoral consequence.

Things just don't add up bro. I'm not a mathematician like yourself, but when I see a country that has a high percentage of overweight people with cancer that feels like it needs to modify food just to help out other people, then something is wrong. You can't trust a skinny cook, but you can't trust one with a microscope either.

Treating Americans as a homogeneous mass of fat, uncaring idiots is an odd thing to see from somebody who isn't foreign...

Apparently the following truism is necessary: Americans are different. Some Americans are humanitarians.

And look, I'm really not interested in any of this stuff. I don't see what America or foreign aid or cigarettes or anecdotes about people rejecting it etc. etc. has to do with anything... if they are supposed to be arguments against what I said, they are very poor and fallacious. As a reminder, what I said was that I find it very unlikely that GM is inherently dangerous: that is, the technology of rearranging genes. Obviously if you put a gene which produces a toxic pesticide in a crop, that will be harmful, and will be flagged as such, and rightly banned. What I'm talking about is harmless genes, like the gene in golden rice which makes beta carotene (from daffodils) to prevent vitamin A deficiency. The only relevant evidence will be some kind of statistical study demonstrating that putting genes which produce some desirable protein in some other organism causes dangerous side-effects. If you don't have any such evidence, you don't actually disagree with what I've said (or at least have no basis to), so please don't respond with some other tangent.

Yes, I know food has been GMO'd...but it's not the same as picking the sweetest apple that originated in china, and it's not the same as picking female Marry J plants to get the most THC....people are breaking down genetic code and putting bacteria in plants without even knowing what the end results will be.

But we've never failed with unknowns right? Aerosols, CFCs, Carbon Emissions, Plastics.....all that jazz...those products have saved hundreds of millions of lives.....and doomed the entire planet.

You realise this puts you in an extreme luddite position? Literally never do anything new. What about these newfangled 'lightbulb' things? Maybe they create some unknown kind of energy ray which makes you explode after five years. Sure, there's no reason at all for thinking it's the case, but can you disprove it? No, didn't think so. Let's ban 'em. Satellites? Ban. Penicillin? Ban.

Obviously the reasonable thing to do is weigh up the potential benefits of any new technology against any reasonable risks. Genes mutating and moving around is something that happens all the time in nature. It's where we got wheat from in the first place! It's just that only very rarely will a mutation survive which benefits humans (because it confers no advantage to the plant); GM allows us to change that. That it may have some inherent danger is about as reasonable as the risk that mixing custard together with chilli powder will create a poison. Sure, nobody's never done it before, but we can still use our common sense to conclude that it would be very unlikely.

I scrolled down the page. Saw the title. Clicked into the thread. Saw that the link lead to Natural News.

Safe to say that if it's from Natural News, you should approach any claims made with the GREATEST amount of skepticism possible.

pictures don't lie

Originally Posted by Original Poster

pictures don't lie

You have failed at understanding basic scientific process.

Clue: rats naturally get tumours.

True! Picture J could be an exact picture of my sweet little Darla, who developed a tumor exactly like that. She only ate normal foods, like oats and rice and pasta. She was not a lab rat. That picture looks completely normal for a rat. They get those tumors all the freaking time. It is just something that happens to rats. By the time she died it was a bit larger than that one pictured.

Plus, to repeat from above, they freaking feed the poor rats round-up! Maybe if the round-up ends up on the parts of the corn we eat in large enough amounts, that may be relevent. It says nothing about the corn.

Bovine somatotropin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

@ xei, As for the rest of your wall of text, I'm too lazy to disagree with it. This place is like the lounge on hard mode.