Forum:Genetic modification
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I was checking out the page on Truthout. I'm no big fan but some of the page on that could have been written by Conservadia http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Truthout ...for example the thing about people who are "paranoid" about GM crops. This led me to the page on GM in general. GMO foods are banned in Europe & I don't think it's because of paranoia. The page on GMO foods looks like it was written by an industry hack, no mention of the bans in Europe at all. wtf? Looks like RationalWiki is overreacting to the cranks by blindly supporting the use of GM foods, which is an emotional reaction, not a rational one. — Unsigned, by: LMM / talk / contribs
- Could you be a little more specific? For example, why do you think the European GMO ban isn't paranoid? Or how do you think RW over-reacting? MarmotHead (talk) 03:11, 3 July 2014 (UTC)
- Just read the entries on GMO at the link http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Genetic_modification#Controversy . It looks more like the kind of arguments that climate-change deniers make. Is there any doubt that Europe has good reasons for banning GMO food, given that they are the leaders in effective regulation for public health and safety? (In Europe a chemical food additive must be proven to be safe before use, as opposed to the USA which has an amazingly stupid policy that allows chemicals etc to be used in food until they are proven unsafe.)
- That's all fine and dandy how polity X pursues policy Y but since we are dealing with the subject of science, whether or not a thing is accepted by a government as "safe" (whatever that means here) is irrelevant. If anything, the EU has not explicitly banned GMOs in their collective market just the US has not "banned" Volkswagen XL1 - it's just that products failed to meet regulatory requirements for one thing or another. Second, even if the EU had banned GMOs, they certainly didn't do so on any scientific grounds as no one has yet determined a mechanism as to how GMOs do any harm to the environment or animals, much less any evidence of this harm. Space Turbo (talk) 23:10, 7 July 2014 (UTC)
- The "don't ban or regulate anything, no matter how suspect, until it's proven to kill people" ethos is a kind of mindless pseudo-libertarianism gone amok that is not rational(wiki?) Same for mocking people and putting them into the same category with anti-vaccers or anti-science for wanting to know what is inside the food they eat and wanting some assurances that extreme food alteration, whether by chemicals or at the genetic level, be proven safe before being dumped into the food supply. To many people, it's rational to assume that changing food at the genetic level could have unforeseen negative consequences that might take years to find out or might even never be totally understood.LMM (talk) 04:04, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
- That's all fine and dandy how polity X pursues policy Y but since we are dealing with the subject of science, whether or not a thing is accepted by a government as "safe" (whatever that means here) is irrelevant. If anything, the EU has not explicitly banned GMOs in their collective market just the US has not "banned" Volkswagen XL1 - it's just that products failed to meet regulatory requirements for one thing or another. Second, even if the EU had banned GMOs, they certainly didn't do so on any scientific grounds as no one has yet determined a mechanism as to how GMOs do any harm to the environment or animals, much less any evidence of this harm. Space Turbo (talk) 23:10, 7 July 2014 (UTC)
- Just read the entries on GMO at the link http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Genetic_modification#Controversy . It looks more like the kind of arguments that climate-change deniers make. Is there any doubt that Europe has good reasons for banning GMO food, given that they are the leaders in effective regulation for public health and safety? (In Europe a chemical food additive must be proven to be safe before use, as opposed to the USA which has an amazingly stupid policy that allows chemicals etc to be used in food until they are proven unsafe.)