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Comment by ddispaltro | Hacker News Reader

Isn't the point of GMO to reduce reliance on pesticides?

Both methods are used. I recall (but am probably wrong out of date)

- Monsanto's "roundup ready" line of breeds is resistant to their pesticide, with the idea that nothing else will be.

- GMO crops on average (world-wide? nation-wide?) are sprayed with less pesticides, implying "roundup ready" as an anomaly.

The takeaway is GM is a tool. I'm 100% for it, but like most tools it can be used for good or ill. Let's be careful, without implying the risks here are anything special compared to other powerful technology.

Assuming you mean herbicides as well as pesticides the answer is sometimes yes, sometimes no. The classic example of a GMO crop is "Roundup Ready" corn, developed by Monsanto. It makes the plant resistant to glyphosate, so the crop can be sprayed, killing weeds &etc. without killing the corn.

I guess as a lay person, I meant both. Makes sense, so does that effectively reduce the volume of pesticides/herbicides, or does it just allow you to lay it on with less precision?

I had to look it up to check what I was about to say: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_crops#Gly...

In the case of roundup ready crops, it sounds like it's both more effective as an herbicide and less toxic. The Wikipedia page didn't say whether that was toxicity towards humans. So in that sense roundup ready crops seem to be net better for the consumer anyway.

Jury seems to be still out on whether roundup is actually harmful, leaning on the no side at least according to the Wikipedia article on Glyphosate.

For many crops the GMO component is designed to resist biocides.

If you're interested in the topic, I'd encourage you to read about the most common GMO crops encountered by consumers, the primary biocides used on those crops, and then read in vivo studies on those biocides.

Do your own research and be discerning about the sources and data, there is an immense amount of astroturfing on the subject matter.

http://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-0...

https://people.csail.mit.edu/seneff/2016/Glyphosate_V_glycin...

http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/iarcnews/pdf/MonographVol...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=glyphosate

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=2,4-d

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carey-gillam/tests-show-monsan...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jul/17/pesticid...

Of course it could all be wrong, biocides could be super healthy and amazingly great for human consumption.

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