Talk:Seeds of Death

What do the effects of pesticides and herbicides have to do with GMOs?
So many irrelevant points blaming GMOs/biotech for pesticide and herbicide effects ex. on bees, tolerant weeds, thicker weeds... how are these people scientists? Didn't they take first year science in uni and learn about dependent vs. independent variables, correlations vs. cause and effect? These effects/causes can occur independent from GMOs; they have in the past. What's even more incredible is the claims are made with no specific cases, for ex. we see a direct correlation between when GMOs consisted of over 50% of American crops and an increase in the rate of tolerant weeds, causing faster and more frequent transfers in insufficiently tested chems being used. Are these "scientists" part of the generations that were able to pull their careers and credentials out of a hat? Vested interests? I think only the USA has opportunities for almost anyone to make money on almost anything. What a shame.

45:59
I'm not supporting the anti-roundup point, because as I already stated, it's irrelevant to the GMO debate. My comment is that I agree that the topic of labor saving should NOT be a pro-GMO point. Considering one family can own 50 tractors that do 50 different things and rape the hell out of 10,000 acres every year, at the touch of a few buttons and levers by one farmer, I don't think we need to be worrying about saving labor. This is a weak point. Machine tech has helped labor enough. Human, animal, plant and overall environmental health should be the main priorities of pro-GMO scientists.

In my opinion, Poverty relief IS a valid advantage of GMOs, though health and safety for the World is my priority over being the "bread basket" for a fraction of the world still in desperate need. Many would also argue the fear of a forced dependence that might grow, on 'generous' nations like the US. Thus, the same people would also argue that, in conclusion, as with many other topics, priority should be given to economic aid through for ex., investing in the country's biotech industry, helping to assist with better trade agreements etc. so as to help countries develop and become more self-sufficient versus dependent upon another country's rations, generosity etc. If a country doesn't have economic stability, suitable climate etc., cultivating isn't the only shortfall... importing food isn't free. Nothing is free unless you're making it for yourself. We have major problems if we start putting our "responsibility to feed poor people" ahead of our responsibility for ethics -human, animal, plant and overall environmental health. These are the most relevant topics to me in the debate. Feeding in to other topics can find a pro-GMOer in stinky water.

As someone who believes in balance and sustainable living, "more people farming" is a very strong point, though it doesn't do much for abominating GMOs because of chemicals. Chemicals are always going to be needed, and as cited in the review, some or most? organic farming requires harsher chemicals.

72:53
I think it would have been better if she said it's pro-democracy to have labels. That seems to be what she meant. When the majority of us (consumers) want it, a true democratic government will listen. I'm not fully supporting the "GMO Product" label, but I do support democracy, I do support more transparency of regulatory bodies, as well as a greater onus on regulatory bodies to better educate consumers using OUR TAX DOLLARS. As I said in my previous comment, GMO products should maybe have a comparison ratio for consumers to know how many GMO apples they have to buy/eat to obtain the traditional nutritional equivalent. BETTER EDUCATED consumers wouldn't stop buying GMOs altogether, rather, they would buy (more or less) depending on the nutritional comparison between GMO and ancestor products. This is not about anything other than our right to know how our food composition has been changed, our right to watch our health, the FDA's/Health Canada's obligation and responsibility to our health, and fair/honest business.

Most GMOs may be 1:1... though you can't tell me that a GMO mushroom or tomato packs the same vitamins as their unmodified predecessors. I get tricked in to buying GMO oranges that taste like paper all the time. That's not only a rip-off, it's misleading consumers to an unhealthy diet. Misleading us in to a crappy cell phone is one thing. Health and safety are another.

Just better educating consumers alone would minimize the impact of labeling. One lesson to Americans on the irrelevance of herbicides and pesticides to GMO health would significantly skew the average perception. A lesson on correlation vs. causation may also have a massive impact. But I don't know why she's trying to appeal to corporations/gmo companies by saying "capitalism." Capitalism is about making CAPITAL, it allows a lot of choice (or freedom) for businesses, but they would obv choose NOT to label their products... so I wouldn't say it's pro-capitalist. And Capitalism is NOT about choice or quality or rights or entitlements of consumers or workers. Our health and safety doesn't need to appeal to the pursuit of capital; rather, in a "democratic society," the pursuit of capital needs to appeal to our health and safety as consumers -yet I haven't seen any votes or government surveys on labelling... not too sure our vote counts on this topic. This has nothing to do with capitalism. The kind of appeal being proposed by the labeling campaign (right to know) would only become possible in a true Democracy.

My big question to this labeling issue is: do biotech seniors eat all their products on a daily basis? Do they eat it alongside supplements or multi-vitamins???? If so, why is it fair that they know to do this when the average consumer does not.

The table of contents is pretty long
Just saying. 141.134.75.236 (talk) 00:48, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
 * TOC-limited it. Better? Herr FuzzyKatzenPotato (talk/stalk) 01:03, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Now it's too short. :/ 141.134.75.236 (talk) 01:04, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Now? FrothyCatPotato (talk/stalk) 01:31, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Ah, almost. Lemme try something. 141.134.75.236 (talk) 01:47, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Should be okay now. ;) 141.134.75.236 (talk) 02:05, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Misused references and unsupported/debatable statements all over the page.
I checked a few statements (see my edits) and I think that this page has serious issues. The majority of the claims are not referenced, and the few references are often misused. Many of the claims are therefore possibly (if not likely) wrong. I would advice deleting the entire page and starting from scratch. Cheers, 18.62.30.62 (talk) 01:34, 19 July 2015 (UTC)
 * The film is one giant Gish Gallop. When dealing with those, it's up to the person doing the galloping to cite everything, otherwise the tactic "works" in that the other side has to waste their time refuting a bunch of PRATTs.  YOU do the sourcing. CorruptUser (talk) 04:38, 19 July 2015 (UTC)


 * I disagree with 18.62.30.62. I think I have referenced in full every important claim, and many less-important ones. It is true that some less-important or minor claims were not referenced, but they are all ones that should not be difficult to verify and are minor enough to justify omitting the reference. This is not Wikipedia, this site is more laid-back, and I believe that I have supported this article with far more quality references than the typical rationalwiki article.
 * I drew upon both a comprehensive personal collection of evidence and the results of countless hours of research when writing this article, so I'm pretty confident that as of Summer/Fall 2013 (when I wrote the original version of article -- it took me about 2.5 months from start to finish), the article was well-supported and the evidence was as current as possible. There are numerous sources used during my research that I could have included, but I didn't want to spend the incredible amount of time required to reference every little detail in the article with the maximum level of citations when said details were easily verifiable and should not be contested. Do I really need to reference that the LD50 of roundup is typically ~5000 mg/kg?
 * Do I need to individually cite every little claim in the section on Schmeiser? That section, by the way, required a LOT of research, which is not obvious at all in the resulting text. I linked 2002 FCA 309, which alone covers most of the section, and gives you a huge amount of details on the case, many of which I omitted to provide a less-bloated summary of the case. And before you make the obvious argument -- no, those omissions did not bias the case, don't even fucking try that argument, if I had decided to include more of those details it would have just made Schmeiser look even worse. Related court documents, which can be easily be procured, were helpful in clarifying some details, but were not cited directly. Yes, I probably should have cited that, and the other more general sources used to confirm and clarify, but I was wading through literally dozens of sources, many of them inaccurate and biased to the point of outright propaganda, and citing every one of them irregardless of how much it duplicated other sources or how minor the evidence in it was did not seem justified in this situation. The Star Phoenix source is one of the most important citations used, and so I cited it directly. The explanations and claims are all verifiable either directly via the cited sources, via associated court documents, or via a broad number of more general sources.
 * There's a lot of other stuff that I'm sure you would argue needs citations, but I doubt the vast majority of them truly need citations. Once again, this is not Wikipedia, I have exceeded the level of evidence typical for rationalwiki, I have used high-quality and inline citations... This is immensely better than most anti-GMO content out there, and even more so compared to the film being refuted, which rarely gives you even a hint of a citation. Much of my refutation is composed of arguments that should not require supporting citations. I don't need to prove that people aren't growing beaks after eating corn. I don't need to prove that the argument demonstrates a severe lack of understanding of how evolution or digestion works. I don't need to support my claim that there are no records of people in history developing permanent gene changes from consuming GMOs. The same goes for claiming that "superweed" and "superbug" are misleading. The rBST section does not really need more references than it already has, but I probably should have cited the primary AcademicsReview article used for that -- it's hard to keep track of everything at this scale, I had to go through 136 claims, there are 185+ references cited (some multiple times), I probably left out a few others. Still, I am making claims that for the most part do not need references. If I had written this article on Wikipedia (which I would not do because this isn't the kind of content that Wikipedia is intended for), I would have followed their guidelines, written it less casually/informally, etc. But I didn't write it on Wikipedia. I've skimmed most of the refutation to look for anything that obviously needs a reference, and none of it deserves an immediate citation (even the AcademicsReview part), and pretty much all of it doesn't really deserve a citation at all given the context. Is much of it stuff that I would have cited if this was Wikipedia? Yes. Does it deserve the immense additional time investment if you're considering the context, sheer number of sources, scale of the article, and incredibly-pathetic level of referencing in the source? No. It took me 2.5 months to get the article into good enough shape to make it public. I spent far more time researching than I did on writing refutations or transcribing the video. I'm confident in the quality of this article. It's not perfect, but it's very very good. It has also been edited to some extent by a number of additional users (myself included) after being moved to the main namespace, which has improved it even more in a variety of ways.
 * Now, onto your next claim. The few references are often misused? First off, I cited one hundred and eighty-fucking-seven unique references. It's not "few" at all, especially considering how many references and even entire sections apply to multiple individual claims. Additionally, much of my commentary did not need references, as explained above. Some of my commentary is entirely based on arguments and explanations that nobody would claim needs references -- common sense does not need a citation. Well, a large number of people may well be too stupid to comprehend even the somewhat-dumbed-down content I've written, but that's just sad, because you really don't need much knowledge or intelligence at all to comprehend this. I even went and summarized some of the references I used in a high level of detail to precisely explain the situation, with the claim at 30:41 being one good example of this.
 * Again, much of the research I did is not reflected in the final result. I'm sure that I could add a huge number of additional citations to satisfy you, but it's not justifiable, at least not to the extent needed to make adding them important.
 * And misused references? Where? Sure, I've used broad references, and did not cite every single little claim, but which ones were misused? Your edits don't seem justified to me, maybe in part, but certainly not as-is. I see a lot of points where I could expand the refutations and cite some newer references, and a lot of points where I could add unimportant additional citations, but I haven't seen any obvious examples of misuse, maybe some rough stuff and semi-outdated stuff, but none of that is bad enough to bother fixing at the moment, and I doubt many of those fixes would result in a weaker argument or fewer sources, especially after adding newer references and improving/expanding my arguments. I wrote this in 2013, it's 2015 now, I'm even better at doing this stuff now, I have much more experience, I have access to a ton of really high quality scientific journals that I did not have back then, and more. But I can't justify the amount of time revising and expanding the entire article would take when it's already quite good and I have many other more urgent things to do. I quite certainly do not support deleting this page and starting from scratch, that's utterly insane to suggest, you're just trying to wipe out the inconvenient evidence, throw it down the memory hole... Gotta suppress the truth, I'd bet you'd love to do the same to the scientific literature, or to Biofortified...
 * But hey, point out issues here, I'll try to keep track of this page and respond to you. I'd rather not waste the time on revising and expanding the article, but if I have to I will throw away countless hours on citing things, rewriting stuff, and expanding the article. The reason I spent 2.5 months and countless hours on this in the first place is because I got pissed enough enough at the idiocy in the film and decided to prove my point in excruciating detail. I'm already tempted to repeat history, but don't want to waste that much time right now. It'd be better for both of us if we just discuss specific examples. Firemylasers (talk) 05:50, 19 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Here's some commentary on your diffs:


 * Semi-justified in part, but even less justified than I initially thought due to removing a lot of important info/refs. As-is, absolute shit quality edit bordering on vandalism.


 * Outright vandalism. The argument is justified.


 * Outright vandalism. A clear attempt to distort the facts by shoving things down a memory hole. Suppressing this section in particular is extremely infuriating to me.


 * Outright vandalism. Another attempt to distort the facts by shoving things down a memory hole.


 * Pretty much just vandalism. Also really pisses me off, especially because of what was removed -- again, this is yet another blatant attempt to distort the facts by shoving things down a memory hole.
 * In conclusion, I drastically screwed up my initial assessment of your intent and edits, assuming that you were reasonable when it's clear now that you're just trying to vandalize the article. Firemylasers (talk) 06:10, 19 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Okay, hopefully this will be my last addition for now. I looked at the prior edits and your reasons given. First of all, let's throw your edits on Schmeiser's section in here:


 * So! This is utter bullshit. Yet another fucking memory hole. This section is one of my best, so I'm pretty mad at this blatant attempt to censor it. You neutered the intro, then deleted close to two-thirds of the original paragraph, removing an extremely important referenced sentence that took me a LOT of time to dig up. You then wiped out pretty much all of the other two paragraphs. The stuff you removed is crucial. It is a extremely clear explanation of just how fucking ridiculous Schmeiser's lies were. It is one of the only accounts out there that gives you an accurate summary of the case -- the internet is filled with biased accounts of the trial, and even the various accurate accounts are almost always unclear and overly-brief. Instead of copping out with a brief reference, I summarized crucial details from the trial itself that tells you why exactly he's lying, why his claims are so implausible, why Monsanto won the case, why the evidence against Schmeiser was so strong, etc. It's a very clear refutation. And it's pretty concise too. So why is it being removed?
 * I admit that I could have cited more sources, but I maintain my stance that the amount cited was more than enough for RationalWiki, that the references directly or indirectly cover the majority of my claims anyways, and I do not think that any of my claims were unjustified or unsupported.
 * In short, this is a disgusting attempt at censorship that further proves the conclusion above.
 * Now, onwards to the edit info. You claimed that entire sections were unsupported by references. I disagree strongly. Let's go line-by-line. Schmeiser is already covered, let's start with the FDA bits. Format is removed line | comments. Non-removed lines are not included.


 * Next, DDT, and I'm switching to grouping sentences to a limited extent to make this a bit shorter and more readable:


 * Now, I'm not going to go over the "independent studies" edit as that requires zero explanation, and I think the first single-paragraph removal of the Monsanto/PCB stuff is clear enough to not bother with, so I'll go over the huge three-paragraph Agent Orange section. Not quite line-by-line, as I'll group it like above, maybe more so because of the length:


 * In summary, your flimsy excuses for your attempts to censor the article shatter easily when examined closely. Pathetic. Firemylasers (talk) 07:36, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

Monkey wrenches
Do 'monkeys' (and apes) use wrenches? If they are shown how to use them/put into a situation where they can tach themselves to do so, is this not 'interfering with nature'? Anna Livia (talk) 18:51, 4 February 2022 (UTC)