Q&A: GM crops decision - UK to introduce GM maize

[Legion]

i this matter reminiscent of my childhood. I remember watching an episode of Captain Planet where they took this very matter and blew it entirely out of proportion to scare their child audience. Even back then political programming started at such an early age. Why do our American media love fear so much? Never did quite understand. I used to think they used it solely to motivate people. Now i am half tempted to believe they believe the bs they spout concerning social woes more than the public does.

take for instance the cancer scares...

 

[sytaylor]

geh, gotta setp out of this now, train to catch..

/me runs out of the office

 

[Joe DeFuria]

I am sure that preventing commercialization of GMO would not have serious effects on society nor here nor anywhere else...

How can you say that keeping the "status quo" means a lack of serious effect on society? Particularly if one thinks the problem (famine) is generally getting worse, and not better.

(need to grow wheat on mars )

EGADS! You don't want GMO, but welcome the introduction of Martian nasties into the earth's ecosystem!?

 

[Joe DeFuria]

Why do our American media love fear so much?

Because it's easier to sell.

 

[Legion]

Yeah...but what if he also had serrated teeth and breathed fire!

You've comically stumbled on the crux of the argument. The "What if'ers" as I call them. What if you didn't have the technology the know-how or even the slightest possibility of that happening?

What if is the main point in prevention rather than fixing when it's all broken.

What if you are completely wrong and admitt your phobias are not based on sound reason?

I am sure that preventing commercialization of GMO would not have serious effects on society nor here nor anywhere else, while commercialization will have.... and I think negative on the whole.

Yet you see a possible benefit from the matter being controlled by the government? I can not grasp this reasoning.

Certainly commercialization will happen eventually, IMHO later is better than now as later we will know more - and if you say when is that later, it's when we really need it as in an example that I posted in the other thread - ie... a crop dying out and similar. (need to grow wheat on mars )

I disagree, i see now as better as the investments will incourage growth in the field. The more we grow the more we'll know.

 

[Druga Runda]

If you are saying there is potential to make mistakes then I have to agree, but have you thought about the benefits of GM crops? They are far cheaper and yeild way better. They get more from land, and can work in soil not as well treated. Imagine the implications of that for the 3rd world!

with the license fee making it expensive to grow, and put in the odd disaster in the box, and you have your benefit outweighted...

--- couldn't read the rest, but I will add - that new scientist artice points out quite a few unchecked problems we as the world will face from deploying GMO - so unfounded fears? Rather unfounded belief in commercial system delivering 100%.

And I am not saying that governmental system would be introducing the crops into the wild - that's even worse , only when really neccessary ie, the last resort - all other options used- and I can't really forsee that happening anytime soon.

 

[Fred]

Druga, your position is based on the presumption that the only safety testing that goes into this is conducted at the business or Government level.

Its not, often its done by academics who share the potential for quite a bit of prestige if they do indeed find a flaw in the system.

The amount of testing GM crops has received in the last 20 years, is nothing short of extraordinary. At this point, if you are against it, you are essentially flying in the face of 99.9999% of experiments and scientific consensus, or you are looking for special cases that have managed to escape previous tests. EG cases that are unbelievably rare that they are negligable for safety procedure calls.

 

[nutball]

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. That's the fundamental problem with GMOs, as with many other eco-related issues.

The planets ecosystem is extremely complex, and it's clear to anyone with the slightest experience of actually doing science that our understanding of it is rudimentary at best.

The mere fact that there's even a debate about these issues within scientific circles tell you instantly that the system is not fully understood! Even if scientists think they understand everything, they're not necessarily correct (witness the attitude of physicists at the end of the 19th century, before the development of relativity and quantum mechanics). That's the way science works guys!

So when talking about "risks" associated GMOs, global warming, etc., etc., etc., and whether we should or shouldn't act to avoid those perceived "risks" the debate very rapidly becomes a non-scientific argument, and peoples positions fall back to their natural political biases.

The scientific "experts" can at best offer a bunch of ifs, buts and maybes. So people (experts and non-experts) end up making value judgements based on their personal attitudes to risk, public expenditure, or to changes in their lifestyles (or those of other people the other side of the planet).

But none of this should be mistaken for science. So quoting articles and links at each other doesn't prove anything. No-one knows the answer, certainly not the idiots in the media.

You might as well flip a coin.

 

[Legion]

So shall we give up pharmicuetics and medical research because we are not fundamentally omniscient? Shall we give up our persuit into the development of computer technologies?

When will we be knowledgable enough to pursue genetic egineering? How will our knowledge ever increase without experimentation? Are their axioms we will cover along the way? Have we discovered methods of varifying our research?

If such axioms are discovered could varying reserach be released in terms of product to the populas?


You know i often find the ignorance argument to be a political and social double standard. Many people will accept Evolutionary Biologist rants of the week as fact but reject information relating to genetic engineering on the grounds we just don't know what we are doing yet.

 

[nutball]

So shall we give up pharmicuetics and medical research because we are not fundamentally omniscient?

Not at all. What I was saying was that we can't expect any decision we make regarding eco-stuff to be The Right Decision(TM). It may be right, it may turn out to be wrong. The best we can do is based on current understanding and evidence, with a very large helping of poltical bias mixed in.

If we get it right, great. If we get it wrong, don't be suprised and don't blame the scientists!

 

[Legion]

So shall we give up pharmicuetics and medical research because we are not fundamentally omniscient?

Not at all. What I was saying was that we can't expect any decision we make regarding eco-stuff to be The Right Decision(TM). It may be right, it may turn out to be wrong. The best we can do is based on current understanding and evidence, with a very large helping of poltical bias mixed in.

If we get it right, great. If we get it wrong, don't be suprised and don't blame the scientists!

Without research into the field how will we be prepared to either pass or fail? Our knowledge will increase more rapidly with heavy experimentation.

 

[nutball]

Without research into the field how will we be prepared to either pass or fail? Our knowledge will increase more rapidly with heavy experimentation.

Assuming we're asking the right questions! Most of science proceeds by formation and testing of hypotheses. The hypotheses you formulate depends on your model and view of how a system might work.

If your model is wrong, then you're asking the wrong questions and therefore getting answers that don't really tell you anything about reality. There's no real way to know whether this is occurring until your model breaks down and is replaced by something else (presumably something "better").

 

[Mariner]

Due to the financial necessities of getting a product to market quickly, it is possible that adequate testing is not carried out on new GMOs. This is one of the main concerns amongst many people as far as I can tell.

It is in the financial interests of companies who are creating modified crops to have as short and cheap a test period as possible as they have to look at the bottom line. If it were a purely scientific choice, then I'm sure that many of the GM crops currently on the market would have undergone more testing, just to be certain. I'm not saying that these crops will have any problems or prove harmful but GM science is still very much in it's infancy which means there is a lack of experience and we can't know of all the potential problems.

Personally, I think GM crops are not too bad a thing although I can't say I'm too convinced that putting fish genes into tomato plants is such a good idea. Crossing the flora/fauna divide at this early stage seems a bit extreme to me! Standard cross-breeding of plants has been successfully used for many years (by the IRRI, for example) and, ultimately, I think using GM to help 'cross-breed' isn't necessarily a bad thing as it's the next logical step.

I'd rather see the science advance in small steps rather than giant leaps. I'm very concerned indeed about the thought of modifying viruses to control pests or for other similar uses. Bearing in mind the problems we have combatting various naturally-occurring viruses, do we really need to create new ones at this point in time?

 

[Fred]

'It may be right, it may turn out to be wrong. '

Thats correct. Except that you are 10000 more likely to be wrong.

Science is never certain, indeed we aren't certain that the apple we are holding might fall to the ground when we release it. But I would count on Newtons 'theory' to be more or less correct if i had to make policy on it or I was a betting man.

Global warming is hotly debated in academia, precisely b/c no consensus has been formed, not enough evidence known. No one knows what the exact specifics look like.

That is not the case for GM crops, where the phenomena is extremely well understood, tested and verified. An immense consensus exists amongst academics on the subject, with only a few minor fringe points in contention (these are often blown out of proportion in the popular press)

So yea, everyone in the field might be wrong, but I wouldn't count on it if I had to put odds on which theory of nature is or is not true.

 

[Fred]

'If it were a purely scientific choice, then I'm sure that many of the GM crops currently on the market would have undergone more testing, just to be certain'

I doubt it, at one point it becomes obvious if something is more or less benign. Usually it only takes a few days (read hours) under scientific scrutiny to tell if something is bad, and only in extraordinarily rare cases does something go counter to that rule of thumb (Fen-Fen, etc etc). GM processes usually undergo something like 4-5 years worth of tests, which is already considered vast overkill depending on which scientist you talk too.

I mean in principle, we could test anything for arbitrarily long periods of time. The difference in certainty in a product becomes arbitrarily small in that limit.

 

[nutball]

Science is never certain, indeed we aren't certain that the apple we are holding might fall to the ground when we release it. But I would count on Newtons 'theory' to be more or less correct if i had to make policy on it or I was a betting man.

True, Newton's laws are a very good and well tested model of the way most of the stuff we encounter in the world works, and most importantly they have a great deal of predictive power.

Still, no-one knows what mass actually is, or what gravity actually is. That doesn't stop the laws working -- but understanding what the laws predict, and understanding what they means and *why* they work are two very different things.

That is not the case for GM crops, where the phenomena is extremely well understood, tested and verified. An immense consensus exists amongst academics on the subject, with only a few minor fringe points in contention (these are often blown out of proportion in the popular press)

Well, I'm a scientist by training and profession and the words "extremely well understood" always make me nervous!!! But, genetics isn't my field of expertise (though I do know a few genetiscists), so I just have to trust that such confidence is well placed!

So yea, everyone in the field might be wrong, but I wouldn't count on it if I had to put odds on which theory of nature is or is not true.

Like I said, 19th century physicists thought the world was "extremely well understood".

 

[Fred]

Cool, im a scientist by trade too =)

It's not just genetists who are involved btw, its general practicioners, nutrionists, environmental scientists, botany specialists, etc etc

All these people proceed independantly generally speaking, and are united by certain review boards when a certain processes comes up.

Btw, the famous quote at the end of the 19th century really was premature.. Even in principle for those at the time =) The assumption was that physics as we knew it, proceeded at all scales like so. That was a very good guess, however already experiment had pretty much ruled that out. People who were familiar with the experiments knew about as much, but were kinda nervous about talking too loudly about the death of classical theory until great care was placed in verifying and reverifying results. The great young theorists also saw the inherent mathematical problems, and were complaining quite loudly to the old classicists of the time. 'Look your theory is self inconsistent, it can't possibly be right'

But one thing to remember. Classical theory WAS NOT WRONG, in the regimes where it was tested. Indeed it had to be true, since experiment had already proved its validity countless times over. Only at scales where it was no longer applicable, was their wiggling room for new emergent physics.

In Biology in this particular case, there really isn't much wiggling room left, only highly exotic possibilities remain. (example: the standard genetically modified crops mysteriously increase malaria susceptibility)

Keep in mind, im talking about those particular crop processes which have been around for quite some time and are the subject of the most scrutiny (eg maize). Its always possible that very new, very ambitious processes that have yet to be tested could open new cans of worms.

 

[Vince]

Keep in mind, im talking about those particular crop processes which have been around for quite some time and are the subject of the most scrutiny (eg maize). Its always possible that very new, very ambitious processes that have yet to be tested could open new cans of worms.

I don't want to, but I have to disagree with the way you've stated your position; although this last paragraph addresses it. Many of the genetic modifications in use are pretty simplistic and follow basic Mendelian genetics and as such have well defined outcomes.

The problem is when you start working on the vast majority of traits which are complex. Information coding in DNA is an intrinsically complex nonlinear system, a problem which is only worsened when you add levels of abstraction and noise. Any biological system like this is going to be massively complex and nonlinear because of the coevolutionary development these systems face as they converge and/or emerge in organisms and the need to maintain a static inner enviroment.

The result being that for the vast, vast majority of heritable traits you'll find non-intuitive consequnces of genetic variation.

In Biology in this particular case, there really isn't much wiggling room left, only highly exotic possibilities remain. (example: the standard genetically modified crops mysteriously increase malaria susceptibility)

Not this again! Everyone likes to pick on biologists. Lets turn the tables and let me posit this question: If you physicists ever find your ToE, will that be the end of high-energy theoretical physics? I think what should be kept in mind is that there's a difference between learning a game and mastering said game. And in this case, we don't even know all the rules.

Just as complex as particle interaction can be, genetic is just as deep and interwoven in it's complexity on it's own level. A problem, IMHO, is that Biology as a field doesn't have enough theoretical thinkers; the field itself is hooked on the concept of a closed science where you do nothing but pour over mounds of data collected by a few postdocs and undergrads and as as a result is slow moving.

 

[KBeee]

sys - to be honest I assume that this is from BBC - and I actually do not think this maize will be dangerous any more than you do... I am arguing the principle "comercially developed GMO" vs normal stuff; benefits vs risks.

And IMHO it is too risky, as the uintentionally introduced changes can have widespread effect, especially when commercialization goes into the full swing and the checking will be no better than it was for the "slimming drug" and commercially motivated companies will "cut the expenses" to maximize profits and cut on the testing, or even worse consiouslly introduce harmfull organisms for short-term benefit to the company and to the deteriment of the society.

Just that time it won't be a slimming drug ruining lives of thousands of people but a GMO altering lives of millions.

If you are saying there is potential to make mistakes then I have to agree, but have you thought about the benefits of GM crops? They are far cheaper and yeild way better. They get more from land, and can work in soil not as well treated. Imagine the implications of that for the 3rd world!

Ermmm...
No they ain't
Tho ONLY reason GM crops are being pushed is because the Patent holders hope to make shed-loads of money.
Patented food and IP property is the name of the game.
The "Miracle Maize" isn't to feed the third world - the third world can't afford it. It's to feed cattle to feed humans that eat hamburgers.

 

[KBeee]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/gmdebate/Story/0,2763,1165077,00.html