"Moosh:}" wrote:
On Tue, 05 Aug 2003 18:17:07 -0700, Walter Epp
posted:
"Moosh:]" wrote:
On 29 Jul 2003 23:31:37 GMT, Brian Sandle
posted:
Moosh:] wrote:
On 22 Jul 2003 12:45:08 GMT, Brian Sandle
wrote:
To my knowledge they only test people with protein that they expect the GM
plant to make. The actual plant could have the engineered promoters
switching on other genes, causing troubles you would not be looking for.
And do they look for unintended effects from mutations and cross
pollinating?
Possibly not as thoroughly as they ought. But those are not being applied
to such a wide sector of people as RR & Bt stuff, which goes to nearly
everyone in North America.
Mutations and cross pollinations go on constantly every minute in
every corn field in the world.
So? Natural populations have millions of generations of experience doing
this and figured out how to maintain their genetic integrity and minimize
unpleasant surprises long before human beings came into existence.
Genetic engineering has only a couple handfuls of years of experience.
But it is all much the same thing. Every combination and permutation
has been tried repeatedly over the aeons.
Then show me documentation of the existence, prior to genetic engineering,
of maize and cotton that expressed Bt, soy and canola that expressed
Roundup-ready genes, bacteria that produced BGH, bacteria that produced
tryptophan, potatoes that expressed snowdrop lectin, tomatoes with the
FlavrSavr gene, strawyberries with the fish gene, salmon with the flounder
growth hormone, etc.
Those that are beneficial survive, those that aren't, go extinct or vestigial..
If you had read the references I posted, in particular
http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/frankenfish.cfm, you would know
it's not at all this simplistic, as the opposite can happen.
Many of us do not accept the proposition that a few = millions.
A few multiplied by millions is millions.
If you can arbitrarily fudge one side by millions then I can fudge
the other side by millions resulting in trillions.
Such fudging has nothing to do with reality.
When the tryptophan from GE sources killed some people it might not have
been discovered if the symptoms were similar to some other lethal
but fairly common disease.
But that tryptophan affair was nothing to do with GE.
Not true. The genetically engineered strains resulted in production of
toxins not produced by non-GE strains, and the filtering levels in effect
when the epidemic occurred had previously been in effect with non-GE
strains without evidence of illness resulting.
See http://www.psrast.org/jftrypt.htm for details.
Quote:
"It was later shown that the tryptophan produced in genetically
engineered bacteria contained one or more highly toxic contaminants."
So the contaminants weren't discovered. A quality control matter, not
a unforseen difference between GE tryptophan and non-GE tryptophan.
Hello! Wake up! The toxins were an unforeseen result of the GE strain
which were not produced by the non-GE strain. The company made the
mistake of listening to those who said there's no evidence of harm so
there's nothing to worry about; it failed to take precautionary action
and used the same filtering regime it had been using for years with
non-GE bacteria on the assumption that they were substantially equivalent.
As a result, the assumption was only proven wrong by a rude awakening in
the form of an epidemic of disease and billions of dollars in lawsuits.
Are we going to learn from this history or condemn ourselves to repeat it?
I can
list several cases of food stuffs that case harm bred with conventional
methods an you can't list a single one with GM methods.
Where's this list?
You don't know about any conventional foods that are toxic? Try
solanine for a start.
People have known for ages to avoid green potatos and potato sprouts.
It forms when they are subjected to light and warmth, so storing them
cool and dark prevents a problem. It tastes bitter, so your God-given
senses can detect if there's something wrong.
How many people exercising prudent handling have been harmed by solanine?
Are you aware that solanine has been used as medicine to treat
bronchitis, epilepsy, and asthma, so consuming the small amounts in
normal food may be healthful?
If you must avoid all solanine, you can refrain from eating nightshades.
Without labelling, the typical person would have trouble avoiding GMOs
in the typical supermarket.
They get withdrawn if they cause trouble that is plain obvious.
Unfortunately that's not true. Only the ones that are immediately obvious
get withdrawn. If 40% of people who ate gmos were going to sustain
gmo-caused heart damage that killed them 25 years later, we may not
know it until millions had been condemned to die.
So why has this never happened before?
How do you know it hasn't happened already?
Just like foods from plant mutations and cross-pollinating, only these
are more likely
What evidence is there on the relative incidences?
Incidences of what?
You said harm is more likely to occur from mutations and cross-pollinating
than GE, ie the incidence of harmful products from natural means is
greater than the incidence of harmful products from GE.
What are the incidences and what is your evidence to back them up?
Who is doing studies comparing recent health changes in countries with GM
food compared to countries with non-GM? Who is ready for what may show up
in the next generation?
Health is always being monitored by hundreds of thousands of health
professionals.
So you agree with me that we must have labelling of GMOs?
For tracing purposes by manufacturers and regulators, yes.
Without labeling it's difficult to impossible for the public or those
professionals to make any connection between health damage and
genetic engineering. Without labeling the public is being treated as
guinea pigs in a giant uncontrolled experiment,
So put a code on it that can be traced.
I'm glad we agree on the need for labelling GMOs.
For all we know, there could have already been a million illnesses
and 10,000 deaths caused by GE and we wouldn't know it.
Can you cite any example of this? Unknown cause of massive numbers of
illnesses and deaths?
In the US,
year-to-year fluctuations in the number of deaths commonly exceed 10,000.
Do they? From what causes? You are not blaming car accidents, are you?
The subject here was using aggregate death & disease rates to detect
damage from GMOs. My point was that if there had already been 10,000
people killed by GMOs there is no way this could have been detected by
the aggregate death rate, since the death toll from all other causes
can and has gone up or down by 10,000.
An additional point: if the disease statistics remain the same from year
to year, this could be due to GMOs causing a continually increasing amount
of damage in every year, if the damage from other causes was continually
dropping due to people otherwise living healthier lifestyles.
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