Posted by admin | Posted in Healthy Eating | Posted on 04-03-2010
Tags: Enemies, Ep.2, Reason
Part Two – The Irrational Health Service Prof Richard Dawkins looks at how health has become a battleground between reason and superstition. A third of us now spend a total of over 1.6 billion a year on superstitious alternative remedies, but 80% of them have never been subjected to properly conducted trials.
hey, when you get a virus in you, whether a cold or whatever, it is just “moving genes about”, so I guess viruses are completely harmless.
or in other words, people like you make the claim that unless I have a post doctoral work in genetic engineering, I have no business even thinking that I don’t trust the scientists making this stuff to absolutely understand everything about what they are doing..
Again, something as SIMPLE as trans fat was not known to be dangerous for about 100 years. And Genetics is far more complex than a simple fat molecule. The effects of GE will be unfolding for decades.
by “only happened in labs” I mean the products of GE are kept in labs. They are not, they comprise about 51% of the crops grown in the United States.
IRRELEVANT INFORMATION.
and does it come from a plant, or bacteria?
and are you now claiming a complete understanding of evolution and genetics back to the beginning of life?
First you were claiming that GE is no different from cross breeding. Then you said it only happened in labs. you were WRONG on both accounts, or YOU ARE A LIAR.
And let’s just put this in perspective. Your position is that I have to be an expert in genetics to decide I don’t want to eat GE.
and good for you if you want to eat GE food, it should be labelled so that people who are interested can know what they are eating.
Bt isn’t a gene. The gene you’re grasping for is called CRY, and it’s not just transplanted. You have to modify its codons for it to express properly. You basically have to make it into a plant gene before it will work, and since we’re all evolved from a common ancestor moving genes about like that is routine, not the mad science someone who knows nothing about it would think it is.
TL;DR: You don’t know shit about shit and you’re afraid of what you don’t understand
flame war go
I’m not talking about your example, I am talking about Bt. Bt DOESN’T COME FROM A PLANT! IT COMES FROM BACTERIA! BACTERIA ARE NOT IN THE SAME KINGDOM AS PLANTS!
DIFF-ER-ENT BI-O-LO-GI-CAL KING-DOMS
GE NOT SAME AS CROSS BREEDING!
UNDERSTAND????
Monsanto makes lots of claims about how wonderful GE food is. And TV commercials make lots of claims about other ‘wonderful’ products too.
Read what I said. CRT1 is a plant gene that originated evolutionarily in archaea, and the reason it’s harvested from bacteria instead of plants is because it’s easier to get it that way, like the way we get water from aquifers instead of desalinization whenever we can. It’s the same shit, it’s just easier to get that way.
I honestly don’t give a damn if Monsanto wants to charge a fee for use of their plants. Their plants are cutting down the price of food so much it’s still saving us all money.
Why should companies making these organisms, who are only doing it in order to be able to patent an organism and basically add their own tax to food production, be permitted to add this experimental food to the food supply without providing consumers information about what they are eating?
How does that situation make sense to anyone except to people who benefit from it?
GE food should be labelled clearly as such, not a warning label, an information label, such as how ingredients are labelled.
you know something about the area, so you KNOW that genetic engineering DOES involve taking genetic material from an organism in a entirely different biological kingdom (bacteria -> bt gene) and inserting it into an organism in another biological kingdom (food crops).
so basically, I was wrong to call you ignorant for that other comment denying this fact, because in fact you were lying.
and about environmentalism – look at my favorites dummy. For example, I think climate change is a scam.
@7Hook: You’re talking about golden rice, I assume. That gene, Calreticulin-1, is also present in plants. Have you ever tried mass-harvesting genetic material from plants? It’s hard. With bacteria you just add some membrane dissolving agent and the material gathers at the top of the vat – you could get it out with a spoon if you wanted. Also, the reason golden rice isn’t out saving lives right now is because of the lies of mouth-breathing environmentalists like yourself.
@Ausare
I am right and you are ignorant.
genes from single celled organisms are taken out and inserted into food crops to create new strains that are patented, grown and sold.
And unlike what P&T have led you to believe, genetic engineering has only been happening since 1974, and GE food sold only since 1995. Penn and Teller don’t know anything. Or rather, they do know, but they are liars.
Cross breeding is not genetic engineering. Read about them and learn the difference.
@7Hook: We don’t eat organisms that have had genes from things in other kingdoms inserted. That’s only done in laboratories to better understand what the genes do.
Besides, unless you want to go into the jungle and find some truly undomesticated bananas and potatoes (they suck), all the food you eat is genetically engineered.
But excess could be as little as a dozen grams per day, which would hardly seem “excess” to the average person. Maybe there is an “excess” for GMO?
The serious health effects of something as simple as trans fat went unnoticed for 100 years. And trans fat is such a simple molecule compared to DNA.
DNA and cell processes are incredibly complex, agree? so how can you honestly conclude, without any study, that its effects will be minor at best? The answer is – you can’t.
Listen closely. If I was arguing that GMO food was too dangerous to be experimented with, that no scientists should be making GM organisms, that it should all be banned, THEN I must have excellent knowledge of the area to impose my view on others
But if all I am saying is that I don’t trust the people who are making this stuff to take care of my health to the degree I want, and therefore I don’t believe their claims it is perfectly safe, and I don’t want to eat it, that is MY DECISION ALONE.
the problem with trans fat is the excess amounts
In other terms NO you don’t, what is your scientific back ground ? As I say in Europe is labeled. I don’t say shouldn’t vet it properly but what you think is the problem is wrong the problem will be if any , the allergen and may be the the modified DNA gets in to wild .
The people who test the new GMO strains are the same people who create them and are developing a product to sell to the public. They are not impartial, they will not thoroughly investigate all apsects of the new organism, such as would happen in a university.
What arrogance you have. You have absolutely no idea what the full implications of GMO are. NONE. It may be cute to dismiss people’s concerns with a mocking comment that you won’t turn into a tomato, but all that does is show you are a jerk. You do not know what the true side effects are.
If you are taking DNA from organism from different biological kingdoms, you are creating an entirely new organism. That never happens in nature.
Regardless, it should be MY decision whether to eat GMO,
@7Hook
How long did it take for the problems of trans fat to be understood? That was on the market for almost 100 years before it was found to interfere with the fat burning process. And now trans fat is considered to be such a problem that there are cities (such as New York) that are banning trans fat in restaurant food.
Think about that.
I don’t care if you are the most highly skilled geneticist on earth, you still don’t know the implication of GMO. Yet it is pushed on me in stealth.
@kreb7
Do I know anything about genetics? I know enough to know that GMO food is an entirely new technology, that it is experimental, and that there has been NO reproduction similar to this in history, and that it may take decades for the problems of GMO to show up AND that if there are subtle problems we won’t hear about them (like info about cigarettes being supressed)
Is that enough? Or do you say that I have to have a PHD in genetics in order to have the option to eat conventional food?
Not all ulcers OTHER causes aspirin, anti inflammatory drugs , smocking . so antibiotics will be useless . were drugs before that got out of patent and after so when ever this got accepted would be some ulcer drug got out off patent so you assumption is faulse
Do you know anything about genetics?
Actually in Europe has to labeled clearly.
Species barrier crossing I’ll guess you know nothing about genetics to say something like that. You consume foreign DNA every day without the problem you describe you don’t turn to fish or tomato. The only true side effect is allergy at best since. The problem in reality if any is within the same species.
“mated” in the sense of DNA from one organism mixed in with the DNA of another – a new species.