Sure, a lot of good information is out there if you look but I don’t think I’ve ever seen the entirety of every issue raised in one easy to read page. It’d be nice to have something like that to point people to, something that, in one (probably big) page covers everything from patents to Golden Rice to biodiversity to cross pollination to labels, point by point with a boatload of citations so anyone looking can get a real complete view on the topic, instead of addressing individual issues as the come up (and come up again and come up again). I think that would be a good thing to have done, and put under the resources tab for easy access.

I’m not familiar with DDT still affecting raptors, but it is continuing to be detected as a residue on produce according to the USDA residue testing program.

The risk of resistance developing from transgenic crops is about the same as resistance developing to other pest control methods. Given time, you can pretty much bet on resistance developing to any pest control methodology if you don’t take measures to reduce the risk, such as method rotations or providing untreated refugia so that you are not only selecting for resistance.

Thanks for a really interesting blog post and some really good comments. Like most here probably I am trying to hack my way through the swamp of pseudo-science and figure this thing out.

I try to buy organic food where possible, not because of ‘health issues’ or nutritional value more because I am concerned about what broad spectrum pesticides are doing to invertebrate populations and the effects of bioaccumulation on other species (I read the other day that DDT is still affecting eagles in some areas of the states, despite having been banned for many years). I figure that humans pump our bodies full of that much rubbish by choice we don’t really have the right to claim health concerns about this stuff.

My question, and only real concern with GMO, would be the potential to create incredibly resistent invasive species (I am thinking an imported crop with the resiliance of japanese knotweed) and affect invertebrate populations – although I imagine that GMO is better than pesticides for wildlife?

Any input on either of these points?

The fear of contamination is mostly based on what I call “B-movie genetics” that imagines the GE traits spreading quickly and widely until it dominates the gene pool. Instead, the gene frequency of any biotech trait that reaches a conventional or organic crop will change in accordance to a Hardy-Weinberg equilibria. If the trait provides a competitive advantage, it could increase. If it doesn’t provide a competitive advantage, it will remain at the same level and if it provides even a slight disadvantage in the wild, it will decrease. Traits like Bt might provide an advantage, but if the crop is otherwise being treated for Lepidoptera larvae, it could easily be masked. Meanwhile, glyphosate resistance would provide and advantage only in crops treated with that herbicide. Next, since the vast majority of farmers purchase seeds instead of harvesting their own, it would only be an issue if the seed crops are crossed with a transgenic trait.

Next, you would need to show that the transgenic traits are a health risk, which numerous studies have indicated is not the case (see the listing in Genera provided at this site).

Finally, this is really only an issue for the zero tolerance camp who really are not concerned about real risks, but are instead using it as s tool to stop biotech crops from being planted.

Monopolization is a potential issue, but it really has nothing to do with biotechnology. It is simply a classic case of corporate maneuvering that the big capitalists of the 19th century would recognize.

Thanks so much for your help

The GMO-scientist that promotes the use of e.g. genetically modified crops, are nothing less than irresponsible scientists.

I don’t think any scientists are yet GMOs, but I disagree that being in favor of a GMO approach automatically makes them irresponsible.

When a GMO scientist take genes from bacteria and virus, and force these into our food plants, they have no way of knowing how many accidental changes that where made to the plant DNA. How many genes where activated or deactivated in the process. HE DO NOT KNOW!

The same can be said about conventional breeding. Except you can know what genes have changed, there are methods for determining this, such as microarrays, RNA seq, etc.

It is not that long ago when the PRO GMO scientists tried to inform us that one gene equals one trait. Nothing could be more wrong. The human genome consist of something like 25000 genes. And the scientist have now also detected more than 250 000 proteins. Which means that each gene on an average produce 10 proteins.

I think your numbers are off, but I’ll bite. the difference in the number of proteins and the number of genes is alternative splicing – which happens with particular genes that have certain kinds of introns in them. Transgenes used in GE crops have no introns, and thus, no alternative splicing. If you consider for a moment, that all these geneticists with advanced degrees and all this experience with genetics don’t consider basic genetics – maybe, just maybe, that notion is unlikely to be true.
the Dscam gene in drosophila which you speak of is a special case – and again, it requires introns which are removed from transgenes.
Anecdotes about pigs going sterile don’t mean much considering the huge number of animals fed GE crops where this is not observed at all – which means that something else must explain it.
Finally, GE eggplant has not been ‘confirmed’ to be toxic. It would be quite extraordinary if it was.