GMO video by Potholer54

[tupac chopra]

I'm not going to address Smith's claims because, frankly, he is full of shit, and you need to produce some reputable sources instead of wasting everyone's time with this crap.

I don't need to do anything. Unless you somehow think is is very important I need to change your beliefs. I don't want to change your beliefs.
I am just pointing out for anyone who does care that there is another side to what you posted. Intelligent people can make up their own minds.

Anyone who is interested can look at your source, then look at the other side to the story.

 

[bigfield]

I'm not going to address Smith's claims because, frankly, he is full of shit, and you need to produce some reputable sources instead of wasting everyone's time with this crap.

I don't need to do anything. Unless you somehow think is is very important I need to change your beliefs. I don't want to change your beliefs.
I am just pointing out for anyone who does care that there is another side to what you posted. Intelligent people can make up their own minds.

Anyone who is interested can look at your source, then look at the other side to the story.

 

[Underseer]

I'm not going to address Smith's claims because, frankly, he is full of shit, and you need to produce some reputable sources instead of wasting everyone's time with this crap.

I don't need to do anything. Unless you somehow think is is very important I need to change your beliefs. I don't want to change your beliefs.
I am just pointing out for anyone who does care that there is another side to what you posted. Intelligent people can make up their own minds.

Anyone who is interested can look at your source, then look at the other side to the story.

I'll let Carl Sagan explain what's wrong with this:

“We've arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.”

You have arrived at an invalid conclusion because you don't understand why things are true in science. Just on general principle, this can have negative consequences on our entire civilization, but in your particular case the national conversation is wasting a lot of time trying to dispel unsupported health claims about GMO, when we probably should be talking about the deplorable business practices of those seed companies instead.

And that's not the only bad thing about your conclusions. There are critical GMO products that are very important to reducing starvation around the world (e.g. some impoverished cultures can only grow one kind of crop or refuse to grow other kinds of crops, and people have produced versions of those crops with higher nutrition value). How many people in this world should starve to death so that you can avoid learning how to draw good conclusions from scientific evidence?

 

[tupac chopra]

You have arrived at an invalid conclusion because you don't understand why things are true in science. Just on general principle, this can have negative consequences on our entire civilization,

I want GMO's tested with long term independent studies and that means negative consequences for our entire civilization??

 

[tupac chopra]

That settles it then

Largest international study into safety of GM food launched by Russian NGO


This should give us some much better answers than the bullshit studies Monsanto do. Although I'm guessing you'll want to disagree?
I suspect you'll think Monsanto's studies would be superior?

I will suspend judgment until the study has been completed and the scientific community has reviewed it.

So despite you believing GMO are safe based on hundreds of studies many of which are done by Monsanto, you secretly suspect they aren't safe?
Otherwise why would you have to wait for this study?
How could this study possibly show them to be unsafe when so many Monsanto studies show them to be safe?

 

[bigfield]

I will suspend judgment until the study has been completed and the scientific community has reviewed it.

So despite you believing GMO are safe based on hundreds of studies many of which are done by Monsanto, you secretly suspect they aren't safe?
Otherwise why would you have to wait for this study?

There is no point in speculating about a study that has not even been started.

You are predicting, based on your Monsanto conspiracy theory, that the Factor GMO study will contradict all previous studies, both those funded by Monsanto and those not funded by Monsanto. It is nothing but wild-ass speculation on your part.

How could this study possibly show them to be unsafe when so many Monsanto studies show them to be safe?

I think that outcome is unlikely, based simply on the fact that it would require an unheard-of level of corruption among the scientific community.

 

[tupac chopra]

So despite you believing GMO are safe based on hundreds of studies many of which are done by Monsanto, you secretly suspect they aren't safe?
Otherwise why would you have to wait for this study?

There is no point in speculating about a study that has not even been started.

You are predicting, based on your Monsanto conspiracy theory, that the Factor GMO study will contradict all previous studies, both those funded by Monsanto and those not funded by Monsanto. It is nothing but wild-ass speculation on your part.

I don't think you quite understand the study. It's a long term study of this corn. As there has been no other long term studies there has no been any chance to observe long term effects.

So for me to speculate that the first long term study of this kind could show harmful long term effects is hardly wild-ass speculation.
Now if there had been many other long term studies of this corn that showed it to be safe , then, it would be wild-ass speculation.

How could this study possibly show them to be unsafe when so many Monsanto studies show them to be safe?

I think that outcome is unlikely, based simply on the fact that it would require an unheard-of level of corruption among the scientific community.

No it would not. As there has been no other opportunity to show long term effects of this corn. So you can't say that.
It might show that both Monsanto and the regulators should have done or insisted on long term studies.

If we find statistically significant numbers of say, tumors, in the rats fed GM corn it doesn't mean there was a conspiracy, it just means Monsanto cut corners and the regulators allowed them to

 

[bigfield]

There is no point in speculating about a study that has not even been started.

You are predicting, based on your Monsanto conspiracy theory, that the Factor GMO study will contradict all previous studies, both those funded by Monsanto and those not funded by Monsanto. It is nothing but wild-ass speculation on your part.

I don't think you quite understand the study. It's a long term study of this corn. As there has been no other long term studies there has no been any chance to observe long term effects.

So for me to speculate that the first long term study of this kind could show harmful long term effects is hardly wild-ass speculation.
Now if there had been many other long term studies of this corn that showed it to be safe , then, it would be wild-ass speculation.

You stated this:

This should give us some much better answers than the bullshit studies Monsanto do.

You make the claim that the Factor GMO study will be 'much better', and that the Monsanto studies (which you have probably never looked at) are 'bullshit', as in dishonest.

Yet details on the Factor GMO study and its backers are scarce:

Their website does not state which GMO they are studying. NK603? Which pesticide are they studying? Presumably it is Roundup. Neither are stated on the site but it it fairly obvious that they are interested in the Monsanto product.

They do not state the duration of the trial, nor what the study will entail, nor what hypothesis they are testing.

The study is organised by NAGS, a Russian anti-GMO group with a vested interest in maintaining a Russian ban on GMOs and encouraging bans elsewhere against the American company Monsanto. NAGS have been behind at least two previous studies claiming that GMOs were harmful, yet these studies were unable to pass peer review.

The list of backers has not been released, which in politics means that the backers are not neutral.

Based on that, I'd say that you prediction that this study will provide 'much better answers than the bullshit studies Monsanto do' is indeed a massive ass-pull.

How could this study possibly show them to be unsafe when so many Monsanto studies show them to be safe?

I think that outcome is unlikely, based simply on the fact that it would require an unheard-of level of corruption among the scientific community.

No it would not. As there has been no other opportunity to show long term effects of this corn. So you can't say that.

There has been ample opportunity to show the long-term effects of the corn: it has been on the market for ten years. NAGS have made multiple attempts to prove the harmful effects of GMOs, but have failed to pass peer review. I can't tell whether they were incompetent researchers, or were simply fudging their results to conform to an agenda. It doesn;t give me any confidence in Factor GMO, their latest venture.

By the way, here is a study examining long-term effects of multiple GMOs in a span of more than ten years:
https://www.animalsciencepublications.org/publications/jas/abstracts/92/10/4255

If NK603 is harmful to human health, then that study represents a massive cover up, or an work of staggering incompetence.

It might show that both Monsanto and the regulators should have done or insisted on long term studies.

If we find statistically significant numbers of say, tumors, in the rats fed GM corn it doesn't mean there was a conspiracy, it just means Monsanto cut corners and the regulators allowed them to

I'm being charitable in even allowing that this study could even make it into the perr-reviewed literature, let alone it actually expose a Monsanto coverup.

You have arrived at an invalid conclusion because you don't understand why things are true in science. Just on general principle, this can have negative consequences on our entire civilization,

I want GMO's tested with long term independent studies and that means negative consequences for our entire civilization??

I think you are kidding yourself if you think Factor GMO is independent.

This is why I said I would suspend judgement until after the study was completed and had a chance to be published in the peer-reviewed literature: most of what you are claiming about this study -- that hasn't even started yet -- may well turn out to be total bollocks.

 

[tupac chopra]

If NK603 is harmful to human health, then that study represents a massive cover up, or an work of staggering incompetence.

What you continue to dodge is how you know Monsanto GM corn isn't harmful over the long term without doing long term studies. How can you know it's not carcinogenic without doing a study to test for that.

No more dodging. It's time to deal with it.

If you don't want to answer this simple question, don't worry. No pro GMO person will give a straightforward answer.
They dodge they swerve they make excuses, they steer the conversation in other directions but they never answer it.

They pretend that a study has been done. They point to other studies (as you did). They say studies are not needed, they get abusive, they condescend, they call names (as you did) but they never answer it

 

[bigfield]

If NK603 is harmful to human health, then that study represents a massive cover up, or an work of staggering incompetence.

What you continue to dodge is how you know Monsanto GM corn isn't harmful over the long term without doing long term studies. How can you know it's not carcinogenic without doing a study to test for that.

US livestock have been an experiment in GMOs for over ten years, as the feed has been mostly GM varieties in that time. No livestock, including dairy cows which live for much longer than lab rats, have shown any decline in health in that time.

From Eenennaam:

These field data sets, representing over 100 billion animals following the introduction of GE crops, did not reveal unfavorable or perturbed trends in livestock health and productivity.

I can't say that it's impossible that NK603 may cause cancer in rats, but not chickens, cows or other livestock, but I'm betting it's unlikely.

 

[tupac chopra]

I can't say that it's impossible that NK603 may cause cancer in rats, but not chickens, cows or other livestock, but I'm betting it's unlikely.

You can't link to a study on any of these animals that used correct protocols.

You are still dodging.
Just admit it, and stop making excuses. The studies have never been done.

 

[bigfield]

I can't say that it's impossible that NK603 may cause cancer in rats, but not chickens, cows or other livestock, but I'm betting it's unlikely.

You can't link to a study on any of these animals that used correct protocols.

The Monsanto study on broiler chickens, the one you keep criticising as inadequate, passed peer review.

http://genera.biofortified.org/view/Taylor2003

You have been so busy moving the goalposts that you have apparently forgotten that.

I have no idea what you consider to be correct protocols.

You are still dodging

First you argued that Monsanto have been conducting a cover-up by fudging their results. Yet the Monsanto study above has managed to pass peer-review, while the studies claiming that GMOs are carcinogens have been discredited for -- you guessed it -- fudging their results and for failing to construct a rigorous experiment.

The discredited Seralini study - the reason why you and every other GMO opponent thinks GMO might be carcinogenic:
http://genera.biofortified.org/view/Seralini2012

Many anti-GMO sites still list it as a credible source.

Now you have changed tack, and are complaining that the studies that do exist do not satisfy your own personal, non-expert standards. Why the fuck should I care what you personally consider to be 'correct protocols'?

 

[Underseer]

You have arrived at an invalid conclusion because you don't understand why things are true in science. Just on general principle, this can have negative consequences on our entire civilization,

I want GMO's tested with long term independent studies and that means negative consequences for our entire civilization??

No, totally misinterpreting the science and coming to false conclusions because you're giving greater credibility to non-scientists than to scientists is the problem.

There is fundamentally no difference between the anti-GMO movement and any other anti-science movement from creationists to anti-vaccine people to people who deny the link between smoking and cancer.

Because of the ruckus you and millions of others are raising, there is enormous public backlash against a technology that has enormous potential for helping people who are starving right now (there's a lot more to this technology than just producing pest-resistant strains), and you are pulling the national conversation away from more pressing issues than your confirmation bias, selection bias, and whatever other fallacies and misinformation you've been using to prop up your conclusions. Because of the ruckus you are raising, we're wasting valuable time debunking your false claims about the health effects of GMO instead of discussing the business practices of those seed companies (yes, plural; there's more than just Monsanto, you know). Because of the ruckus you are raising, you are encouraging others to give greater credibility to pseudoscience "experts" instead of, you know, the scientists, which in turn can have all kinds of other negative effects on civilization.

 

[tupac chopra]

You can't link to a study on any of these animals that used correct protocols.

The Monsanto study on broiler chickens, the one you keep criticising as inadequate, passed peer review.

http://genera.biofortified.org/view/Taylor2003

That is a nutritional study .
Do you really not understand the difference?
The question is does this corn increase the incidence of tumors, yet you want to link to a nutritional study on chickens?

- - - Updated - - -

Because of the ruckus you and millions of others are raising, there is enormous public backlash against a technology that has enormous potential for helping people

...or harming people. So lets do the tests then if it's shown to be safe then release it.

 

[tupac chopra]

You can't link to a study on any of these animals that used correct protocols.

The Monsanto study on broiler chickens, the one you keep criticising as inadequate, passed peer review.

http://genera.biofortified.org/view/Taylor2003

You have been so busy moving the goalposts that you have apparently forgotten that.

I have no idea what you consider to be correct protocols.

You are still dodging

Yet the Monsanto study above has managed to pass peer-review, while the studies claiming that GMOs are carcinogens have been discredited for -- you guessed it -- fudging their results and for failing to construct a rigorous experiment.

If you do a bit of research you will find you are wrong. The Seralini study was not a carcinogenic study. So they did construct a rigorous experiment. The problem was that it was never designed as a cancer study. It was a toxicity study. They just reported the increased incidence of tumors in the rats fed GMO corn . What were they supposed to do? Not report it?

Here is a basic rundown of the history.
1. Monsanto conducted a 90 day toxicity study. 10 rats per group.
2. Seralini asked to see all the data
3. Mosanto said no.
4. Seralini took them to court and got the data.
5. Seralini became concerned about organ damage when looking at the data.
6. Seralini conducted a longer two year toxicity study. They were looking for organ damage not tumors, so they only used 10 rats per group
7. During the study they noticed that those rats fed GMO had more tumors, and that this only became apparent after 90 days.
8. Now a couple of longer term studies will look at GM corn. They will use 50 rats per group, which is in line with European protocol for a cancer study.

 

[scombrid]

They just reported the increased incidence of tumors in the rats fed GMO corn .

What part of "they did not have proper expiramental controls" and "that strain of rats has a natural 70-80% tumor rate when they are held for two years" is so hard to understand?


The Seralini rat study did not find an increased incidence of tumors that was linked to GMO corn.

They held rats that get tumors long enough for them to get tumors and then blamed it on GMO. The natural tumor rate of that strain of rat is 70-80 percent and none of the groups in the Seralini study deviated significantly from that rate.

The size of the control group relative to the treatment groups was too small and there were too many treatment groups of too small a size for each group for the results to be meaningful.

Therefore the Seralini study is useless.

 

[scombrid]

Because of the ruckus you are raising, we're wasting valuable time debunking your false claims about the health effects of GMO instead of discussing the business practices of those seed companies (yes, plural; there's more than just Monsanto, you know).

It's like ADM and its comodities price fixing shenanigans doesn't exist in anti-GMO land.

Hell, maybe ADM is funding an anti-Monsanto disinfo campaign so it can run amok without notice.

 

[tupac chopra]

They just reported the increased incidence of tumors in the rats fed GMO corn .

What part of "they did not have proper expiramental controls" and "that strain of rats has a natural 70-80% tumor rate when they are held for two years" is so hard to understand?

They repeated the Monsanto experiment (except for a longer period) and used the same breed of rats that Monsanto used, which were the recommended rats for a toxicology experiment.
Are you saying that they should have done a toxicology study but not used the recommended rats for a toxicology study?
What rats should they have used for a toxicology study?

The Seralini rat study did not find an increased incidence of tumors that was linked to GMO corn.

The rats fed GMO corn had more tumors and larger ones. This could not be positively linked to the GM corn as they would have had to do a cancer study and use 50 rats per group (edited as I has misread the post)

Tumor incidence
Tumors are reported in line with the requirements of OECD chronic toxicity protocols 452 and 453, which require all ‘lesions’ (which by definition include tumors) to be reported. )​

.
http://www.enveurope.com/content/26/1/14

The size of the control group relative to the treatment groups was too small and there were too many treatment groups of too small a size for each group for the results to be meaningful.

Yes that's true because it was a toxicology study not a tumor study.
They noticed that more tumors occurred in the rats fed GMO so reported it. They have to report all tumors.They then suggested that more studies be done.

Our findings imply that long-term (2 year) feeding trials need to be conducted to thoroughly evaluate the safety of GM foods and pesticides in their full commercial formulation​

Therefore the Seralini study is useless.

Well it could not say much about tumors as they would have needed to use 50 rats per group. Now we can do a study with 50 rats per group and see what we can learn

 

[bilby]

What part of "they did not have proper expiramental controls" and "that strain of rats has a natural 70-80% tumor rate when they are held for two years" is so hard to understand?

They repeated the Monsanto experiment and used the same breed of rats that Monsanto used, which were the recommended rats for a toxicology experiment.
Are you saying that they should have done a toxicology study but not used the recommended rats for a toxicology study?
What rats should they have used for a toxicology study?

The Seralini rat study did not find an increased incidence of tumors that was linked to GMO corn.

Yes they did, The rats fed GMO corn had more tumors and larger ones.

That is irrelevant, because the study design was such that it was not possible to link that observation to GMO corn - it was indistinguishable from random chance. They made an observation that was equally compatible with the hypothesis that GMO Corn causes cancer in rats, and the hypothesis that GMO Corn does not cause cancer in rats. If, from this observation, you draw the conclusion that there are grounds for further study, then you don't understand statistics at all - the study clearly shows that no such inference is justified.

Tumor incidence
Tumors are reported in line with the requirements of OECD chronic toxicity protocols 452 and 453, which require all ‘lesions’ (which by definition include tumors) to be reported. These findings are summarized in Figure 4. The results are presented in the form of real-time cumulative curves (each step corresponds to an additional tumor in the group). Only the growing largest palpable growths (above a diameter of 17.5 mm in females and 20 mm in males) are presented (for example, see Figure 5A,B,C). These were found to be in 95% of cases non-regressive tumors (Figure 5D,E,F,G,H,I,J) and were not infectious nodules. These arose from time to time; then, most often disappeared and were not different from controls after bacterial analyses. The real tumors were recorded independently of their grade, but dependent on their morbidity, since non-cancerous tumors can be more lethal than those of cancerous nature, due to internal hemorrhaging or compression and obstruction of function of vital organs, or toxins or hormone secretions. These tumors progressively increased in size and number, but not proportionally to the treatment dose, over the course of the experiment (Figure 4). As in the case of rates of mortality (Figure 6), this suggests that a threshold in effect was reached at the lower doses. Tumor numbers were rarely equal but almost always more than in controls for all treated groups, often with a two- to threefold increase for both sexes. Tumors began to reach a large size on average 94 days before controls in treated females and up to 600 days earlier in two male groups fed with GM maize (11 and 22% with or without R)​

.

The size of the control group relative to the treatment groups was too small and there were too many treatment groups of too small a size for each group for the results to be meaningful.

Yes that's true because it was a toxicology study not a tumor study.

and as a result, it said NOTHING about tumor incidence. The observation does NOT support the inference you are making.

they noticed that more tumors occurred in the rats fed GMO

But if the incidence is completely random, there is about 50-50 chance of this observation. The chances of both groups having exactly the same incidence of tumors is minuscule.

so reported it.

Which was highly unprofessional, given that it is demonstrably meaningless.

They then suggested that more studies be done.

Despite having NO BASIS for such a suggestion.

Therefore the Seralini study is useless.

Well it could not say much about tumors as they would have needed to use 50 rats per group.

And yet, despite your recognising that it can't say much, you are determined to claim that it says something. It says NOTHING about tumors being in any way associated with or linked to GMO corn. Nothing!

Now we can do a study with 50 rats per group and see what we can learn

You certainly can; but you can't expect to have any clue what the result of this study might be by inference from Seralini's irrelevant observations. The only prior evidence that might hint at the result of such a study is the history of VALID studies - ones that do not draw conclusions from datasets that are as likely due to random chance as to any real effect.

The Seralini result indicates just as strongly that more testing of green M&Ms is required to assess their long-term cancer risk. Are you going to call for a long term study of green M&Ms?

 

[tupac chopra]

they noticed that more tumors occurred in the rats fed GMO

But if the incidence is completely random, there is about 50-50 chance of this observation. The chances of both groups having exactly the same incidence of tumors is minuscule.

so reported it.

Which was highly unprofessional, given that it is demonstrably meaningless.

No..all tumors must be reported. Are you saying that even though under OECD guidelines all tumors must be reported they should not have reported the tumors?

Tumor incidence
Tumors are reported in line with the requirements of OECD chronic toxicity protocols 452 and 453, which require all ‘lesions’ (which by definition include tumors) to be reported. )

http://www.enveurope.com/content/26/1/14