[christinew582]

Halfway through this article on Slate. I've always been staunchly against GMOs and pro labeling GMOs, although never overly concerned as I find I can easily avoid most GMOs by not eating packaged food or factory farmed meat. This article, however, is giving me reason to pause. It looks like there may actually be conventional as well as organic food that contains higher levels of pesticides than GMOs and that "our side" seems to have a lot of fear mongering, cherry picking and blind - and perhaps unfounded - mistrust.

I'm on the fence, but anxious to read the rest of the article. Would love hear others' thoughts.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2015/07/are_gmos_safe_yes_the_case_against_them_is_full_of_fraud_lies_and_errors.html

[Nori]

I just wrote to Jeffrey Smith to see what he has to say about the article.  From my own research, however, GMOs are having epigenetic effects on offspring and, in conjunction with Round-up Ready use, are significant disruptors of the gut microbiome, affecting many aspects of human health.

[christinew582]

Thanks, Nori. I'd be interested in hearing what he has to say.

I've done some research on GMOs as well, and found concerning things. But this was done at the beginning of my education at Bauman, and I'm not confident in my critical study reading abilities at that time

[heathervh799]

This is very interesting to me. Like Christine, I have always been against GMOs at face value. Recently I heard a Heather Bruce, Molecular Biologist at UC Berkeley speak on KALX about GMOs. She made the statement that GMOs are a necessary solution to world hunger and we owe it to humanity to utilize this technology. My immediate response to this interview was frustration at the proliferation of popular misconceptions. After looking deeper I found this article from Mother Jones: http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012/06/gmo-bt-pesticides-crops
Said simply, "But just as we do not blame a murder on, say, a knife, Bt technology is not to blame for the ills of industrial agriculture. After all, knives are pretty handy in the kitchen when we use them properly".
While big agriculture is dominating the world market for capital generation, it is a good point to consider the positive ways in which GMOs might be positive if utilized from a true humanitarian effort.
Here is a great quote by contemporary philosopher, Erich Fromm from his book The Revolution of Hope: Toward A Humanized Technology (1969)
"How did it happen? How did man, at the very height of his victory over nature, become the prisoner of his own creation and in serious danger of destroying himself? In the search for scientific truth, man came across knowledge that he could use for the domination of nature. He had tremendous success. But in the one-sided emphasis on technique and material consumption, man lost touch with himself, with life. Having lost religious faith and the humanistic values bound up with it, he concentrated on technical and material values and lost the capacity for deep emotional experiences, for the joy and sadness that accompany them. The machine he built became so powerful that it developed its own program, which now determines man’s own thinking".
https://books.google.com/books?id=SVdy0rtho0kC&pg=PA13&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=4#v=onepage&q&f=false

[Nori]

I have not heard from Jeffrey Smith, alas.