Many GMO studies have financial conflicts of interest

[tater]

LOL, that's hilarious. Suffice it to say it's a men's drug with loads of TV advertising. Also, the warning that everyone laughs and makes jokes about... not a joke. She has to go in sometimes for guys who ignore said warning and don't seek immediate medical attention, and the fix involves very large needles (are they still "needles" when they approach the diameter of a small finger?), and often irreversible damage.

Edited December 18, 2016 by tater

[Camacha]

On 17/12/2016 at 10:52 AM, Shpaget said:

Did anybody ever think otherwise?

Who else could both afford to and have interest in such studies? Well, other than governments, but we all know how slow and inefficient, not to mention corrupt, those can be.

In any area with any interests involved it is common to produce research or even counter research. It seems to be a pretty obvious solution too: if your product or service has some issues, confusing the matter will ensure nothing it done to hurt it. If you pump out a few favourable research papers each year, proving your product is all bad is much harder.

Not that I am saying that this is the case here, by the way. Some GMO practices seem pretty terrible, but the modern world would also be impossible without them.

 

3 hours ago, peadar1987 said:

Haha, I love that the forum automatically replaces the name of a certain branded medication with a warning that the poster is a spambot!

Which one is that?

Aspirin?
I'm a spambot, report me.?
Prinivil?

Edit: found it It has to do with disfunctional body parts that are specific to males.

Edited December 18, 2016 by Camacha

[magnemoe]

3 hours ago, peadar1987 said:

Haha, I love that the forum automatically replaces the name of a certain branded medication with a warning that the poster is a spambot!

Yes its funny, it does so with some other words, like an Swedish software piracy site or the ruling party in Germany during WW2.
I liked how runecraft did it, they replaced swear words letter with *, this made is easy to pull of some very salty language. 
Stupid ******* ****** in ****, why the **** ******* in ********* ****** ******, ***** **** ******** ********* 

[Vanamonde]

Please avoid the talk of politics, intimate relations (whether drug-assisted or not), and post in English without character subsitutions. 

[KSK]

On 12/17/2016 at 6:11 PM, James Kerman said:

My issue is that nature has created a great way to propagate plants for free but a company has profited by disrupting a process that has kept humans and animals fed for at least 200 000 years.

I take your point but consider why that company made a profit. Without descending into cliché, farmers are not known for throwing money at things for no reason. The reason Roundup Ready crops got so popular is purely because they work and they save the farmer enough money to compensate for needing to buy seed each year. 

[Bill Phil]

I'm sure this has already been mentioned:

Most "food" are GMOs, processed or not. Sure, a good amount of that genetic modification is from artificial selection, but that's still genetic modification. Maize cobs were nowhere near their modern size thousands of years ago. It took centuries of selective breeding to get larger cobs.

Even with a conflict of interest, however, there are some conclusions which are accurate. But studies themselves are easy to manipulate to get the the desired conclusion.

[kerbiloid]

The way to avoid GMO usage is synthesize proteins, carbohydrates and lipids directly and then mix them. Using physics instead of chemistry.
But it's still much easier to break molecules apart than to stick them together.

 

Stupid ******* ****** in ****, why the **** ******* in ********* ****** ******, ***** **** ******** ********* 

"It's full of stars!" (c) 

[wumpus]

First, the elephant in the room is the implied claim that if there exists a GMO food that is dangerous, that somehow other GMO foods should be considered hazardous while ignoring "natural hybridization".  They just aren't two independent sets.

As far as conflicts of interest, I'd suspect that all the companies with the fancy lab equipment that needs to be paid doing GMO work are doing the research that disabuses the notion that the human body some reacts differently due to GMO insertion, natural mutation, and direct hybridization.  The researchers without a conflict of interest are almost certainly going to have far less tools to actually study such problems and might be able to study such effects on the remaining "heritage" seed lines (which are some of the more obvious lines to get a publishable paper that might be less pro-GMO).

PS: About the conflict of interest in doctor's offices, while bringing lunch will almost certainly get you in the door, sample drugs are what really influences a prescription.  Nothing like being able to hand the patient a bottle of pills and say "take this and refill it if it works".  Expect patients, doctors, and "big pharma" to *all* push back if congress interferes with that.

[Diche Bach]

On 12/17/2016 at 3:14 PM, magnemoe said:

Its an good reason the M.D. don't get an cut in the drug sale.

And yes organic corn is so natural

 

Imagine how terrified they are going to be when they realize that our ancestors have been "genetically modfiying" both plants AND animals for millenia . . .

It's true that GMOs are insidious. My dachsund has me wrapped around her little paw and gets her way most of the time . . . Insidious.

ADDIT: and as for "financial conflicts of interest" well . . . that problem may be a bit more widespread than you had considered.

Once upon a time, a lot of science was done by hobbyists, or people whose livelihood was not dependent on the frequency with which they publish (Darwin, Mendel, even Pasteur, Pierce, etc.). Granted, this excluded the impoverished from having a voice in science, but lets shelve that point for a second and fast forward to the early 20th century.

"Publish or perish" = publish or don't get paid = financial conflicts of interest. Combine this with pervasive corruption in how "peer-reviewed" literature is conducted, and the fact that careers are based on putatively "establishing answers" not "asking good questions" and you have what we have today: Science which is so fraught with conflicts of interest (financial, ideological, political and otherwise) that it took 30 years of work by thousands of contributors to amass the sort of bullet proof scientific evidence it took to prove legally that tobacco causes cancer.

Of course, everyone already knew it even the scum bags that sell the stuff. But academia stopped being "reliable" sometime after WWII, and it is not hard for a team of well-trained attorneys to convince judges and juries of this when they are being backed by an affluent, desperate, scuzzy industry trying to preserve its role in the market place.

It is an interesting unintended consequence.

Edited December 19, 2016 by Diche Bach
elaborate

[stellargeli]

On 12/17/2016 at 11:26 AM, magnemoe said:

First any farmer can use legacy seeds, this give lower yield so it make more economical sense to buy high yield seed from providers. 
And yes you will get perhaps 0.2% second year growth if you switch grain type, this is pretty easy to see in fields if the previous year plants was higher. 

The safety part is vastly overblown, plants mutates all the time, people has used radiation on seeds to increase the mutation rate in hope on getting something useful, probably the origin of many of the superhero creation stories like spiderman. Now the old shotgun type GM would have an chance of adding weird stuff, it was basically an more targeted version of the radiation, you had to breed the plants true afterwards. 
Modern GM eliminates this. In short its way more likely to get bad stuff out of plants because of random mutations who is an hanger on in the breeding stock than GM itself.
This has never been an serious problem as I know, yes you have the green spots on potatoes. Some plants are poisonous before cooking but they are not major crops. 

An real problem is if you get one version of an plant who is very popular and everybody uses its an huge single point failure if its weak to some disease. 
Probably the main danger of an very successful gm plant. 
Now you could GM an plant into providing useful chemicals. Here it would be very stupid to use common plants who give grain for food then you just as well could use other plants where its no danger the product could get mixed up and breed with others. 

As for the population issue, that part don't need GM, its also mostly solved. Now more efficient plants would probably increase the amount of wilderness as less farmland is needed. 
This is an real effect in the west today, plenty of marginal farmland has returned to forests as its too labor intensive to use. 

On the legacy seeds part. yes a farmer can use legacy seed.  If that farmer were also protected from being sued by companies with patents on their own seeds, whose plants end up crossing with the farmers, then I think that would be a huge move in the right direction.  

As I have said, I personally am not terribly worried about GMO as a health issue directly.  It is all the other issues tied to it that concern me.  I'm NOT against GMO per-se, I'm against the not fixing the why we are becoming dependant upon them and causing a multitude of other problems in the process.  GMO is also solving a multitude of problems as well.  It isn't an all good or all bad thing, but I feel that generally it is well-intentionally misguided in some fundamental ways, and coupled with that, I take issue with the business strategy side of it.  You don't need to invent an organism to consume your poo, you just need to stop pooing on the floor (yeah, gross, but I think you can see what I mean), many of our issues are us pooing on the floor.  I think that there are smarter ways to address several huge issues and GMO is sort of a profitable, here-right-now sort of answer.  Now if you could make a ton of money doing it the smarter way, well, then this would all be a lot easier

 

On 12/17/2016 at 1:28 PM, todofwar said:

Farming practices and GMOs are two completely separate arguments. GMO food might be more or less healthy than non GMO food. The way it was grown may or may not be more ecologically friendly than the non GMO variety. It's sort of like the leaded gas issue, people wanted better octane ratings so chemists came up with leaded gas. That caused other problems, so chemists figured out how to solve those. Science is a tool, it fixes the issues you want it to fix but without providing parameters it may cause unwanted side effects. So, if you tell scientists you want crops that are more effective at taking up fertilizer and use less water, they might be able to GM some crops to fit that criteria but then something else you never mentioned was important might go wrong. So I am all in favor of being careful with GMO technology, but I get frustrated by people who insist against all evidence that GMO foods are inherently bad. And it causes real problems, like when golden rice faced strong resistance because it was a GMO product.

Farming practices and GMO are and are not two different things.  GMO development is informed by farming practices, which then feedback into farming practices optimizing themselves to take advantage of the new GMO.  They are not independent of each other.  I'm not saying they are tied to each other at ALL levels.

GMO is an amazing application of technology, it just needs more wisdom in its application.

Money complicates everything. Always

 

Edited December 20, 2016 by stellargeli

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, stellargeli said:

On the legacy seeds part. yes a farmer can use legacy seed.  If that farmer were also protected from being sued by companies with patents on their own seeds, whose plants end up crossing with the farmers, then I think that would be a huge move in the right direction.  

As I have said, I personally am not terribly worried about GMO as a health issue directly.  It is all the other issues tied to it that concern me.  I'm NOT against GMO per-se, I'm against the not fixing the why we are becoming dependant upon them and causing a multitude of other problems in the process.  GMO is also solving a multitude of problems as well.  It isn't an all good or all bad thing, but I feel that generally it is well-intentionally misguided in some fundamental ways, and coupled with that, I take issue with the business strategy side of it.  You don't need to invent an organism to consume your poo, you just need to stop pooing on the floor (yeah, gross, but I think you can see what I mean), many of our issues are us pooing on the floor.  I think that there are smarter ways to address several huge issues and GMO is sort of a profitable, here-right-now sort of answer.  Now if you could make a ton of money doing it the smarter way, well, then this would all be a lot easier

 

Farming practices and GMO are and are not two different things.  GMO development is informed by farming practices, which then feedback into farming practices optimizing themselves to take advantage of the new GMO.  They are not independent of each other.  I'm not saying they are tied to each other at ALL levels.

GMO is an amazing application of technology, it just needs more wisdom in its application.

Money complicates everything. Always

 

Sound more like an legal issue to me and an very idiotic one. 
Require an very stupid court to not trow the case early and an very short thinking and bean counting seed company. 
Has been cases of this because of hybrid seed so not an GM thing. 

The entire case sounds a bit too stupid to me to be honest, feels like it was more than 80% of the special seeds in the field rater than an tiny faction. Farmer would obviously blame it on cross pollination. 
Now copyright on plants is another can of worms. 

 

[Racescort666]

This has been a very interesting discussion and I'm glad that it hasn't been shut down. Whether you are pro-GMO or anti-GMO, this article makes several very good points on the matter and I suggest everyone read it: http://fafdl.org/gmobb/answering-the-3-most-common-internet-objections-to-gmos/ 

I'm not going to do a tl;dr version but I think I'm going to relate some of the highlights:

1. Most people are concerned about crops that have been engineered rather than selectively bread. Yes, you're still modifying the genome, but direct manipulation of DNA is what scares people. The article goes into much more detail about the mechanisms that make crops more resistant to pests and pesticides/herbicides, which is a specific topic of the anti-GMO crowd, but it basically comes down to biology and chemistry. For example, theobromine is a chemical that is very toxic to certain pets (cats and dogs) but is widely consumed by humans. It's found in high concentrations in chocolate. I like to use it as an example because it's relatable that there are chemicals out there that are more toxic to animals than humans and as long as the safe dosage isn't exceeded, all is fine and good.
2. Regarding patenting of seeds/plants. My first question to this is always: do you think that people should be paid for the work that they do? Patents/copyrights to plant strains are actually quite old. The article I linked does a good job explaining some of the history behind patenting breeds and whatnot, please read it. My question is geared more toward the "you can't patent life" argument. I personally feel that people should be paid for the work they do so I suppose if I run into someone who doesn't, I won't have a good basis for my argument. 
3. Lastly, regarding COI. It's kind of not surprising that there COIs found in studies regarding GMOs. RIC posted some quotes from the OP article that states that they didn't find grounds of COIs for anti-GMO groups. I disagree. Organic growers have been slamming GMO relentlessly and they don't have a conflict of interest? What would you buy instead of GMO? Organic.

[stellargeli]

14 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Sound more like an legal issue to me and an very idiotic one. 
Require an very stupid court to not trow the case early and an very short thinking and bean counting seed company. 

Well, unfortunately, the GMO companies ARE winning against the farmers in court.  And then the farmers have to pay the GMO companies, because their crop is now crossed with the GMO companies' patented seed so in the eyes of the court they are using the patented intellectual property.

58 minutes ago, Racescort666 said:

 

Regarding patenting of seeds/plants. My first question to this is always: do you think that people should be paid for the work that they do? Patents/copyrights to plant strains are actually quite old. The article I linked does a good job explaining some of the history behind patenting breeds and whatnot, please read it. My question is geared more toward the "you can't patent life" argument. I personally feel that people should be paid for the work they do so I suppose if I run into someone who doesn't, I won't have a good basis for my argument.

These companies are also patenting natural non-GMO plants.  Basically, whoever submits the patent first wins when it comes to plants that already exist.  The GMO companies are finding the plants that it will benefit them to have control over and submitting for patents (and being granted patents).  It is a ridiculous and IMO dangerous situation that needs legislative oversight and limits. That is one problem of the many.

It isn't a question of people being paid for their work for me.  I'm ok with that.  The issues are patenting things you did not create, and the fact that you have no control over that patented DNA once it reaches the world outside the lab.  Being sued because someone is not in control of where their patented DNA goes is terribly unjust.  Like most problems, this one isn't simple.

Edited December 20, 2016 by stellargeli

[Red Iron Crown]

32 minutes ago, Racescort666 said:

Lastly, regarding COI. It's kind of not surprising that there COIs found in studies regarding GMOs. RIC posted some quotes from the OP article that states that they didn't find grounds of COIs for anti-GMO groups. I disagree. Organic growers have been slamming GMO relentlessly and they don't have a conflict of interest? What would you buy instead of GMO? Organic.

That's not quite what the quote said, it said they didn't examine anti-GMO CoIs. They made no claims about their existence or frequency.

[stellargeli]

14 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Now copyright on plants is another can of worms. 

 

Copyright is for media.  DNA is patented.  Totally different thing.

On 12/18/2016 at 6:53 PM, Vanamonde said:

Please avoid the talk of politics, intimate relations (whether drug-assisted or not), and post in English without character subsitutions. 

This subject IS political at a level, so not sure how you expect that to happen.

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, stellargeli said:

Copyright is for media.  DNA is patented.  Totally different thing.

This subject IS political at a level, so not sure how you expect that to happen.

I know, and its part of the issue. First is patenting genes, more surreal patenting an hybrid plant who is just breed. would be easier to patent an genetic modification.
Could I take an patent on my tomcat, then sue people who owned cats who got kittens from it?
Probably not as Its rules for it, an friend of mine had an male dog in an chain outside the house, a lady was walking an female dog who ran away and up to his dog, This resulted in puppies and he go an cut in the sale of them. He found it hysterical funny, he had not done anything and his dog had an good time and he got paid. 
 

[Racescort666]

59 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

That's not quite what the quote said, it said they didn't examine anti-GMO CoIs. They made no claims about their existence or frequency.

I read into it too much and the wire crossed with another article I had been reading. My mistake.

1 hour ago, stellargeli said:

Well, unfortunately, the GMO companies ARE winning against the farmers in court.  And then the farmers have to pay the GMO companies, because their crop is now crossed with the GMO companies' patented seed so in the eyes of the court they are using the patented intellectual property.

These companies are also patenting natural non-GMO plants.  Basically, whoever submits the patent first wins when it comes to plants that already exist.  The GMO companies are finding the plants that it will benefit them to have control over and submitting for patents (and being granted patents).  It is a ridiculous and IMO dangerous situation that needs legislative oversight and limits. That is one problem of the many.

It isn't a question of people being paid for their work for me.  I'm ok with that.  The issues are patenting things you did not create, and the fact that you have no control over that patented DNA once it reaches the world outside the lab.  Being sued because someone is not in control of where their patented DNA goes is terribly unjust.  Like most problems, this one isn't simple.

Which plants are patented that are non-GMO?

There are plants that have been patented that are not "GMO" in the traditional sense, i.e. hybrids. Cross breeding is only GMO by the strictest definition and unfortunately we've wandered down the path of the equivocation logical fallacy. That being said, cross breeding requires a lot of work to develop the traits that are desired and have been protected since the 70s with little debate. I assume this is not what we are debating but I figured I'd broach the issue since it's at hand.

In regard to what is even eligible for a patent, it's far more complicated and nuanced than is being described in this thread. Although it's mind numbingly dry, the US Patent Office has very detailed information regarding what can and can't be patented: https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2103.html Granted, this doesn't apply places outside the US but other countries have similar requirements regarding patent application. In general, you can't just claim something is yours without proof that you invented it and proof that it's not something that's widely available to the common public.

Also extremely dry but worth reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc_v_Schmeiser (if you don't want to read the whole thing, just read the first paragraph, then skip down to the "Judgement" section which explains why the court ruled in favor of Monsanto). The link in my other post talks about a few other cases as well.

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, Racescort666 said:

I read into it too much and the wire crossed with another article I had been reading. My mistake.

Which plants are patented that are non-GMO?

There are plants that have been patented that are not "GMO" in the traditional sense, i.e. hybrids. Cross breeding is only GMO by the strictest definition and unfortunately we've wandered down the path of the equivocation logical fallacy. That being said, cross breeding requires a lot of work to develop the traits that are desired and have been protected since the 70s with little debate. I assume this is not what we are debating but I figured I'd broach the issue since it's at hand.

In regard to what is even eligible for a patent, it's far more complicated and nuanced than is being described in this thread. Although it's mind numbingly dry, the US Patent Office has very detailed information regarding what can and can't be patented: https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2103.html Granted, this doesn't apply places outside the US but other countries have similar requirements regarding patent application. In general, you can't just claim something is yours without proof that you invented it and proof that it's not something that's widely available to the common public.

Also extremely dry but worth reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc_v_Schmeiser (if you don't want to read the whole thing, just read the first paragraph, then skip down to the "Judgement" section which explains why the court ruled in favor of Monsanto). The link in my other post talks about a few other cases as well.

Well in the linked case he used Roundup to purify the test field and then planted the pure Roundup resistant seed on 4 km^2 who is an significant area. Had he not purified he should be home free.

The Bowman case is more interesting, it did not look like Bowman purified, and if he used Roundup he would kill off plenty of his crops he simply bought cheap seeds. 
Now the Roundup resistant seeds is an special case, they are easy to purify who is illegal, they also give no benefit if you don't spray with roundup. 
That if you make an seed who is more resistance to a disease, you could not purify it without the disease who would be hard and also illegal for an farmer to try to spray with. 
The gene would spread and become common by it self. 

[Ja3k_Frost]

I would like to point out some potentially nasty effects created by crossing some ideas thrown around earlier. These being the world population, mono-cultures, and GM super crops.

The general consensus I see here is distaste for the shady business practices of some GM companies as well as that GM crops have the potential to increase the efficiency of farming all over the world, especially developing nations.

So I ask, What is too high a price to pay for solving world hunger?

If we use the argument that GM super crops could do this (as opposed to something else, like better global food distribution) I would refuse to support the current companies who are known for suing farmers neighbors who have had their patented seed blown into their field. These are not companies who I would want profiting from a potential super food, likely grown as a mono-culture in more extreme climate areas. What would these areas be? Developing countries who cannot support their population with the arable land they have.

I guess I see a potential for GM companies to create a similar dynamic to the current military industrial complex. No pun intended but that is not a food chain I would want to see Monsanto at the top of.     (ok the pun was intended)

Of course, all this is hypothetical... So far.

 

[Vanamonde]

9 hours ago, stellargeli said:

This subject IS political at a level, so not sure how you expect that to happen.

Not so much expect as require. Political discussions always turn into arguments, and so have been ruled off-limits for this forum (2.2.b). 

[mikegarrison]

On 12/18/2016 at 11:00 PM, KSK said:

I take your point but consider why that company made a profit. Without descending into cliché, farmers are not known for throwing money at things for no reason. The reason Roundup Ready crops got so popular is purely because they work and they save the farmer enough money to compensate for needing to buy seed each year. 

Ah yes, "Roundup Ready".

1. Yes, let's make some genes that resist a common herbicide. Because those genes would never spread to the weeds we are trying to fight, right?
2. Let's make it easy for farmers to spray glyphosate all over the food we eat.

Yeah, it makes things easier for the farmers. But is it good for the rest of us? Man, I love being a lab rat in a long-term toxicity study -- said no one ever.

Edited December 21, 2016 by mikegarrison

[mikegarrison]

10 hours ago, Racescort666 said:

Regarding patenting of seeds/plants. My first question to this is always: do you think that people should be paid for the work that they do? Patents/copyrights to plant strains are actually quite old. The article I linked does a good job explaining some of the history behind patenting breeds and whatnot, please read it. My question is geared more toward the "you can't patent life" argument. I personally feel that people should be paid for the work they do so I suppose if I run into someone who doesn't, I won't have a good basis for my argument.

Ah, but the problem is that patents are NOT supposed to be given to things that are discovered in nature. They are only supposed to be given for novel inventions. Patenting genes is a end-run around the patent rules. The genes are actually developed by nature and found by the researchers. What is patented is the method used to extract it or inject it or concentrate it.

It's pretty clear that patents were not originally intended for this. So it's not as simple as to just moralize that "people should get paid for the work they do". Lots of people get paid for the work they do without also owning the right to keep other people from doing the same work.

[Diche Bach]

48 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

Ah, but the problem is that patents are NOT supposed to be given to things that are discovered in nature. They are only supposed to be given for novel inventions. Patenting genes is a end-run around the patent rules. The genes are actually developed by nature and found by the researchers. What is patented is the method used to extract it or inject it or concentrate it.

It's pretty clear that patents were not originally intended for this. So it's not as simple as to just moralize that "people should get paid for the work they do". Lots of people get paid for the work they do without also owning the right to keep other people from doing the same work.

Here is a patent for a calcium carbide production technique.

https://www.google.com/patents/US2749219

Calcium carbide is used to make acetylene.

Here is what is used:

Quote

The starting material used in this manufacture of calcium carbide consists of a mixture of a solid fuel, mainly composed of carbon, such as coke, charcoal and anthracite, and unslaked lime or a calcareous material (limestone or dolomite). which, by heating can be converted into calcium oxide, the amount of heat and the high temperature required for the formation of the carbide being produced by burning part of the fuel with an oxygen-containing blast.

Are you saying you think this patent (which is about 50 years old) is illegitimate because the materials used in it are " in nature."

Everything starts from nature, and where you draw the line between it and "legitimate creative work" does not seem obvious to me.

Edited December 21, 2016 by Diche Bach
add link

[stellargeli]

1 hour ago, Vanamonde said:

Not so much expect as require. Political discussions always turn into arguments, and so have been ruled off-limits for this forum (2.2.b). 

Gotcha.  Thank you.  I can't say that's a bad thing, lol.

[James Kerman]

9 minutes ago, Diche Bach said:

Everything starts from nature, and where you draw the line between it and "legitimate creative work" does not seem obvious to me.

GMO's are dealing with organisms, that is the distinction.

I understand that farmers have been selectively breeding seed and animals to get the species we have now however no farmer before Monsanto (who is not a farmer but a chemical/bio-science company) developed seeds that will not propagate the next season.

I'm not scared of health effects and I can understand them wanting to make money from improving yield, drought tolerance and disease resistance but their current model makes the world a slave to their products and kills the process that allowed farmers to selectively propagate the very species that sustain humanity today.

Has Monsanto compensated the millions of farmers who got the plants to that level before they messed with it?