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Comment by vixen99 | Hacker News Reader

'Anti-scientific nonsense' suggests a measure of zealotry and someone who thinks they have total command of all the facts. How wonderful to be so sure. Don't you think a somewhat more circumspect tone would be appropriate and more persuasive?

I guess the 'anti-scientific folk' in Switzerland, Australia, Austria, China, India, France, Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg, Greece, Bulgaria, Poland, Italy, and Russia who have banned GMO crops altogether are beyond the pale.

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> I guess the 'anti-scientific folk' in Switzerland, Australia, Austria, China, India, France, Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg, Greece, Bulgaria, Poland, Italy, and Russia who have banned GMO crops altogether are beyond the pale.

Governments banning something doesn't mean it's either a) based on science or b) the right thing to do.

14 governments banning GMs (while not banning vaccines and other scares) suggests that dismissing the anti-GM crowd as 'anti-scientific folk' might be unreasonable.

> dismissing the anti-GM crowd as 'anti-scientific folk' might be unreasonable

As I pointed out in another comment[1] there's a wide gap between "what the public thinks and what scientists know" regarding GMOs[2]. Having an opinion that is the opposite to scientific consensus is by definition anti-scientific.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9451873

[2] http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/theres-a-gap-between-what...

Resorting to authority is a weak argument. There's logic and history as well - like the history of nobody ever got ill from GMOs. Or the logic of, we've massively altered wild foods for millennia and had no issues; why is it different to do it in the lab?

But instead we have populist fear holding sway in all those countries instead.

There are an increasing number of studies listing the harmful effects of glyphosate (Roundup) poisoning. So saying that "nobody ever got ill from GMOs" is patently false.

http://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/15/4/1416

http://sustainablepulse.com/2013/04/27/dr-swanson-gmos-and-r...

Conflating the herbicide with the crop. GMOs are only tangentially involved here. Roundup is used on lots of crops, including non-GMO crops.

Monsanto specifically makes genetically modified seeds (seeds they sell and have patented) to withstand Roundup (an herbicide they sell). That is the antithesis of being tangentially involved.

> nobody ever got ill from GMOs.

See this 1996 study: Identification of a Brazil-nut allergen in transgenic soybeans. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8594427

So, those soybeans were nearly as allergenic as Brazil nuts? What's your point?

Something containing soya isn't labled as containing brazil nuts. Since parent is replying to someone who says "no one ever got ill from eating a GMO" it seems a fair enough, and obvious, point.

This wasn't a case of food becoming toxic due to an unforeseen chemistry stemming from genetic tinkering. They put the albumin in the bean. Albumin has a well-known effect on those sensitive to it. Nothing surprising here. They could just as well have cooked the beans with some albumin.

This is also obvious, to tell the truth.

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