Letters to the Editor
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Golden rice
There is at least one famous example of a genetically modified crop that has the consumer in mind - golden rice (www.goldrice.org). Golden rice is rice that has been genetically engineered to increase its the amount of beta carotene it includes . The idea being that golden rice would decrease mal-nutrition in populations dependent on rice as a staple food.
I would be interested to hear from someone who rejects genetic alterations on moral grounds on what you think of golden rice.
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Understanding the issue
For a trait to be spread to the wild, it has to confer an advantage - in the wild
Cross-pollination does occur, has occurred and is occurring. As to advantages, the advantages do not necessarily have to relate to the wild. For example, Monsanto's "Roundup Ready brand" of "products" confer an advantage--if you use Roundup (a Monsanto product). These genes have already proven to cross-pollinate at much shorter distances than claimed.
The statement you made is true so long as genes are naturally selected; clearly GM is not natural selection.
we can say that GM-crops currently in use are as safe as non-GM crops currently in use
How can we say that a two-year old, genetically modified strain of corn is as safe as corn developed over millions of years of natural selection then tens of thousands of years of human selection? One could easily assert, using this logic, that any old chemical, if not absolutely "known" to be dangerous, could safely be poured into our drinking supply.
GM products should not be automatically banned just because they are GM. But the cross-pollination issue presents a nearly irreconcilable problem just from a legal standpoint. When the "patented" genes (a ridiculous concept on its face) appear in the wild, who is responsible? Bees? Farmers? Can Monsanto sue a farmer when its "technology" gets loose and force them to pay for "using" a patented product even unwillingly? Yet this is already happening.
One may choose to use the label "Luddite" to avoid the direct statements that GM products are unproven, uncontrollable and possibly unsafe. Sorry to pick on you, factician, but arguments should hold merit without attempting to devalue one's opponents rather than addressing real and valid concerns.
Your comments about monocultures are perfectly valid. Permaculture can be created from native flora; after all they existed that way prior to human selection. But is GM the only, or even a reasonable, alternative? GM does not attempt to solve monoculture problems. Rather, it is intentionally designed to exacerbate the problem as a means to gain artificial leverage over natural markets. For Monsanto to hold a patent for any type of corn is ludicrous. In any other field such marginal improvements rarely merit a patent. It's not like they invented corn, after all. They just inserted non-corn genes into a naturally evolved life form. It's like claiming a patent on computing technology after writing a text editor for Windows.
I do not want to give the impression that GM supporters or agri-Corps are evil. I believe that a lot of the GM community see their work as an opportunity to improve life and create useful products. Some believe they can contribute to solving nutritional shortfalls by developing better crops. But I do not think the goal of most large agribusiness is an altruistic solution to world hunger. This does not make them evil, it is the nature of business to seek profit. However, when claims are made that products are developed solely for the benefit of the consumer, we should view those claims through a clear lens and understand that they may be skewed by corporate desire for profits.
Are environmentalists hypocritical when we point out these conflicts of interest? Are we Luddites when we want serious and honest scientific inquiry into the real effects of GM products on lives? I can't seem to find any hypocrisy by asking real questions about GM.
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definitive proof of safety?
When it comes to proving safety, I think one of the things that worries some scientists is that they're being asked to prove a negative.
Any study that shows no bad effects can be criticized on the grounds that it doesn't consider every possible bad effect. You can say the study is not long-term enough, it only considers current GMOs (as if any current study could test future organisms), whatever. There's no way to prove that no GMO will ever hurt anything.
Should parents be asked to prove that their children will never hurt anyone? You can't do it.
If those that are afraid of GMOs would propose a testing hurdle more reasonable than "you have to prove that it's impossible for this GMO to hurt anything anywhere ever" then I think a lot of the resistance to testing requirements would go away.
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Those Libertarians really ought to know better! They learned that the process is broken themselves
Libertarians have been in the forefront of the fight for medical marijuana, and they know darn well from THAT experience that Big Pharm gets what Big Pharm wants and scientific studies and reality can go take a flying leap at a rolling donut when the profit motive is at stake.
The fact is, Big Pharm has known about the medicinal powers of cannabis since the 1970s. It's only because cannabis cannot be patented that the FDA is so dead set against allowing its medicinal use.
Libertarians know all of this. They have served in the forefront of the social movement where this collapse of the regulatory process has been most prominent and has affected so many lives for the worse.
So why are they claiming now that this broken, useless, ridiculous regulatory process can be trusted with something as radical and beyond previous human experience as GM crops?
The regulatory process for food and drugs, as polluted as it is by financial interests, cannot be trusted to guarantee that Big Pharm patented pharma-crops are safe any more than it has been trustworthy in determining whether the unpatentable cannabis pharma-crop is unsafe.
The process is broken, the process is broken, the process is broken.
Libertarians know this and shame on them, shame shame shame, for pretending that they don't.