You can read about the reason I’m asking this in the spoiler. TLDR I’m just wondering if there’s some debunking I can do since western media is oh-so-not-trustworthy
spoiler
I’m in some IRL debate (Well, online but in a closed chat) with some libs. They are talking about the right-wingers saying Taylor swift is being paid off to spread democratic votes, whatever, hollyweird are all dems, no conspiracy needed.
I mentioned that we need to actually, you know, actively keep conspiracy theories from spreading, and my liberal friend is gishgaloping a bit, but I’ll bite since they are sincere, even if wrong.
They came back with “Well china has conspiracy theories”, which I didn’t mention china, I didn’t mention anything about censorship, it’s just gishgalloping like I said, but anyway…
Any truth to this one? I mean being anti-gmo is not rare, so I’m not surprised if it was true. I don’t have a good handle on high quality china news (And cannot read their sites myself, even with translators it’s a slow experience).
Edit: Oops, I had to go AFK after posting this and didn’t get to clarify as the comments were all being. I meant do Chinese people broadly believe in the conspiracy theories around GMOs such as causing cancer or making your DNA change or something like that. Of course GMOs are complicated science and are a tool used by capitalists to patentize (did I make up that word? Lol) the food industry, which is a natural science and typically difficult to patent.
the idea of GMO, and to a side note, gene editing, revolves around the idea that although its possible to modify a portion of DNA to get a desirable trait, it may have adverse effects on other traits, as a piece of DNA is not 1 to 1 with how its expressed. a single change may affect several expressions, and its a game of how severe those extraneous changes are.
take for example strawberries. natural strawberries to a lot of people are inedible/non desirable, and its only because of GMO that brought it to a state where its desirable.
the part of GMO being used as a way to control people is silly, but the idea of a GMO being potentially dangerous is a completely reasonable statement to make, as long as its backed up with specific examples, as blanket dangering GMO would be like blanket statement cooking, as charing food is confirmed to be directly related to cancer, leading to a (terrible) idea to not cook food.
completely fair to be skeptical about a new GMO product, but for older strains thats have been in the market for decades, would be sort of silly to be afraid of those, given the averge global age of death is much higher than it was a century ago
I’d almost flip that: GMOs are no more dangerous than naturally edited genes (by cross-breeding) but it’s definitely being used as a means of controlling people, societies, and food-systems by selling what should be a non-commodity (heirloom seeds) creating demand for patented and proprietary goods, and making us dependent on their product.
definitely be wary of economic dependancies, but that’s mostly not impossible given that agriculture export is a fairly competitive field, and Brazil has really stepped up in the past few years, In particular to China, even though they are a major producer, they still import a lot, and that’s a china specific problem they have to hurdle. but to find different sources for produce is (mostly) competitive in the current global market.
It’s only when you have a certain crop thats hyper regionalistic and high in demand where it actually becomes a problem for dependencies sake. e.g Alfalfa (typically used as food for cattle) tends to only grow in regions near deserts.
Oh no, I was afk after posting this and now I have to clarify. I was wondering if it was something that was heavily believed in China, not necessarily about the science itself.
More specifically about the whole conspiracy theories around eating GMO foods changes your DNA or has a chance of giving you cancer or something. Of course, GMOs are a very complicated science with a lot of risk involved, but that’s not what I meant.