[Wafflepudding]

On Genetic modification

There have been many divergent opinions, from ecologists, scientists, conservative and liberal authors about this and I thought it was odd that we weren't discussing this. GM organisms, vaccines, pharmaceuticals, genetic engineering is no longer on the far off sci-fi future, it is part of our lives and will only be more present in the foreseeable future.

This could have revolutionary applications and radically alter many of society's current issues, like the energy crisis, conservation, global warming, healthcare, agriculture, and recycling.

These technologies offer exciting new possibilities, but also carry threats of a level never seen before. The same techniques that could be used to provide cheap, effective healthcare to the entire world could be used to commit genocide on a massive scale. The same GM microbes that could clean up polluted sites could also contaminate otherwise pristine environments. The same retroviruses that could be used to extend and improve the quality of life could result in the end of the human race as we know it, not by annihilation but by controlled evolution.

In a few decades, certainly within our lifetime, humanity will have the ability to manipulate the human genetic code. Will this widen the gap between the haves and havenots? or will this result in a new era of true equality? one thing is for certain: At the present state of society, we are not ready for these changes

Discuss.

[Jennifer_SFBA]

Some of of us are ready for all of the changes that are available to us. None of us but the elite themselves are ready for what the elite and the corporatocracy that they own and control intend. Intention, application and spritual maturity are key elements involved in the development and application of invention and "novelty" (Terrance McKenna and did he ever have alot to say eloquently that's worth the time):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_McKenna

At the link below, scroll down to the free 6 minute + "Terence McKenna: 2012 Timewave Zero" video.

http://2012eschaton.com/modules/news...?storytopic=10

http://video.google.com/videosearch?...+mckenna&hl=en

More of Terrance KcKenna is at the website below:

http://bluehoney.org/bluehoney/index...position=33:29

[Jennifer_SFBA]

Cases in point (Think DNA manipulation, legal patents, corporate profits and control)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_food

http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/trials-cn.htm

http://www.marxist.com/scienceandtech/genetic_engineering.html

http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/campaigns/genetic-engineering

What you can do:

http://www.sierraclub.org/biotech/

[Wafflepudding]

Many of the first links aren't working. The main problems I see here are:

1.- Testing and regulation inadequacy, which is certainly a serious issue (that can be adressed by stricter, yet non prohibitive regulation and oversight).
2.- Suicide seeds, herbicide resistance and other GM done out of the interest for profit (which could be undone just as easily as it was done).
3.- The intended use for the food itself (can be adressed by clear labelling).
4.- GM food causing ailments. Other than some allergy cases which could have been prevented if farmers and companies were forced to label their products clearly I haven't seen any other problems, anyone else wanna ilustrate this more?
5.- The traits of the seeds themselves. Perhaps the UN WFP (food programme) could fund the development of seeds for third world countries and subsistance farmers with the traits they need in their crops.
6.- The hard to predict nature of genetic modification. This is very open to debate and will likely remain a key point of discussion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Greenpeace

Much of this criticism can be traced to corporations involved in the controversy. However the arguments about GM food are worth looking into. As a sidenote, I didn't even know about the problems with the electronics report. I'm all for saving the oceans, the ancient forests and reducing human influence on climate change, but that doesn't mean I'll blindly support greenpeace on every crusade they get into.

[Jennifer_SFBA]

After I've posted them, hopefully, the free Terance McKenna video links on Google will come up:

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=terrance+mckenna&hl=en

Please scroll down to "Terence McKenna Time Wave Zero" at the link below:

http://2012eschaton.com/modules/news/

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=terance+mckenna&search=Search

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu6WFr61I-g

http://bluehoney.org/

http://bluehoney.org/bluehoney/

http://bluehoney.org/bluehoney/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=18&MMN_position=33:29

[MAGI]

I wished I paid more attention as to what South African (I assume it was S. Africa) country it was that was cutting down acres of Rain Forest daily. I caught this info on a show during this past week while preparing lunch.

The rest of the story really caught my attention because they were doing so to plant soybeans, to feed the chickens, they were raising to sell on the world market!

I wrote about my farmer neighbor previously, who also plants soybeans on his farm in Minnesota, seed which Monsanto genetically spliced with an herbicide!
He told me the herbicide when sprayed on the plants was so wonderfull..............it killed all the other weeds and was like food to the soybean plants which thrive magnificently!

Talk about double trouble!
Ex Rain Forest chicken, anyone?

:eek:

[Wafflepudding]

Magi: I don't know about South Africa, but you're talking about Monsanto Roundup Ready GM Soybean. It's not that they use the herbicide (also sold by Monsanto) as a nutrient, they're extremely tolerant to it. And this is an excellent example of how the possible benefits of GM are wasted and perverted by multinationals to line their own pockets. Instead of making GM seeds that grow well on African soils and have higher nutrient content, they make seeds resistant to the herbicide THEY SELL.

I stand by my suggestion: The WFP could easily fund development of new seed strains to eliminate the need for toxic herbicides and copious amounts of chemical fertilizers in the third world. But this is contrary to the interests of Dow Chemical, Bayer and the rest of the big chemical companies that make huge profits on agrochemicals.

I think the protesting by greenpeace adds to the complexity. IMHO progressives could cooperate to make such seeds available, this would strike a hard blow to companies like Monsanto and reduce pollution too.

[MAGI]

WP,
I should have said genectly altered seed. Yes you're right, thank you for refreshing my memory about the herbicide, Roundup. You sent me on a search about Roundup seed and I found all kinds of problems with "genectically engineered seed" and profiteering unconsionable "scientists", (what's new ?) and the always present deception of too many corporations!

This one is unforgivable and I wonder if you know more current news of worldwide governments making progress fighting off these whores? All countries have them I see; it's as usual, a matter of fighting the "buccaneers" BS propaganda and ignoring learned data!

http://www.mindfully.org/GE/2006/India-Biotech-Buccaneers21dec06.htm

Biotech GM Seeds Buccaneers
Destroy India's Rice Economy
ARUN SHRIVASTAVA / Global Research 21dec2006
[Say “No” To India’s Crops Being Genetically Engineered (offsite)]

"The India Government is firmly under control of buccaneers of biotechnology and spurious Life Sciences multinational corporations. Despite rules to the contrary, GM experiments have been going on across India with the complicity of the Indian Government. Most importantly, the attack is now on rice.

India is a centre of origin for rice and the centre for diversity for rice genes, in the same way as Mexico is for corn. It is therefore much more than just a rice country. This makes the Government’s cavalier attitude to India’s Non-GM status for rice, one of irresponsible criminal negligence. In embarking on high-risk field trials of GM-rice, it exposes our rice farmers to contamination by GM including transgenic contamination of wild species and the rice seed stock. If we Indians lose control over local rice seeds we lose our right to food and nutrition. We lose our sovereignty.

snip

In granting permission for field trials, the Government of India has failed to protect the people’s interest and health. The Supreme Court of India [SC] in its interim order in matter of a Public Interest Litigation [PIL] number 260 of 2006 [1st May 2006] had directed that an inter-ministerial "Genetic Engineering Approvals Committee" [GEAC] be formed and all applications for field trails be routed via GEAC. This does not imply that the SC had given a carte blanche to GEAC to approve field trials; rather, the directive was to prevent one department [the Department of Biotechnology] from taking unilateral decisions and bring in some discipline.

However, in the ‘67th Meeting of the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee’ held on 22.05.2006, the GEAC brushed aside all such concerns and in utter defiance of the spirit of the Order it has rubberstamped an astonishing 91 GM products for multi-location trials [MLTs]

snip

Thus, the big seed companies [in this instance Monsanto, operating through its Indian Joint Venture partners Maharashtra Hybrid Seeds Corporation or Mahyco] have committed crimes against humanity with full connivance of officials of the Department of Biotechnology and members of GEAC [which means several Ministries are also involved, chiefly, the Minister of Agriculture & the Ministry of Environment & Forest].

This is a crime against the people of India and against India’s farmers because these approvals have been given knowing the fact that in the last two years, 70% of the farmer suicides in the Maharashtra belt are Bt cotton farmers suicides.

"During the latter part of April, the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture (CSA) uncovered deadly toxic reaction in sheep and goats in Warangal in AP from grazing in Bt cotton fields in Feb/March, post the last cotton harvest of 2005-2006. Local shepherds estimate the total mortality for the area to be around 10,000 dead sheep and goats." [Page 4, Application for interim order, in the SC of India, No 260 of 2006]

Whilst Bt rice trials have been approved in 10 out of India’s 25 states, we suspect that the total area where GE field trails have been slipped in, without knowledge of the poor farmers who rented their lands, could be significant.

This is not a new war

The United States of America declared a war on Indian rice [and food security] way back in the early 1960s when India’s No 1 scientist mole, Dr M.S. Swaminathan, stole the gene bank of rice, evolved over decades by Dr Riccharia, and passed it over to the Americans. How many genetic varieties have been stolen? No one really knows.

Swaminathan was the main dramatis personae in what is known as "the great[est] gene robbery" in the history of mankind. [See, "The Great Gene Robbery", by Dr Claude Alvarez, The Illustrated Weekly of India, March 23-April 5, 1986]

India had 120,000 varieties of rice seeds; today, no more than 50 are available. This is United States’ war on genetic diversity, ably supported by scientist-criminals like MS Swaminathan. And the worst crime of the Indian Government is to have these criminals head Agriculture Policy of India.

snip "

I had to cut out excellent info to get this on one page, so I recommend anyone interested to read the full url above.

What FOOLS WE MORTALS BE!

[Wafflepudding]

Excellent discovery Magi, I'll have to make time to examine this later.:thumbup:

[Michael DeM]

Anuradha Mittal of the Oakland Institute dispels the myths of genetic engineering.

http://mefeedia.com/entry/3188679/

http://www.oaklandinstitute.org

[Magi2]

Thanks Michael Dem for informing us how Monsanto, Bayer & their ilk are destroying our food supply and hurting farmers worldwide as well as poisoning the food we eat!

Well, I'll call my Rep's office tomorrow about genectically engineered foods and hope we can get an FDA once again that is NOT corrupted!!!!!!!!!!!

I wish everyone would see that video!!!!!

:thumbup:

[Michael DeM]

I'm glad you liked it. :)

[Magi2]

My AZ. neighbor, farmer friend who just loved the way his Monsanto Genectically engineered soybean crop thrived on the GE Monsanto herbicide "roundup", died of pancreatic cancer 13 months ago.

His wife died a few years before of breast cancer, which really causes me to wonder about all the toxins now in so much of the food we eat..................


Monsanto GE corn, soy and cottonseed oil (just read the labels) is suspected to cause U.S. obesity as well as poisoning the soil for many years to come as well.

http://aolsearch.aol.com/aol/search?query=Monsanto+Roundup&invocationType=clpromo6&icid=clpromo6

Here's an interesting article:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/During-a-world-food-crisis-by-Linn-Cohen-Cole-080723-548.html

some highlights:


Where does one even begin?


Do you know who Monsanto is? They are a chemical corporation which made Agent Orange and after that, PCBs, with which they drowned the town of Anniston, Alabama for decades, even after knowing for sure that PCBs were highly carcinogenic. They make organophosphates, including glyphosate (Round-up) - which are highly neuro-toxic.


With this background in illness and killing, Monsanto then began "doing" your food. It genetically engineers food.


But before you say "Oh, that's good because genetic engineering is making food better, adding vitamins, growing bigger crops, ..." I have bad news for you. Please go to http://www.responsibletechnology.org and listen to Jeffrey Smith's lecture on how genetic engineering works and what it does to organs.


And as the greater yield PR, I suggest you read: http://www.i-sis.org.uk/IBTCF.php about the Bt-cotton fraud in India while Monsanto claims to have increased yield by 160%. click here do Indian farmers say? Indian farmers call Monsanto's Bt-cotton seeds, the Seeds of Death.
Beyond India, there are also problems. click here to believe?

Isn't this the same Monsanto that for four decades denied that PCBs caused cancer, while sitting on thousands of documents to the contrary? http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/ features/2008/05/monsanto200805


But the important thing to understand - EVEN IF genetically engineered seeds created greater yields and EVEN IF genetically engineered crops were safe to eat and EVEN IF they were not just designed to be used only with Monsanto's pesticides - is that genetic engineering is dangerous because it is imperialism via DNA, given Monsanto power field by field, farm by farm, country by country.


It works like this: Monsanto gets George HW Bush to put one of its employees on the Supreme Court. From there, Clarence Thomas is in time to rule that genetically modified organisms are no different from normal organisms. Science by legal decision. Pandora's box of endlessly mutant organisms being let loose onto the world by Monsanto's influence over Bush and via one single law.

skip



Monsanto is not just seeking control over grains, but is genetically engineering vegetables and trees, bought Delta and Pineland in order to own its (and its partner, the USDA's) terminator technology click here to go sterile after one season, establishing TOTAL control over seeds it sells while risking cross-pollination and thus seeds in nature going sterile, too), is buying up fish farms and privatizing water. http://www.rense.com/general20/re.htm


It has been very hard to reach the liberal and urban community about farming. Not many, for instance, in opposing the war in Iraq, noticed what Bremer got sent there to do for Monsanto. http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/62273/?page=entire


Kissinger said that if you control food, you control populations. That's what's happening. Fascism is arriving through food. click here fight for farmers here and abroad is not some happy-go-lucky interest in organic and better tasting food. It is a fight against worldwide totalitarian control over land and food and animals and water and all natural substances by multinationals. Farming is at the heart of everything and is deeply political.


It's time to pay serious attention.


skip



so much more

Other countries are wise .....when will we be?

:confused:

[Magi2]

Hummmmmmm,
"they" must keep locations secret so "We The People" dont' rip out GE (M) experimental crops:

http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/linkframe.php?linkid=66459

Prince Charles warns GM crops risk causing the biggest-ever environmental disaster
By Jeff Randall
Last Updated: 2:01pm BST 12/08/2008

Read comments


The mass development of genetically modified crops risks causing the world's worst environmental disaster, The Prince of Wales has warned.


Listen: The Prince of Wales speaks out:

http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/linkframe.php?linkid=66459


In his most outspoken intervention on the issue of GM food, the Prince said that multi-national companies were conducting an experiment with nature which had gone "seriously wrong".

The Prince, in an exclusive interview with the Daily Telegraph, also expressed the fear that food would run out because of the damage being wreaked on the earth's soil by scientists' research.

He accused firms of conducting a "gigantic experiment I think with nature and the whole of humanity which has gone seriously wrong".

"Why else are we facing all these challenges, climate change and everything?".

The Prince of Wales: 'If that is the future, count me out'

Relying on "gigantic corporations" for food, he said, would result in "absolute disaster".

"That would be the absolute destruction of everything... and the classic way of ensuring there is no food in the future," he said.

What we should be talking about is food security not food production - that is what matters and that is what people will not understand.

"And if they think its somehow going to work because they are going to have one form of clever genetic engineering after another then again count me out, because that will be guaranteed to cause the biggest disaster environmentally of all time."

Small farmers, in particular, would be the victims of "gigantic corporations" taking over the mass production of food.

"I think it's heading for real disaster," he said.

"If they think this is the way to go....we [will] end up with millions of small farmers all over the world being driven off their land into unsustainable, unmanageable, degraded and dysfunctional conurbations of unmentionable awfulness."

The Prince of Wales's forthright comments will reopen the whole debate about GM food.

They will put him on a collision course with the international scientific community and Downing Street - which has allowed 54 GM crop trials in Britain since 2000.

His intervention comes at a critical time. There is intense pressure for more GM products, not fewer, because of soaring food costs and widespread shortages.

Many scientists believe GM research is the only way to guarantee food for the world's growing population as the planet is affected by climate change.

They will be dismayed by such a high profile and controversial contribution from the Prince of Wales at such a sensitive time.

The Prince will be braced for the biggest outpouring of criticism from scientists since he accused genetic engineers of taking us into "realms that belong to God and God alone" in an article in the Daily Telegraph in 1998.

In the interview the Prince, who has an organic farm on his Highgrove estate, held out the hope of the British agricultural system encouraging more and more family run co-operative farms.

When challenged over whether he was trying to turn back the clock, he said: "I think not. I'm terribly sorry. It's not going backwards. It is actually recognising that we are with nature, not against it. We have gone working against nature for too long."

The Prince of Wales cited the widespread environmental damage in India caused by the rush to mass produce GM food.

"Look at India's Green Revolution. It worked for a short time but now the price is being paid.

"I have been to the Punjab where you have seen the disasters that have taken place as result of the over demand on irrigation because of the hybrid seeds and grains that have been produced which demand huge amounts of water.

"[The] water table has disappeared. They have huge problems with water level, with pesticide problems, and complications which are now coming home to roost.

"Look at western Australia. Huge salinisation problems. I have been there. Seen it. Some of the excessive approaches to modern forms of agriculture."

He said that the scientists were putting too much pressure on nature.

"If you are not working with natural assistance you cause untold problems. which become very expensive and very difficult to undo.

It places impossible burdens on nature and leads to accumulating problems which become more difficult to sort out."

In a keynote speech last year the Prince of Wales warned that the world faces a series of natural disasters within 18 months unless a £15 billion action plan is agreed to save the world's rain forests.

He has set up his own rain forest project with 15 of the world's largest companies, environmental and economic experts, to try to find ways to stop their destruction.

Only two weeks ago British GM researchers lobbied ministers for their crops to be kept in high-security facilities or in fields at secret locations across the country to prevent them from being attacked and destroyed.

They spoke out after protesters ripped up crops in one of only two GM trials to be approved in Britain this year.

Scientists claim the repeated attacks on their trials are stifling vital research to evaluate whether GM crops can reduce the cost and environmental impact of farming and whether they will grow better in harsh environments where droughts have devastated harvests.





I just love ( :rolleyes: ) the way this author cites scientists as if all scientists believe in Genetically Engineered (M) seeds!

Talk about brain washing!

I studied plant genetics at the University of California at Berkeley with many professors who also had their own biotech companies. Later I got a masters in public health studying environmental health at Tulane University. The science behind the GM scenes is fascinating and may I say that plants are far more interesting than animals when studying genetics. In the end though, I decided that nature is more efficient, more diverse and knows what she's doing 100 times better than we do. GM not only jeopardizes the lives of farmers and the environment (which of course will eventually affect all of us), but there is some evidence that GM foods may be immediately harmful for human and animal health. Check out this website, link.

http://www.seedsofdeception.com/GMFree/AboutGMFoods/WorldAccordingtoMonsanto/index.cfm

I haven't reviewed the literature myself, but my family who are livestock breeders have heard anecdotal evidence of the damage GM may do to animal reproductive health. The bottom line is, don't mess with mother nature.
Posted by Anna Spector on August 15, 2008 1:42 AM