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Comment by visarga | Hacker News Reader

I read yesterday that GM food is better because it does not need to be covered with pesticides so much. GM plants have built in protection, on purpose, to lower the need for dumping chemicals in the earth.

Now they can make GM fruit and vegetables taste great and look great, they don't have to taste like plastic.

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One of the most popular types of GM crops is the "roundup ready" variety. The purpose of this crop is precisely so they can spray it with roundup.

The problem with GM foods is less to do with health and more to do with public control of food supply. There's a good documentary called Food Inc. which looks at the effect of GM crops on farmers and some of the pretty openly evil tactics of Monsanto to cement their monopoly on supply of seeds.

The "built-in protection" is achieved by the plant producing its own pesticide, in the form of a toxin, so you don't have to spray it. Look for "BT corn". It is argued that it is safer since the dose is lower, but you can't really be sure it is totally harmless either. (And apparently the soil is contaminated by the plant as well)

You're assuming companies like Monsanto haven't made some other undisclosed alterations which are detrimental to health.

Is there any evidence that this has ever been the case? I completely understand that people would be hesitant to embrace GM crops, but I've never really understood the "health" argument. Has anyone actually demonstrated that any GM crops contain chemicals harmful to humans?

no but i guess it takes time to find out, and the studies are often financed by the companies like monsanto them selves.

Which is not to say that they publish ALL these studies, they are not legally bound to.

Shame.

I'm not saying Monsanto has done anything at all, but it would be odd if they didn't tweak their product a little.

The meaning of your comment isn't particularly clear. Monsanto (and other GM crop developers) have tweaked their product. They've played with the genetics to make it roundup resistant or give it other desirable characteristics. They're pretty open about that.

To argue that GM crops have health implications for humans is to argue that GM crops contain harmful chemicals at levels higher than their natural counterparts. As far as I'm aware, there's no evidence pointing towards this. Genetic modifications made to crops are done with a particular purpose in mind, and normally only involve very slight modifications to the existing crop's genetic makup. Given how widely distributed GM crops are and the level of scrutiny applied to the process, any harmful chemicals introduced as a result of the GM process would be noticed.

Biology is more complex than a list of good vs bad chemicals, so you're assertion that GM crops are OK if you can't find any harmful chemicals doesn't hold up.

We really need long term human trials and these aren't being done at all. Ria is trying to achieve this in fruit flies, which is better than nothing.

Just watch the reaction of the media and GM manufacturers to her work, this should be telling ;-)

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