Hey guys, what’s up, it’s me again with another episode of Biomed. Today’s topic: GMOs.
Now, you’ve probably heard a lot about GMOs, both good and bad. They’ve both been flaunted as the key to future human survival, and also denounced as evil “artificial” foods that are somehow lacking in that magical nature spirit energy that organics fans lust after. My personal favorites were a few posts on the Chinese internet about how GMOs were a Japanese plot to destroy the entire population. As for the sources cited, there were none. How utterly surprising.
I’m sure you at least have some knowledge of what GMOs are. At their very heart, they’re simply ordinary organisms that have been genetically modified to be better at what humans need them to be good at, like fruits with more berries, for instance.
So, why do people think they’re bad? Let’s break down the reasons and debunk them one by one, ranging from most sensible to least.
#1: GMOs could give genes to weeds and give them superpowers.
This is definitely a valid concern for traits like pesticide resistance and hardiness, but there’s not much we can do about it for the moment. There are potential solutions, however, like making GMO crops only male/female (I know what you’re going to say, Jurrasic Park fans. DON’T SAY IT.)
#2: GMOs aren’t 100% safe.
Complaints of these types are mainly over concerns about new allergens that may be created. And while that’s a valid concern, the idea that we shouldn’t use GMOs because there’s some danger is complete bullshit. Trains are dangerous. Agriculture is dangerous. Hell, surgery and medicine is dangerous. Did our ancestors stop using any of those things just because of the danger? If anything, GMOs are safer that conventional methods of producing new types of crops because we can easily contain them and control them. And even if there are allergens, they can still be identified through rigorous testing, which all GMOs are subject to. If you’re going to make the case that corporations could ignore regulations and produce harmul GMOs… well, they basically do that for everything else now, does that make technology inherently bad?
#3: GMOs aren’t natural so therefore they are bad.
Fat is natural, poison is often natural, sugar is natural. Does it make any of these things bad? Quite the contrary, GMOs can make us healthier by controlling what goes into our diet. Not like corporations would care, but…
#4: GMOs will somehow poison us and make the population die.
Stop watching so many scifi horror movies.
And there you have it. I hope I’ve dispelled some myths, and I also hope you all learned something today. Do make sure to read more, since I’m going off memory here.
I always thought that the anti-gmo thing was hysteria. I’ve never seen actual evidence they are unhealthy.
My only qualm with GMOs is how multinationals like Monsanto act unethically to protect their “intellectual property” but if we can feed the hungry that’s a worthy trade-off.
What’s “unhealthy” about them is some of them are modified to be resistant to certain poisons we then spray on their field to kill weeds and pests. Most of those poisons aren’t exactly good for the human body. The danger comes not from the plant itself.
This is just one part of the GMO though. Many are just for hardiness, disease resistance, etc. Which can be beneficial.
I don’t mind “artificial” food, tbh.
I want to eat petroleum-derived protein just for the novelty tbh. Shame they don’t make it anymore 😔
lol
Really love these posts, I hope you will keep making them. Even though I already knew that anti-gmo position didn’t make sense, I still learned something new.
The issue with what I think makes GMOs potentially dangerous isn’t the actual GMO plant but that some of these modifications are to be more resistant to certain herbicides and pesticides that they then spray the shit out of them with to kill off the pests and weeds. GMOs for things like disease, drought resistance, hardiness, etc are great.
GMOs to make a plant resistant to some herbicides and pesticides, that you then cover the field with repeatedly… not so good. Most of that shit is basically plastic based and is very hard to wash off because it’s not water miscible. We need to fight less against GMO and more against the use of all these poisons we spray onto the food, land, and water.
I mean, pesticides already inadvertently cause pesticide resistance in weeds and such, but they’re sort of a necessary evil right now as without them, we’d lose a lot of food to pests. GMOs are part of the solution with self-contained insect defenses rather than human made ones.
Yes, I’m just saying, making GMOs for the express purpose of spraying even more poison is one of the only real negatives I see, and that’s not even the plant itself being dangerous, but the poisons we load onto them. As you say, we still use chemicals like those on non-gmo crops too. We need to develop better farming practices that use less ecologically damaging pest controls in conjunction with GMOs that are pest resistant.
Mexico is having issues with a reliance on American GMO corn, but that’s an issue of NAFTA destroying the ability for Mexico to protect its own agricultural sector. Like most technologies, the problems arise due to economic relations and aren’t inherent in the tech.
My personal favorites were a few posts on the Chinese internet about how GMOs were a Japanese plot to destroy the entire population. As for the sources cited, there were none. How utterly surprising.
So weird. China is behind when it comes to seed breeding compared to the US, but it still only imports 3% of its seeds and none of these are genetically modified anyway! They do import a lot of food despite high agricultural productivity, but that’s an issue regardless of how the food is produced. Also, China has its own GM program - they send seeds into space and have cosmic rays mutate them. It’s pretty cool, although it’s not technically GMOs. I think they recently approved the development of “actual” GMOs now though.
They dug up some “proof” about a GMO scientist’s daughter’s boyfriend’s dog’s former owner’s uncle’s cousin’s sister being Japanese or something. And also some shit about a kid eating GMOs and getting diarrhea, and “FoOd DoEsN’t TaStE aS gOoD aNyMoRe” like bro, China uses 5 different types of GM crops and you’ve probably never eaten any of them. And yeah irradiation is a pretty common method for Genemodding, and nobody thinks it’s disturbing lol. Guess it’s normal when it’s out of our control huh?
“the idea that we shouldn’t use GMOs because there’s some danger is complete bullshit. Trains are dangerous.”
Trains are the safest mode of mass transportation actually, and expecting private capitalist corporations with the ability to modify the content of food to make responsible decisions in our interest is as out of touch with reality and idealist as the bootstraps argument.
From modern cars which teeter between plastic/fiber glass and hardened steel to modern beverages which teeter between sugar with flavoring or water with flavoring, it is clear the capitalists cannot make a scientifically sound decision to save their own lives. A beautiful relevant current example of this is the Titanic sub debacle.
When people defend GMOs, EVs, or any other new technology the capitalists have a very high likelihood of fucking up or have already fucked up (in the case of the roll out of EVs in America), this highlights concern for the rate of which many leftists still uncritically forward neoliberal talking points without considering the consequences for our class. Remember, when they fuck things up, it is us who suffer from these actions, not them. They still eat regular food, they’re still driven around in gasoline or diesel cars. It’s us who can’t find an EV charger outside of the city, or get cancer from eating food which has been modified to create the most profit for the capitalist despite safety concerns.
The argument for GMOs (allowing corporations to decide how food is constructed) isn’t far from the argument that Nestle should be able to own the oceans. Food is just as vital as water and corporations who have diametrically opposed interests to our own should not be able to control the substance of these.
Now as far as GMO in general, of course this can be a good thing, just as EVs. As long as our class is the one which implements and controls this, nothing too severe can go wrong.
By this logic, we should be against every single technological advancement. What about vaccines, or medicine in general?
I would argue against such an overview. Especially because it doesn’t paint the entire story. You do have regulatory organs that make sure that what is produced is actually safe. And even if those organs are far from perfect, at least here in EU they are generally pretty good.
Would I be happier if such technologies were controlled by our class, obviously yes, but that is currently impossible. So as long as GMOs are providing tangible benefits (which they currently do) and there is no good reason against them, I don’t agree with your argument.
Ah well if you live in the EU then I would imagine you would see things in such a way. I live in America, and so I presume you can understand my cynicism on that matter.
In the U.S. all regulatory bodies are in an incestuous polycule with one another, with a revolving door policy connecting them all. FDA (Food & Drug) is subservient to the meat industry, the FCC (Federal Communications) is subservient to Verizon, AT&T, et al., the EPA (Environmental Protection) is subservient to all sorts of planet pillaging corpos like the oil industry and mining conglomerates.
Who regulates the regulators? In the U.S., corporations. Who regulates the corporations? Corporations. Fascism, “corporatism”, bourgeoisie-state collaborationism - whatever, it has been honed and perfected in the U.S.
WRT vaccines and medicine generally we need more civilian oversight, and by “civilians” I mean workers and not playboy pharma bro m/billionaires. The same is true for any rapidly advancing technology, I think.
Trust the science, of course! Too bad Amerikan science is payrolled and contained by corporations who hid climate change from the public for over 50 years (let alone the way the state has literally weaponized vaccines not once but multiple times) and on the off chance you find scientists discussing something or offering transparency, I hope you’ve got the money to shell out for their articles.
I agree in principle with your idea. We should not retreat to Ludditism and technophobia. Even the most beneficial seeming technologies have been weaponized by the corpostate, though, and we should remain vigilant.
I am not convinced that placing cellular towers, for instance, all over the fucking country without rhyme or reason when nearly every other nation has enshrined limitations to the amount of EMF /etc. exposure a community can be subjected to at any given time. There exist no such limits in the U.S. and it’s because Verizon et al. own the FCC. Pointing this out often generates accusations against me of Qanon brainwashing.
I do not apologize if it makes me a conspiracist to not trust the U.S. state whatsoever or its corporate arms. Or its “scientific” arms, for that matter. I am a conspiracist, then, and I think we all should strive to remain ruthlessly critical of all that exists, even when it’s uncomfortable.
Fair enough, and I am in no way arguing about not remaining vigilant or just blindly trusting companies. But my issue is that your argument is basically just about US handling of these issues. Which certainly is important, but it does not paint the entire picture.
I think my main problem with your argument is, that if I try to simplify it, it says GMOs/Vaccines/… bad, when in reality what you are saying is these things in US potentially bad. EU regulatory organs are certainly not perfect, but at least in regard to safety they are pretty decent. And I am not knowledgeable enough about such organs in other parts of the world, but I would guess that there are many where the situation is similar.
So I think there is a certain nuance that is missing. But sorry if I misrepresented your point.
I am not convinced that placing cellular towers, for instance, all over the fucking country without rhyme or reason when nearly every other nation has enshrined limitations to the amount of EMF /etc. exposure a community can be subjected to at any given time. There exist no such limits in the U.S. and it’s because Verizon et al. own the FCC. Pointing this out often generates accusations against me of Qanon brainwashing.
Interesting that there are no limits, from what I’ve tried to find, it seems like US is basically the only country with no such limits. But again from what I’ve seen (although to be fair I just read two papers on it, not really thorough research) even the US handling of communication towers doesn’t seem to be dangerous in any way.
I most certainly agree, just wanted to offer some insight to Amerikan “regulation”! I hope and believe they are usually better in EU nations (only one complete regulatory failure comes to mind, though I’m sure there are more). Info on the FCC being a captured agency.
even the US handling of communication towers doesn’t seem to be dangerous in any way.
Yet! There are conflicting reports. That’s what science is for, yeah?
Here’s an instance of corporate “free speech” winning out over public health by a front group for the Amerikan telecom industry, wherein the “Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association” disallowed the city of San Francisco to warn people about potentially hazardous levels of radiation emitted from mobile phones.
The truth matters, of course. It may all be perfectly safe and alarmists are just freaking out over nothing. When you add the shady history up, it paints a rather disturbed picture, though.
only one complete regulatory failure comes to mind, though I’m sure there are more
There are definitely many more, but usually they are things like this. Things leaking into water and things being incorrectly disposed of etc. Which obviously is bad, but it is not the same as food we sell will kill you bad. And it is most often not that the regulations are incorrect or insufficient, but that they are not properly enforced.
Here’s an instance of corporate “free speech” winning out over public health by a front group for the Amerikan telecom industry, wherein the “Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association” disallowed the city of San Francisco to warn people about potentially hazardous levels of radiation emitted from mobile phones.
Obviously that is bad, although for reasons of corporate silencing public safety warning. Personally I am always extremely skeptical about any claims of phones being dangerous, every single time I see it, it uses extremely unscientific sources. But that is beside the point.
Overall I agree, we should be skeptical, but I think there needs to be some nuance.
