Modified crops reveal hidden cost of resistance

Not to mention the zombies.

What does that mean?

Alway...As long as we don't have to prepare for unforseen consequences we should be fine.

Exactly the assumption which guides Congressional action!!

In layman's terms; cucumber beetles prefer to dine upon healthy, plump plants.

And so do I. That makes me at least as smart as a cucumber beetle!

Now, what is your excuse?

You do have a way with words, just charming and the excuses are all about you. I just have a few simple questions about what's in a biotech diet and why I can't opt out and you still offer heel nipping and nonsense rather than a human health study.

While it s dandy to see the beetles dine on the biotech forms more, achieving the opposite result is want biotech aims to do. To create an imbalance across a broad area of cropland, where the native forms perish and the engineered forms produce a feast for pests, hardly seems like a good reason to grow it. What's more things grown as food for people should first be shown to be safe for people to eat.

I want to see where the medical doctors have determined that a diet that includes a daily allowance for virus resistant food forms has been determined to be a safe.

Regardless of the opinion of whatever scientists and experts do offer some details of safety for human consumption, I want to retain my right as a citizen in a free country with a free market, to refuse to swallow for anyone if my preference is to say no.

Where are the human health studies Publius? One simple question that can be answered with one single link and yet we get everything but.

Just what I suspected, closed-minded with unwavering allegiance to the agenda.

Call it an agenda of determining safety and protecting individual liberty. Choosing a diet is one of the most personal rights we have and biotech uses the argument to claim biotech farmers should have a right to choose. Choose away, grow what consumers will support.

If Americans wants Roundup Ready corn flakes and pesticide producing Rice Krispies, go for it. Sell away, but compete honestly for market share, don't strip consumers of rights and pretend that ignorance is acceptance or that eliminating choice is compatible with the basic tenets of freedom.

We should be free to choose dark chocolate over milk chocolate, local farmers or the drive through happy meals, big business or biotech or not one drop. That's a free market system. You have the right to follow your own heart or beliefs in the pursuit of happiness.

Mine is a preference for foods not created or sold by petrochemical companies as well as a concern for what safety testing was done before feeding it to the public.

Where are the human health studies Publius?

Publius, what we're all looking for is evidence the stuff is fit for human consumption. Until we see that it is safe the discussion of other values or virtues doesn't matter at all.

Where are the human health studies and evidence concluding biotech is safe for anyone to eat?

Publius...If I didn't know the life and the lore I would pose no real threat to you fakers and you wouldn't be squirming and sweating so.

Don't flatter yourself; no one is threatened by a name caller who snipes in anominity. You can't supply a link to any science that shows the biotech foods have been tested for human health effects and shown to be safe.

Publius...Heh, you can only wish I were merely a paid shill for some industry you revile. That would spare you self-absorbed bastards the harsh realization that I identify with the majority of compassionate and thoughtful folks who have a genuine care for humanity and their collective welfare.

That compassionate spirit of yours shines through in all your comments. It avoids any factual issues and is nothing but a collection of nasty remarks, which says more about what you have to offer than what the issues are.

Where is the evidence gmo food is safe? Stick to facts. You've been told countless times that your opinion will be welcome when we see a fact or two substantiating the safety claims. Show me the studies and stuff the opinion!

Publius...Kindly trace the pandemic of morbidity and mortality across the isle of Puerto Rico attributable to fully 20 years of GMO technology run rampant.

What in the world do the State death records have to do with establishing the environmental, economic or health impacts of gmo crops? Would negative health effects manifest only as an immediate spike in the death toll? Is your point that no spike in the death rates indicates safety?

mstanley...Mess with Mother Nature and she messes right back...there are always unintended consequences...

You're exactly right and it is because Nature works with systems that balance one another and industry assumes a production mentality where altering the process is isolated enough to be controllable. In Nature everything cascades and each change put countless others in motion.

that really needs to be figured into the equation when scientists work on making things "better". At least they don't come up with weird or have they?

Pure science should explore everything, but safety should not be sacraficed and necessary precautions must be in place. That's what government oversight used to aim for, but an over fed lobbying system has transformed Washington into a shameless executive stop over.

As far as weird goes, approving cloned foods hit me as over the top, but to each his own.

Rick Weiss - Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, January 16, 2008; 1:00 PM

While officials at the Food and Drug Administration approved this week the sale of food from cloned animals, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has asked producers to keep the meat off the market because of consumer fears.

They sit back and wait for people to forget about the issue and start pumping it through the undisclosed ingredients in the fast foods that feed Wall Street so well we're Running on Dunkin'.

Alway...True, there are imperfects and mutations from it, but it is really no more than you would get from natural creation.

Assuming that cloning will produce identical, healthy offspring seems to make sense, but it does not hold up in the real world where the interaction and replication of genes is more complex.

BBC - New research suggests that even seemingly healthy animal clones may have subtle genetic abnormalities with unknown consequences....

They found that the mice clones had subtle differences in their genetic make-up.

Something was going wrong in the regulatory process that controls whether certain genes are switched on or off in the cells used for cloning.

"This suggests that even apparently normal clones may have subtle aberrations of gene expression that are not easily detected in the animal clone," said Professor Jaenisch.

We see the maturation of the clones reveal some of the unknowns over time.

Pig fatalities highlight cloning dangers.

New fears have been raised about the health of cloned animals after three
cloned adult pigs dropped dead from heart attacks.

The pigs were created using a variation on the technique that made Dolly
the sheep. A Taiwan-based team rammed a whole adult cell into a
fertilized egg that was emptied of its own genetic material1.

Of four piglets born, one died within days. The remaining three have now
collapsed and expired of heart failure at less than six months of age,
team leader Jerry Yang of the University of Connecticut in Storrs
revealed this week. "It was totally shocking," says Yang. He has dubbed
the fatalities 'adult clone sudden death syndrome'.

The pigs' demise is a stark reminder that cloned animals are far from
normal. Many fall ill or die just after birth -- Dolly herself passed away
at the relatively tender age of 6. Their problems probably arise because
the adult DNA is not properly reprogrammed to drive embryo growth. Yang
is now hunting for the genes responsible, perhaps those that govern the
heart's function.

Genes are not like machine parts where a copy will produce the same result as the pattern.

Alway...Certainly nothing harmful to humans would arrise (well, theroetically it could happen, but it has about the same chance as me quantum tunneling through a wall).

Actually the odds that nothing harmful or unintended will happen is the real long shot!

mstanley2265...There is thinking and there is knowing. Big gap twixt and tween.....

Yes there is and we should take great care to be sure which case it is before proceeding.