GMO is relatively new. We know a thimbleful of information about nutrition and health generally. We know even less than that about what more recent inventions do to the human body because there is simply less of a track record and time span in which to determine meaningful data and conclusions.
Saying "We don't know what this new thing does to our health" in no way romanticizes anything. It doesn't even implicitly suggest we know a heckuva a whole lot about the old thing. But the old thing is probably not going to randomly open up some metaphorical worm hole to some bizarre outcome and maybe the new thing will and we just haven't had enough of a track record to notice yet.
Thalidomide was briefly prescribed to pregnant women for nausea until they began having babies missing limbs because of it.
I'm not fear mongering. I live with a genetic disorder. I've paid lots of attention to food chemistry over the past nearly two decades since getting a proper diagnosis.
I'm done with this discussion. This is the second comment accusing me of spreading fear. It's a ridiculous accusation and long experience tells me it will make zero difference how I reply. It only gets uglier from here.
One is a semi-random process where an unknown (but large!) number of genes are modified in the hopes of getting a few desired good traits to express themselves.
The other is a targeted change to the smallest number of genes to get a single desired good trait to be expressed.
Imagine you are going in for surgery to remove a lump, and the doctor tells you there are two options, he can cut out 20 lumps of flesh, and good chance he'll get the one you want removed, or he can remove just the lump that is causing a problem.
Which of the two options would you choose?
GMO is the later. Traditional breeding is the former.
If people want to criticize WHAT modification was done via GMO, great! Lots of good debate there, maybe inserting some particular gene is a bad idea. But let's have that discussion, not "all GMO is bad!"
Because "all GMO is bad" is nonsensical. GMO isn't some process that turns food into poison. It just changes it, in a more controlled way than breeding changes it.
That's an extremely gross misinterpretation of my point which boils down to "The effects may be different on different populations due to variables you are overlooking, such as (for example) they could be eating fundamentally different plants that happen to go by the same name."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26235356
The degree to which people actively twist my comments to railroad me with their bizarre garbage makes it enormously difficult to participate here in good faith at all. I should probably go get some other hobby and stop wasting my time on a bunch of people hellbent on trying to make me look like a nutter no matter how mild and reasonable a point I am trying to make.
In practice the difference is generally not that significant, but there is some increase in risks.
Personally, I would prefer a different label for new GMO foods. Presumably, the odds of finding an undiscovered issue drops over time. So using a different label for the first 20 years is reasonably appropriate. Plenty of people are going to take slightly higher risks, so they can benefit from and thus test new cultivars.
Except for random mutations, which are, well, random changes to DNA.
There is a reason the nightshade family[1] is so varied.
So it’s not just a question of random chance adding something harmful at this point, but also malicious actors. Someone could easily decide to try and reduce the human population by reducing fertility or whatnot and new GMO crops aren’t tested for such things.
Of course /nothing/ meets the goal posts of "arbitrary" including state of the art genetic modification.
As I said it’s probably not that meaningful of a difference, but malicious actors have serious tools to work with here not just random changes.
> That's a little like saying "There's zero difference between traditional animal husbandry and cloning."
This is a very interesting topic, actually! I can't comment on animal husbandry (much less dolly style cloning), but cutting (cloning) is a very common way to propagate crops, and has been done for longer than we care to know. It's also the natural way in which some plants and fungi propagate. There are many benefits to cloning, but there are also downsides: when disease affects one, it affects all your clones. You can protect against that by seed propagation, crossing, etc, but then you have a less predictable and consistent crop, which in the modern market is sometimes frowned upon.
I know most farmers will pick consistency over variety any time of the day because they have to make a living, and most people won't buy greenish tomatoes, yellow or green oranges, white artichokes, etc. People also expect their fruits and veggies to taste as expected, so it's difficult to sell mixed variants.
Note: I should also say I'm from a family of farmers so I'm probably biased towards defending our practices -- in our case we grow citruses, stone fruits, artichokes, aubergines, melons, etc. (not big-agro scale, think more cooperatives in rural Spain), and I do have my personal opinions on traditional techniques vs. modern vs. big-ag, use of pesticides, overstressing the soils, etc. I'm also from an area that has suffered bad droughts and deforestation over generations so I'm also not one to romanticize about traditional farming methods and some traditional attitudes. Take whatever I say with a pinch or more of salt!
My initial comment was just to make the point "Maybe you can't use Asians and their experiences as a rebuttal for some American study because maybe it's an apples to oranges comparison."
I could have said that without mentioning GMO. It's not necessarily hugely pertinent to the point.
But everyone is latching on to that detail and this has gotten enormously whackadoodle.
I stand by my original point. I even stand by everything else I've said here.
But other people reacting like I'm some strident anti GMO nutter for mildly observing that "GMO plants may be fundamentally different from non GMO plants" is not something I have any desire to engage with further.
That's a little like saying "There's zero difference between traditional animal husbandry and cloning."
Sorry, I think there is a meaningful distinction between traditional human intervention in plant varieties and the more recent intervention called GMO. Most of the world seems to agree that there is a distinction, enough so that we invented new language for what it is we are doing.
Edit in response to your edit:
But I wouldn't just blindly lump GMO in the same group just because it's also modern.
That's an ugly thing to say and it's not far from a personal attack. There's no blindness on my part. I'm not lumping anything in just because it's modern.
I have a genetic disorder and pay enormous attention to the details of my diet because of it. I react poorly to soy products. Research and experience suggest that my firsthand negative experiences with soy may be related to the fact that most soy in the US is GMO.
My views here have nothing at all to do with unfounded assumptions, ridiculous neurotic views of "modern" things or anything of the sort.