What is your opinion on GMO plants and products?

Voting in the US is a joke, your vote counts I suppose so long as you're voting a D or R. In the end, it's the money and marketing that wins elections. The US is way too full of stupid. (That said, I vote every time, lemming like )

As for GMO's, like many initial ideas, this appears to be a good thing, but with it comes money and power and this is where science fails time and time again. GMO's are the designer drug of horticulturists. They are bad because there are no controls of the thousands of variables. Science is full of themselves and far too often get blindsided. You can what if GMO's in to the ground, however "ifs" in this case won't stop science. Today one can say GMO's are ok and the vision is utopic, however once this is the norm, GMO's will not be ok, and in fact IMO they'll be terrible for society.

For example, has science thought of how GMO's can be used for biological warfare?

I think why GMO's came to be; it wasn't because science could do it, it was because someone saw profit in doing it.

It's one thing for science to take the best of the best and continue to "grow" that, so we get the best corn, yet still natural. GMO's can say, in less time you get the best corn, but the seeds are sterile so you can't plant your own. Or they won't grow without this GMO activation fertilizer, etc.

Isn't that seed stock or whatnot up in the north poll (iirc) a big waste of time because those seeds are completely worthless once GMO's are the norm. Those seeds won't even be usable once GMO proteins invest the soil (ala mad cow protein, hehe, this was an ass pull as it were)

A lot of what I said is a bit tongue in cheek and not meant to be some scientific rebuttal, just opinions.

Conflating Monsanto's business practices with the science of GMOs is annoying.

GMOs are among the most important things that we do, period. It has also been that way for thousands of years. The fear-mongering is annoying.

(Educational background is a BSci but in CompSci and nothing to do with biology at all)

fanaskin_sl said:

Why does Europe hate gmo? Usually the more liberal/college educated people say Europe has more advanced attitudes on things in general but they ban gmo's? Is it economically motivated?

Both France and Germany have banned gmo

Europe has banned shit before that the FDA still said was safe here like trans fats.

Click to expand...

Why would France and Germany need GMO ? For us, only corporations need GMO.

I would think that it's more about checking the regional influence of Monsanto than it is a scientifically based institutional mistrust of GMO products.

Look at the patent shit they play in the American legal system. If you had the choice of buying into that rigged game, or pursuing your own agenda... which would it be?

That and a sneaky way to subsidize local farming. Which they have every right, and even a responsibility, to do.

fanaskin_sl said:

Why does Europe hate gmo? Usually the more liberal/college educated people say Europe has more advanced attitudes on things in general but they ban gmo's? Is it economically motivated?

Both France and Germany have banned gmo

Europe has banned shit before that the FDA still said was safe here like trans fats.

Click to expand...

In my experience, it is the "liberal" people in my area fighting against GMO's. That is what I noticed on my Facebook feed as people went back-and-forth about the labeling issue in WA (same with the voting demographics on the actual measure). Also, environmentalist are also convinced GMO's are harmful to the environment which sways a lot of the "liberal" people there. I have a limited knowledge of the politics overthere but as I understand it environmentalist spearheaded the anti-GMO movement in the EU.

As far as EU, they are backpedalling big time on their GMO policies. Labeling pretty much demonized the technology, nobody was buying GMO labeled food and now they are concerned with economic issues with their food supply as a result. (Generalizations here)

Mos def a lot of hyperbolic over-reaction from the hippie wing of the left, which I understand is a powerful part of german culture (conservatism of nature). It's unfortunate. It's a bit like greenpeace being anti-business rather than anti-ecological disaster. They at some point conflated the two things and rather than try to solve problems they kept throwing bricks at anyone making money, alienating the public and undecided actors along the boundaries of their activities.

A part of the over-reaction is the fear that these edited plants will spread far beyond their intended location (they have) and muck up "natural" stuff (they have), and when everything goes to shit (vague fearmongering) we won't be able to go back. Genie, bottle. So far the ecological disasters are negligible and may have occurred regardless of the altered seeds, but the economic and societal disasters have been pretty epic. Of course from Monsanto's perspective those were not problems, but they're evil.

GMO foods are to liberals/left-leaning people as climate change is to conservatives/right-leaning people. For whatever reason, both of those issues short circuit a lot of otherwise intelligent people's brains, who let ideology and ignorance replace their rationality and intelligence.

The Year the Monarch Didn't Appear

Another major cause is farming with Roundup, a herbicide that kills virtually all plants except crops that are genetically modified to survive it.

Click to expand...

Yeah, GMO are good for human, who gives a shit about other things ?