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[KichigaiNeko]

Scientific American comes out in favor of GMOs, and I agree
By Ashutosh Jogalekar | September 6, 2013 |

In the September 6 issue of Scientific American, the magazine’s editors pen a piece explicitly supporting GMOs and opposing GMO labeling. I applaud the editors for taking an official position on a topic that still sparks intense debate. Both the wording and content of the editorial reflect an adherence to what is called “good scientific practice”; trusting the scientific evidence as far as it takes us, leaving room for uncertainty and making a judgement call based on imperfect but still sound evidence.

The editors start by reminding us that we have been consuming genetically modified foods for 20 years without much trouble, a point worth belaboring only because it keeps getting conveniently ignored in many debates on the topic.

Full article here


I am yet to fully read this and follow the links to verify; but they do seem to have a point

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Some of the comments

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9. Kevbonham
11:36 am 09/7/2013
“From a chemical standpoint I have said before that I would rather trust foreign bits of DNA circulating around in my blood than things like dioxin and chlorofluorocarbons which can wreak demonstrated havoc”

The reality is that those foreign bits of DNA won’t even make it as far as your bloodstream. Nucleic acids are efficiently digested and incorporated as individual nucleotides.

@ Drinker: The obesity epidemic also tracks nicely with internet use and renewable energy. Just because GMOs are food and obesity involves what we eat, that doesn’t mean they’re connected.

In fact, obesity started its upward trend before GMOs were introduced onto the market. A lot of factors contribute to obesity, and there are a lot of policies that exacerbate the problem, but there’s no evidence, nor indeed a theoretical framework that might suggest a possible link between GMO and obesity.

Link to this
10. ikewinski
1:20 pm 09/7/2013
“In spite of this extensive consumption – surely constituting a global laboratory involving billions of daily, repeated, controlled experiments – there is no evidence of distinct harm from GMOs.”

I have to take exception with the adjective “controlled”. In fact, this experiment seems to be exactly the opposite of “controlled”. We don’t know who is eating GMO, how much they are eating of it, when they are eating it, what else they are eating with it, nor do we have a proper control group that is not eating GMO foods.

I understand why no such controlled human trials are happening, and I’m fine with using non-human animals in properly controlled feeding trials.

Link to this
11. curiouswavefunction
2:16 pm 09/7/2013
#9, #10: Good points. The fact that phosphodiester bonds get largely chewed up in the digestive system weakens the argument against direct GMO toxicity even further.

Link to this
12. dslovejoy
2:22 pm 09/7/2013
First, how much money has Monsanto paid to Scientific America?
Second, there is a huge difference between selective breeding and direct genetic manipulation.
Third, 20 years of no ill effects? Really? Take a look at the general health and obesity rates of children 20 years ago and today. Food allergies, asthma, high blood pressure, etc. I will bet you find differences that can be directly or indirectly related to GMO’s.
Many countries have banned GMO’s, and many more have banned American made food products for potential GMO’s and other questionable ingredients.
It is irresponsible for this magazine to endorse GMO’s, and I feel you have lost credibility as a source of information as a result.

Link to this
13. Crocodile Chuck
6:51 pm 09/7/2013
The original justification for GMO was that ‘missing’ nutrients could be incorporated into food, reducing the extent of malnutrition.

What actually happened: the genes inserted into grains were to increase resistance to herbicide exposure.

Of course, what we are now seeing is resistance to these herbicides (which just happen to be sold by the same companies marketing the GMO strains themselves) as they are used in higher and higher concentrations.

The ‘advantages’ of GMO have flowed overwhelmingly to the producers, who have changed the laws, from making it illegal to even make explicit the presence of GMO grain in food labels for consumers, to prosecuting farmers who try to reserve seed from one crop for the next one.

This post is sloppy and replete with straw men, e.g., people don’t eat cars, and ‘foreign bits of DNA’ don’t circulate in your blood (hat tip Kevbonham above). This is so far beneath the usual standards of this blog as to be shocking.

Finally, per dslovejoy’s comment, how much IS Monsanto paying Scientific American for this blanket endorsement?

We look forward to the answer to this obvious query in an update.

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Still on the topic of GMO

Tryptophan contamination[edit source | editbeta]
In the late 1980s Showa Denko decided to change the method it used to produce tryptophan, from fermentation to the genetic engineering of bacteria. Bacteria were engineered to express certain enzymes at much higher levels than normal, and to express other enzymes not normally present in the original bacteria. In 1989 an outbreak of Eosinophilia-myalgia syndrome causing the death of 37 people and permanently disabling 1500 more was attributed to the use of Tryptophan. Some epidemiological studies[1][2][3] traced the outbreak to L-tryptophan supplied by Showa Denko.[4] It was further hypothesized that one or more trace impurities produced during the manufacture of tryptophan may have been responsible for the EMS outbreak.[5][6] The fact that the Showa Denko facility used genetically engineered bacteria to produce L-tryptophan gave rise to speculation that genetic engineering was responsible for such impurities.[7] However, the methodology used in the initial epidemiological studies has been criticized.[8][9] An alternative explanation for the 1989 EMS outbreak is that large doses of tryptophan produce metabolites which inhibit the normal degradation of histamine and excess histamine in turn has been proposed to cause EMS.[10] Once the link between EMS and Showa Denkos tryptophan had been established, chemical analyses of the tryptophan was performed by researchers at the Mayo Clinic, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Japanese National Institute of Hygienic Sciences to determine if any contaminants were associated with EMS.[11] Showa Denko reportedly destroyed the GM bacterial stocks after the EMS cases began to emerge.[12]
References

Wiki link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Showa_Denko

Tryptophan debacle
Google link https://www.google.com.au/search?q=Trypt...e&ie=UTF-8