GMOs: Nobel laureates dismiss fears about genetically modified foods

[Independent voter]

anti-GMO people are like anti-global warming and anti-vaccers, you have a group of uneducated people taking a stand on something they know nothing about.

And they do so because science is scary.



https://www.theguardian.com/science/...modified-foods

Winners of this year’s Nobel prize for chemistry say overblown fears about genetically modified foods risk preventing society benefiting from the technology.

Prof Frances Arnold, from the US, and Sir Gregory Winter, from Britain, made the comments on Friday ahead of Monday’s presentation of the prize.

“We’ve been modifying the biological world at the level of DNA for thousands of years,” Arnold said at a news conference, citing examples such as new dog breeds. “Somehow there is this new fear of what we already have been doing and that fear has limited our ability to provide real solutions.”

Arnold argued that genetically modified crops could make food production more environmentally sustainable and help feed the world’s growing population. Genetic modifications can make crops drought and disease resistant.

Winter said that current regulations on GM needed to be “loosened up”.

Arnold and Winter were awarded this year’s Nobel prize in chemistry, along with the American scientist George Smith, for their work in harnessing evolution to produce new enzymes and antibodies. Their work led to the development of new fuels and pharmaceuticals by making use of nature’s evolutionary processes themselves, leading to medical and environmental advances.

[PC2]

Agricultural organisms are largely just factories for making the same ~20 amino acids. The odds of modifying one of the organisms in a way that unintentionally makes a new toxic protein or carcinogen is pretty low.

The phenomena at play here is what should be called "misanthropic bias", the tendency to think that human intervention is more likely to cause harm rather than improvement.

[Rustedsaint]

Personally I’m okay with gmos as long as it was properly examined before being made available to the public.

[lonely zergling]

Bet they were paid to say that.

[Malikath]

if monsanto wasn't the cheap greasy brother of lexcorp making faulty, toxic, nutritionally vacant strains there wouldn't be anti-GMO people beyond the luddites.
but they do, so no we need regulation on the growth and propagation of GMO technology and a series of standards and regulations to provide safe-guards for the natural environment that sustains life on this planet.

same with anti-vaxxers and big pharma, if they would stop being assholes intentionally retarding research on cures in favor of treatments to tax you for life,literally and actually, and using cheap heavy metal toxins to make vaccines people would vaccinate more.

people need to stop complaining about complainers and fucking get rid of the problem makers.

[Noomz]

anti-GMO people are like anti-global warming and anti-vaccers, you have a group of uneducated people taking a stand on something they know nothing about.

And they do so because science is scary.



https://www.theguardian.com/science/...modified-foods

Winners of this year’s Nobel prize for chemistry say overblown fears about genetically modified foods risk preventing society benefiting from the technology.

Prof Frances Arnold, from the US, and Sir Gregory Winter, from Britain, made the comments on Friday ahead of Monday’s presentation of the prize.

“We’ve been modifying the biological world at the level of DNA for thousands of years,” Arnold said at a news conference, citing examples such as new dog breeds. “Somehow there is this new fear of what we already have been doing and that fear has limited our ability to provide real solutions.”

Arnold argued that genetically modified crops could make food production more environmentally sustainable and help feed the world’s growing population. Genetic modifications can make crops drought and disease resistant.

Winter said that current regulations on GM needed to be “loosened up”.

Arnold and Winter were awarded this year’s Nobel prize in chemistry, along with the American scientist George Smith, for their work in harnessing evolution to produce new enzymes and antibodies. Their work led to the development of new fuels and pharmaceuticals by making use of nature’s evolutionary processes themselves, leading to medical and environmental advances.

Yeah being against GMO's is astoundingly stupid. WIthout them, we can't get the yields we need, as efficiently as we need.
Of course, biodiversity is ALSO important when it comes to crops, should a crop fail we need to have others that can replace it or empower it to be immune to whatever is killing it. Something like that has already occured in the 50's with bananas. The variety of banana they had back then no longer exists because of a disease that destroyed it.

If we use crops and plants that yield less, take more water and energy to give LESS but also lose part of it to the use of less pesticides and such, whilst also being generally inefficient, we're not doing us or the environment any services.

Now, companies like Monsanto and the other few conglomerates that own everything and how they handle things is an entirely different can of worms.

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if monsanto wasn't the cheap greasy brother of lexcorp making faulty, toxic, nutritionally vacant strains there wouldn't be anti-GMO people beyond the luddites.

I'm gonna need to see some examples of those.

- - - Updated - - -

Personally I’m okay with gmos as long as it was properly examined before being made available to the public.

But why wouldn't they be safe? We've crossbred crops since we learned how to plant them. Same thing with animals, that we've crossbred and bred into certain behaviors and needs. Why'd it suddenly be bad when we doing it better with the help of a lab? They still grow them, they still try them and so on. It's not some Mad Doctor science stuff where he sits and cackles whilst pouring one vial into another vial.

I think you really misunderstand, or don't understand at all, how it all works. Simply giving a tomato a gene from wheat or whatever won't make it dangerous to you. It's not a Hollywood movie.

- - - Updated - - -

Agricultural organisms are largely just factories for making the same ~20 amino acids. The odds of modifying one of the organisms in a way that unintentionally makes a new toxic protein or carcinogen is pretty low.

The phenomena at play here is what should be called a "misanthropic bias", the tendency to think that human intervention is more likely to cause harm rather than improvement.

Meanwhile we sit here stuffing our faces with chocolate, alcohol, cigarettes and all that other garbage. BUT NAH GMO'S ARE SCARY! Now let me pour some more salt on this "sausage" and slam some "cheddar" on it.

[Spectral]

if monsanto wasn't the cheap greasy brother of lexcorp making faulty, toxic, nutritionally vacant strains there wouldn't be anti-GMO people beyond the luddites.

Which Monsanto strain would you characterize as fault, toxic, and/or nutritionally vacant?

[arandomuser]

Right wing logic

"the science is clear white people on average have a higher IQ than non white races)
10 minutes later

"climate change is a NWO marxist hoax to take over the west!!!!

[Omega10]

anti-GMO people are like anti-global warming and anti-vaccers, you have a group of uneducated people taking a stand on something they know nothing about.

And they do so because science is scary.



https://www.theguardian.com/science/...modified-foods

Winners of this year’s Nobel prize for chemistry say overblown fears about genetically modified foods risk preventing society benefiting from the technology.

Prof Frances Arnold, from the US, and Sir Gregory Winter, from Britain, made the comments on Friday ahead of Monday’s presentation of the prize.

“We’ve been modifying the biological world at the level of DNA for thousands of years,” Arnold said at a news conference, citing examples such as new dog breeds. “Somehow there is this new fear of what we already have been doing and that fear has limited our ability to provide real solutions.”

Arnold argued that genetically modified crops could make food production more environmentally sustainable and help feed the world’s growing population. Genetic modifications can make crops drought and disease resistant.

Winter said that current regulations on GM needed to be “loosened up”.

Arnold and Winter were awarded this year’s Nobel prize in chemistry, along with the American scientist George Smith, for their work in harnessing evolution to produce new enzymes and antibodies. Their work led to the development of new fuels and pharmaceuticals by making use of nature’s evolutionary processes themselves, leading to medical and environmental advances.

Fine.

You eat foods that have HFCS and are genetically modified in whatever ways you want.

I'll stay from these as much as I can. Worldwide, American food is considered cheap and low quality. I get around this the best I can. I pay more for organic foods, and when I have a chance to get foods that are certified non-GMO I get them as well.

Insult me all you want. You've proven in other threads that you hate my guts anyways, so an additional set of insults just has no effect at this point.

[Steelcryo]

Fine.

You eat foods that have HFCS and are genetically modified in whatever ways you want.

I'll stay from these as much as I can. Worldwide, American food is considered cheap and low quality. I get around this the best I can. I pay more for organic foods, and when I have a chance to get foods that are certified non-GMO I get them as well.

Insult me all you want. You've proven in other threads that you hate my guts anyways, so an additional set of insults just has no effect at this point.

Genuine question: Why are you so against GMO's?

Pretty much everything is a GMO in some form, just not so selectively as those tagged as GMO. Nearly every crop, fruit, vegetable w/e has been specifically grown from plants that succeeded in being farmed. Ever since humans have understood agriculture, we've been modifying our food for whichever grows best, tastes best, provides the biggest yield. Even before we knew DNA existed, farmers were doing it because they saw that plant A was better than plant B and grew that.

Nature and evolution are the biggest creators of GMO crops. All living things naturally adapt and evolve to the enviroment around them, it's natural selection. So why is it so bad we give it a helping hand? Sure we could create something toxic but so can nature and GMO crops are tested and scrutinized far more than organic food is. So if either is likely to suddenly create something harmful to eat, it's far more likely to be noticed in GMO crops and removed than in organic.

[Endus]

Monsanto's problematic because they typically try and engineer their seeds to be infertile, to force farmers to buy new seedstock every year rather than re-seeding from that year's crop. Also that they pretty freely sue other farmers if their seeds turn out to be less than infertile and cross-pollinate into those farmers' fields. It has nothing to do with GMO technology, and everything to do with their particular business practices.

As a for-instance, there's some issues arising with wheat lately, beyond just gluten intolerance/celiac/etc. This could have to do with some farming practices like dessication, it could have to do with modern wheat being a heavily hybridized and selectively bred species and hugely different from "heritage" wheat forms of even a century ago. More study's needed. But it really doesn't have anything to do with GMO techniques, which if anything, may be a solution to the issue, especially if the latter turns out to be the case.

[PC2]

Monsanto's problematic because they typically try and engineer their seeds to be infertile, to force farmers to buy new seedstock every year rather than re-seeding from that year's crop. Also that they pretty freely sue other farmers if their seeds turn out to be less than infertile and cross-pollinate into those farmers' fields. It has nothing to do with GMO technology, and everything to do with their particular business practices.

As a for-instance, there's some issues arising with wheat lately, beyond just gluten intolerance/celiac/etc. This could have to do with some farming practices like desiccation, it could have to do with modern wheat being a heavily hybridized and selectively bred species and hugely different from "heritage" wheat forms of even a century ago. More study's needed. But it really doesn't have anything to do with GMO techniques, which if anything, may be a solution to the issue, especially if the latter turns out to be the case.

Infertility isn't a scheme to control farmers, farmers could use either seed type if they want to. The reason is that infertility is a trade-off between the amount of energy put into seeds vs the more desirable feature of the plant. Also processing crops for reseeding isn't necessarily cheaper than simply buying new seeds in bulk.

[Omega10]

Genuine question: Why are you so against GMO's?

Pretty much everything is a GMO in some form, just not so selectively as those tagged as GMO. Nearly every crop, fruit, vegetable w/e has been specifically grown from plants that succeeded in being farmed. Ever since humans have understood agriculture, we've been modifying our food for whichever grows best, tastes best, provides the biggest yield. Even before we knew DNA existed, farmers were doing it because they saw that plant A was better than plant B and grew that.

Nature and evolution are the biggest creators of GMO crops. All living things naturally adapt and evolve to the enviroment around them, it's natural selection. So why is it so bad we give it a helping hand? Sure we could create something toxic but so can nature and GMO crops are tested and scrutinized far more than organic food is. So if either is likely to suddenly create something harmful to eat, it's far more likely to be noticed in GMO crops and removed than in organic.

The modifications are not being done to make food more nutritious, they are being done to make them cheaper and sweeter. Oftentimes, this is at the expense of nutrition.

The people my age that I work with that eat the typical American diet tend to be 100+ pounds overweight. I'll pass on that. It has taken me a long time to get used to veggies being what I crave, that 90% cocoa dark chocolate is the "sweet" that I eat, and that any sugar I get is from fruits. I'll take this over what other Americans eat. I eat Grapefruit like most people eat Oranges - and absolutely without any sweetener.

There is now a new strain of apple, the Honeycrisp. Not GMO, but they worked hard to breed apples to give it certain characteristics. Eating one almost makes me sick due to how sweet it is. It is not as bad as eating, say, an Apple Pastry that you get from a donut shop, but it is way too sweet for me. So none of these for me anymore.


My metabolism is low, so I don't get to eat too many calories per day. So I can spend a bit more and get higher quality food. It works for me. When I tell people my age they are shocked because they thought of me as being a decade - or more - younger. I am almost 60, and young women in their 30s or 40s still flirt with me So I'll stick with organic and non-GMO since I found something that works well for me.

[Draco-Onis]

Genuine question: Why are you so against GMO's?

Pretty much everything is a GMO in some form, just not so selectively as those tagged as GMO. Nearly every crop, fruit, vegetable w/e has been specifically grown from plants that succeeded in being farmed. Ever since humans have understood agriculture, we've been modifying our food for whichever grows best, tastes best, provides the biggest yield. Even before we knew DNA existed, farmers were doing it because they saw that plant A was better than plant B and grew that.

Nature and evolution are the biggest creators of GMO crops. All living things naturally adapt and evolve to the enviroment around them, it's natural selection. So why is it so bad we give it a helping hand? Sure we could create something toxic but so can nature and GMO crops are tested and scrutinized far more than organic food is. So if either is likely to suddenly create something harmful to eat, it's far more likely to be noticed in GMO crops and removed than in organic.

I think the problem is GMO is purposely being applied to all kinds of methods including genetic modifications. The fact is we do not know the long term ramification of genetically modifying our food supply just like we don't know how modifying our own genes has on us because there simply is not enough data. The fact that Monsanto is leading the charge one of the most evil companies on the planet certainly does not help either.

[Steelcryo]

The modifications are not being done to make food more nutritious, they are being done to make them cheaper and sweeter. Oftentimes, this is at the expense of nutrition.

The people my age that I work with that eat the typical American diet tend to be 100+ pounds overweight. I'll pass on that. It has taken me a long time to get used to veggies being what I crave, that 90% cocoa dark chocolate is the "sweet" that I eat, and that any sugar I get is from fruits. I'll take this over what other Americans eat. I eat Grapefruit like most people eat Oranges - and absolutely without any sweetener.

There is now a new strain of apple, the Honeycrisp. Not GMO, but they worked hard to breed apples to give it certain characteristics. Eating one almost makes me sick due to how sweet it is. It is not as bad as eating, say, an Apple Pastry that you get from a donut shop, but it is way too sweet for me. So none of these for me anymore.


My metabolism is low, so I don't get to eat too many calories per day. So I can spend a bit more and get higher quality food. It works for me. When I tell people my age they are shocked because they thought of me as being a decade - or more - younger. I am almost 60, and young women in their 30s or 40s still flirt with me So I'll stick with organic and non-GMO since I found something that works well for me.

See that is a totally valid reason. If you prefer the taste then I’m glad you’ve found what you prefer and it’s actually something healthy for you. Although on the point of weight I expect a lot of that is lack of diet control more than GMO and it’s more likely that your dislike of GMO stuff has inadvertently given you a healthy diet as you’re thinking about what you’re eating and not just snacking on whatever is quick and easy when you feel peckish.

[Sting]

Monsanto's problematic because they typically try and engineer their seeds to be infertile, to force farmers to buy new seedstock every year rather than re-seeding from that year's crop. Also that they pretty freely sue other farmers if their seeds turn out to be less than infertile and cross-pollinate into those farmers' fields. It has nothing to do with GMO technology, and everything to do with their particular business practices.

As much as I dislike Monsanto, I don't think that's right. The monsanto legal cases wikipedia page gives a pretty decent insight into which cases they actually take to court (They don't sue for trace amounts or unintentional crossbreeding). I keep hearing this particular argument and it's simply not true.

The real problem with Monsanto is that they're doubling down on promoting the use of chemicals through chemical-resistant crops. Since weeds are also becoming glyphosate resistant, they thought it'd be a good idea to just make them resistant to another chemical and sell both their products to farmers along with the seeds. Terrible decision from an ecological point of view as you just end up with more bad shit in your ecosystem and it's an arms race you'll always lose. Keep in mind, Monsanto is primarily about selling chemicals, not about selling seeds. It makes them a lot more money.

[PC2]

The modifications are not being done to make food more nutritious, they are being done to make them cheaper and sweeter. Oftentimes, this is at the expense of nutrition.

Well most fruits and veggies are already relatively low in protein and fat compared to sugar. So it makes sense that further specialization would typically cause fruits and veggies to become sweeter.

But you can also get low sugar, high fat, high protein foods if you want to. IE beans for protein, avocado for fat. Animal products for both. It's not very reasonable to expect any 1 source to have the complete array of nutrition.

[Azadina]

Personally I have nothing against the GMO foods themselves, but everything against, in my opinion, the unethical and predatory business practices. They can keep their GMO products until that changes.

[Independent voter]

I think the problem is GMO is purposely being applied to all kinds of methods including genetic modifications. The fact is we do not know the long term ramification of genetically modifying our food supply just like we don't know how modifying our own genes has on us because there simply is not enough data. The fact that Monsanto is leading the charge one of the most evil companies on the planet certainly does not help either.

Yet these Nobel laureates say you're wrong.

[Draco-Onis]

Yet these Nobel laureates say you're wrong.

Question. Do you go to your dentist for brain surgery? because you are taking the advice of a chemist on genetics.