[geezer]

Don't mess with complex systems we don't understand. Whether it is GMOS, global climate or administering antibiotics to animals.

It should be incumbent upon those tinkering with complex systems to provide proof of non-harm. Right now, its the other way around, where those who are harmed have to provide proof of harm.

[bpodgursky]

Please don't conflate issues with scientific backing (antibiotic abuse) with unscientific fearmongering (GMOs).

It drags the legitimate concerns down and makes them look like crackpot conspiracies.

[tzs]

There are reasons to be concerned with GMOs that are not at odds with science. Let me quote something from a comment from a few weeks ago:

---- begin quote ----

GMOs aren't inherently dangerous to human health or inherently environmentally destructive. But they do let producers do things faster and more extreme than they could do via conventional breeding techniques.

They've used those conventional techniques to reduce crop diversity, and select for things like uniform time to grow and uniform size/shape to make mechanical processing easy, over selecting for things like nutrition and flavor.

Is there any good reason to believe that the increased power GMO techniques give them won't be used to go even farther in those directions?

With great power comes great responsibility. I'm skeptical that the big food companies are responsible enough for GMO, and with government food regulation more determined by industry lobbying than by actual science I have little faith that the government will do anything to make sure GMO techniques are only used for good.

---- end quote ----

[tptacek]

If we're going to regulate food production in ways that require producers to make commercial sacrifices to promote crop diversity, we should do that directly, rather than indirectly through regulations on GMOs. Because, obviously, producers have a variety of other ways besides GMOs to profit from reduced diversity.

[TeMPOraL]

Those, I agree, are legitimate concerns worth discussing. But 'bpodgursky is right that it's harder to discuss those when people are mostly vocal about some invented fear-inducing non-issues. This also holds for discussions about nuclear power.

About your concerns - it's worth noting that they're political/economical in nature and have nothing to do with genetic modifications itself. I agree with most of them, but personally believe that it's not enough to shut down the entire branch of science, as some of the opponents seem to want. But those issues definitely need to be addressed.

[saiya-jin]

still waiting for that scientific backing, I don't see any outright proven threat. on the other hand, if this extra "power" allows us to create plants to feed hungry ie in Africa where usual crops wouldn't survive, that sounds like a real added value. or you want to explain a starving child that it should rather die because you don't like how the results are obtained?

[BuckRogers]

>still waiting for that scientific backing, I don't see any outright proven threat.

We don't need scientific backing: it should be proven safe before using. Not proven a threat then removed from the market. Some of these things can be difficult to reverse.

The issue in Africa isn't a lack of food worldwide, it's distribution.

[msandford]

> Please don't conflate issues with scientific backing (antibiotic abuse) with unscientific fearmongering (GMOs).

GMOs are only unscientific fearmongering until some kind of a heretofore invisible link is found.

Now I'm not suggesting that one will be found, but to say that you know there isn't one is the height of arrogance. There are a great many things that science has known that have been later overturned.

For example, Semmelweis beat Pasteur to the punch by a solid 10 years but he died basically in disgrace because the medical community chose to ignore him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Pasteur

I'd love to provide another dozen examples but I don't have a handy list to show you. Rest assured that if science could be wrong at least once it's within the realm of possibility that it could be wrong again. There's definitely no law of the universe that prevents science from making a mistake or two along the way to knowledge.

[openasocket]

By that logic you can assume anything is true. It is certainly _possible_ that GMOs are harmful, but without any evidence you have nothing to go on. I could use your exact same argument to argue against evolution or gravity.

[msandford]

You're trying to compare biology to biology and physics. Biology is messy and squishy and imprecise so you'll have an easier time there. Good luck on the physics front, though, because physics is so fundamental.

We have tremendous ability to make predictions in physics and then test those predictions roughly as many times as we care to. Biology is probably a few hundred years (or more!) from that.

[openasocket]

If you want me to believe GMOs are harmful, you need a better argument than "biology is hard."

Sorry if that comes off as harsh. I'll admit that the misuse of genetic modification could have big consequences, but the regulation currently in place seems sufficient. If you have regulations you would like to add, I would love to hear them.

[msandford]

When you do physics you're basically trying to test one interaction and you might have a half-dozen other interactions that you have to contend with. And even then, it's really hard! NASA is continuing to investigate the EM drive on the tiny, tiny chance that it's real, but mostly to see what these folks got wrong.

In biology you don't have a half-dozen other interactions to contend with, you've got probably on the order of millions. How many organic molecules are there? Do you know? I sure don't and I spent a couple of years doing computational genomics. The best we could do is spend thousands of processor hours trying to understand how the genome affects things, much less the transcriptome or proteome. If you want to suggest that "oh, GMO is fine because biology isn't THAT HARD" then I would implore you to go revolutionize biology because everyone I talked to said it was very, very hard.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genome

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcriptome

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proteome

[BuckRogers]

> If you want me to believe GMOs are harmful, you need a better argument than "biology is hard."

But the burden of proof that it's safe is on you. Not on those who prefer the conservative route.

[xkcd-sucks]

But, suggesting all types of genetic modification are equivalent ("GMOs") is also unscientific fearmongering.

[msandford]

Well they're equivalent insofar as they used methods outside traditional breeding in order to achieve their goals; namely "artificial" sequence editing. Will all the modifications have the same potential for harm? It's an open question.

We do know that humans do pretty well on things that have been bred using ancient techniques. Might modern techniques do a better job? Absolutely yes. Might these modern techniques also introduce problems? You can't really rule it out.

I'm not suggesting that all GMO are evil and that they should be banned, destroyed, etc. But what I am suggesting is that when the rate of change we can achieve gets much, much faster than using traditional techniques it's entirely possible that we could do something bad that would take generations to shake out.

Presuming that we "know" something after a couple of years when it has to do with biology, especially when you're talking about humans, is pretty dicey.

Soylent seems to be OK for humans so far, but if all you eat/drink is soylent for a decade you might find out that it's got too much of something, or not enough of something else. It's entirely premature to proclaim soylent 100% safe, that'll take a couple of generations. I feel the same way about organisms that have had their breeding sped up significantly. Not definitely bad, but I'd prefer not to be the guinea pig myself.

[geezer]

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Allegations of harmful effects of smoking were also once crackpot ideas. So was lung cancer due to working in coal mines.

The point is that biological systems are complex. We don't understand them well. Its better to be safe than sorry.

[dxhdr]

We can't agree on what constitutes a good diet, or even basic things like how much red meat or sugar are unhealthy, or indeed if they are even unhealthy at all. And yet you believe that we fully understand the consequences of modifying plant DNA to add features like glyphosate resistance? The fact, is we don't understand the relationship between food, the human body, and good health.

I'm very afraid of our unscientific GMO processes.

[duncan_bayne]

> It should be incumbent upon those tinkering with complex systems to provide proof of non-harm.

It should be incumbent upon those demanding proof of a negative to explain how that might work in practice.

[msandford]

You're right, better dismantle the FDA post-haste since a solid half of what they do there is make sure that things don't harm people.

[duncan_bayne]

http://warisboring.com/articles/super-glue-built-planes-nuke...

Also, they delay life saving medicines for decades.

[mirimir]

They try. But they're hugely understaffed. And they get conned a lot.

[duncan_bayne]

Unrelated to the issue of trying to prove a negative - can you demonstrate where the US Constitution allows the Federal Government to set up the FDA in the first place?

Some of what the FDA does is good and proper. But it's unconstitutional for the Federal Government to do it.

[duncan_bayne]

Downvotes don't count as demonstrating ;-P

[unclebucknasty]

It's no different than categorically stating that something is safe, simply because evidence of harm is yet to be found. See thalidomide, tobacco, DDT, and a host of others.

So, to the extent that both sides are being "unreasonable" in demanding proof, the difference is that we are moving forward with one side's thesis. In doing so, we are exposing people en masse to the risk of their being wrong.

[duncan_bayne]

Yes - both those positions are flawed. One leads to human progress, though, and the other to stagnation. I know which I'd choose.

It's also worth considering that people clamoring for "proof of safety" are usually the first to complain when you ask them for evidence to back up their pet projects (for example minimum wage laws). It's not even like they're being consistent about it.

[unclebucknasty]

>both those positions are flawed. One leads to human progress, though, and the other to stagnation

Of course the other side would say that this hoped for "human progress" can, and many times, has instead been human suffering.

But, it's a false choice you're offering which says that these two extremes are our only options. No one is arguing against "progress". The problem is our haste to declare something safe due to absence of proof, then subject people to it on a mass scale. We literally experiment on the general population.

And, how many times must we learn this lesson? The hubris on display here [1] reminds me of those who today trumpet the safety of, say, GMOs; dumping different pesticides on entire populations (still today), etc.

In hindsight, the scale of hubris on display in [1] is completely asinine. But, the "absence of proof" mindset that led to this folly is alive and well today.

[1] http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/06/27/ddt-is-good-...

[privacy101]

They say that GMOs are safe, not because of the test that they have done, but because of how long they have been feeding it to us. And they create new varieties constantly.

[geezer]

Homes prices had also always been trending up, until they didn't starting in 2008.