Political Crossfire Forums

Oregon counties Jackson and Josephine both banned GMO crops tonight. I am so damn proud of my state ... and with the gay marriage ban going down yesterday... best week in Oregon political history.

Is there reliable scientific evidence that GMO foods are detrimental to our health?

To me, being relatively uneducated about GMOs, this seems akin to the fundies wanting to teach creationism in school. All reliable research indicates that evolution is real, but they refuse to believe the science and instead stick to their guns based upon misguided beliefs.

Please educate me on my GMOs are bad.

There is no evidence that GMOs harm human health.

The concerns I am sympathetic to are issues surrounding cross-pollination, as well as the built-in pesticide production such crops tend to have. Considering that the link between pesticides and the death of bees is now considered to be pretty solid, I can see why people would be hesitant to allow crops that will, inevitably, increase pesticide resistance, thus requiring more and more powerful pesticides. Big Agra likes it though because then you become reliant upon their seed, which they control to a truly absurd degree.

I find most people passionate about this issue lack the proper perspective, and are either too eager to defend GMOs (John Galt), or too eager to disparage them.

I read something about the pesticide issue, and I didn't understand it (which led to my previous post, hoping someone would post information to help me understand).

It seems there are various goals to GMO foods. Higher yields, better ripening properties, more consistency . . . and more resistant to bugs/disease. That's the pesticide issue, right? That companies are developing foods with natural (OK, artificial, but internal) resistance to bugs and disease. So that they don't have to be sprayed with chemicals. Right? How is that a bad thing?

I mean, I can understand how it's bad if you create a tomato that naturally excretes DDT. It's bad for you, and now it's integral to the tomato. But, lots of plants have natural pesticides that are perfectly healthy. If, say, a pepper has a certain pesticide (that is healthy for humans) and you can genetically modify the tomato to have that pesticide, it means that you are using fewer chemical pesticides on that tomato. How is this bad?

I guess that one might say that we're likely to create a bug that is able to evolve to become immune to that certain pesticide, and then we'll have to develop something stronger. But, throughout human history (recent history), humans have been far more effective at killing/stifling species of animals and plants than creating suberbugs and their equivalent. For every MRSA that we've created, there are hundreds of examples of corn leaf blight that we've successfully managed and held at bay.

That's good work by Oregon on marriage equality. My native state of Pennsylvania struck down gay marriage ban yesterday.