Thread: GMOs and Gene Patents

Originally Posted by stonedape

I'd rather eat unmodified food than modified food.

Why? Do you think natural just automatically means better?

It doesn't matter if it's "better", modifying food is completely unnecessary. Food is perfectly fine the way it is. It's very nutritious and tasty. So why the hell should we modify it. THe only thing that modifying it does is make it resistant to pests, and mostly it is used so that people can spray herbicide(round-up) on their crops to kill the weeds rather than pulling them.

How do you make food "better" by modifying it? That's like making sex better by taking some drug. It's already really fucking good, so why fuck with it? It doesn't need to be better. If you aren't getting enough nutrition from the food you eat, either you live in a third world country and can't afford enough food, or you aren't eating well because you choose to eat an unhealthy diet.

And honestly I'm not against fucking with it in labs and seeing what can be done, but GM crops should not make up the majority of crops. This is what Monsanto wants to do and there are trying very hard to make this happen. It should be very easy for a person to buy a food and know that the food they are buying is not GM, but it isn't.

What's "better" about modified food? The only thing I can tell is that it is cost effective for some farmers, though because of seed patenting and other problems I think in the long run it just makes farmers into serfs to monsanto. They have no choice but to use Monsanto's seeds and pesticides.

Originally Posted by stonedape

But it has not been proven that GM foods are safe. We won't really know until years from now, and because of the way that Monsanto does business we probabaly won't ever. Personally I don't want to be the guinea pig for this, but here in the state you have little choice.

It has not been proven they are not safe. GM food undergoes more rigorous control than 'conventional' food.
Yet people think conventional food is safe.

As for being a guinea pig, here is a list of pesticides that have been used in past (meaning you or your parents were guinea pigs for them), but are now banned due to environmental or health hazards:

aldrin
arsenic oxide (3)
asbestos (friable)
azodrin
1,4-benzoquinone, 2,3,5,6-tetrachloro-binapacryl
2,3,4,5-bis (2-butenylene) tetrahydrofurfural
bromoxynil butyrate
cadmium compounds
calcium arsenate
camphechlor
captafol
carbofuran
carbon tetrachloride
chlordane
chlordecone
chlordimeform
chlorobenzilate
chloromethoxypropylmercuric acetate
copper arsenate
2,4-d, isooctyl ester
daminozide
ddd
ddt
di(phenylmercury)dodecenylsuccinate
1,2-dibromo-3-chloropropane
1,2-dibromoethane
1,2-dichloroethane
dieldrin
4,6-dinitro-o-cresol
dinitrobutyl phenol
endrin
epn
ethylene oxide
fluoroacetamide
gamma-lindane
heptachlor
hexachlorobenzene
1,2,3,4,5,6-hexachlorocyclohexane (mixture of isomers)
1,3-hexanediol, 2-ethyl-lead arsenate
leptophos
mercury
methamidophos
methyl parathion
mevinphos
mirex
nitrofen
octamethyldiphosphoramide
parathion
pentachlorophenol
phenylmercuric oleate
phosphamidon
pyriminil
safrole
sodium arsenate
terpene polychlorinates (strobane6)
thallium(i) sulfate
2,4,5-tp acid (silvex)
tributyltin compounds
2,4,5-trichlorophenol
vinyl chloride

Currently you are a guinea pig for the following when you eat 'normal food' (only four of the most widely used):
1. atrazine (already banned in Europe due to endocrine, possible carcinogenic effects, and reduced sperm count)
2. alachlor (banned in Europe)
3. metolachlor (proven cytotoxic and genotoxic effects in lymphocytes)
4. 1,3-dichloropropene(already classified as a potential human carcinogen).

Saying these four are dangerous, or that any future chemical herbicides/pesticides/insecticides will be dangerous, is an educated guess with very low uncertainty.

I'd rather take my chances with transgenic Bt crops since Bt is NOT toxic to humans.

I'd rather eat unmodified food than modified food.

So basically, you want to forget the past few thousand years of agriculture then. Not to mention you will want to grow all your own food. You think that stuff in the supermarkets is 'unmodified'?

Food is perfectly fine the way it is. It's very nutritious and tasty. So why the hell should we modify it. THe only thing that modifying it does is make it resistant to pests, and mostly it is used so that people can spray herbicide(round-up) on their crops to kill the weeds rather than pulling them.

It's very easy to sit there in your chair and make those statements; you don't have to worry about food. You don't have to worry about the crops failing, or mass starvation because a drought killed all plants off. You don't have to worry about crops failing because of the salinity of the soil.

Furthermore, food is not fine the way it is. Why do you think the art of cooking exists? An art that enchances the flavour of food. Why do you think that some people prefer different wines, or different varieties of the same food? Because some taste better.

And as I said, without all the modifications beforehand we'd all be starving because yields wouldn't be big enough. We'd be starving because crops would fail completely as well.

Go and educate yourself instead of simply reading mass media stories on the subject.