User _fs makes the excellent point that

The only fear of GMOs that I have is knowing that certain crops have been genetically modified to not die when they are caked in pesticide. Good for plants, bad for me, as I have not been genetically modified to eat crops with layers of pesticide on them.

Strangely, this post was downvoted. Even more strangely a response to _fs's post by goodreter, that simply provided support in the form of a link for _fs's point about secondary negative effects was quickly downvoted.

As _fs alludes to, even if GMO crops have no negative effects on organisms that eat them, there are a lot of potential negative externalities that need to be considered, monocultures in food production, the unprecedented control of a food supply that patented genomes give to individual corporations, unforeseen interaction between a gmo and the surrounding ecological systems, etc. etc.

With _fs's and goodreter's posts, both of which are perfectly reasonable, being downvoted as well as the other posts downvoted in this thread(which all seem to share the characteristic of being somewhat skeptical of gmo) I'm not entirely sure there aren't monsanto shills hovering on this thread.

Possibly because the more common situation is that a crop is GMd to not need pesticides. Like the papaya in the article.

"more common situation is that a crop is GMd to not need pesticides"

Is that based on research you've done, or are you just going with your gut?

This[0] article explains how "Roundup-ready corn and soybeans"(roundup is an herbicide) has caused the near disappearance of milkweed and because of that the near disappearance of Monarch Butterflies which need the milkweed to survive. What does "roundup ready" mean? It means the corn and soybeans can tolerate the herbicide, so the fields are coated with it indiscriminately. I'd wager that acres of corn and soybeans planted exceeds acres of papaya by a fair bit.

This[1] well-sourced[2] article describes "Herbicide and Insecticide Use on GMO Crops" as "Skyrocketing."

This[3] article describes how corn crops that are gm'd to be resistant to pests have actually become susceptible to pests because "nature will find a way." This has resulted in even more use and need of pesticides for these crops, a vicious cycle.

By the way the crops that are modified to "not need pesticides," still actually need and use pesticides. The pesticides are just incorporated at the gene level, instead of after they've already been planted. For example, the use of systemic insecticides, which coat GMO corn and soy seeds and are incorporated and expressed inside the entire plant, has skyrocketed in the last ten years. This includes use of neonicotinoids (neonics) which are extremely powerful neurotoxins that contaminate our food and water and destroy non-target pollinators and wildlife such as bees, butterflies and birds. In fact, two neonics in widespread use in the U.S. are currently banned in the EU because of their suspected link to Colony Collapse Disorder in bees.[1][4]

And the roundup ready type gm is one of the main things I've heard touted about gm over the years, I'm not sure where you're getting your information.

Over 99% of GMO acreage is engineered by chemical companies to tolerate heavy herbicide (glyphosate) use and/or produce insecticide (Bt) in every cell of every plant over the entire growing season. The result is massive selection pressure that has rapidly created pest resistance--the opposite of integrated pest management where judicious use of chemical controls is applied only as necessary. Predictably, just like overuse of antibiotics in confined factory farms has created resistant "supergerms" leading to animals being overdosed with ever more powerful antibiotics, we now have huge swaths of the country infested with "superweeds" and "superbugs" resistant to glyphosate and Bt, meaning more volume of more toxic pesticides are being applied.[1]

[0]http://blog.nature.org/science/2013/04/04/the-monarch-butter...

[1]http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-bronner/herbicide-insect...

[2]http://static.ewg.org/agmag/pdfs/pesticide_use_on_geneticall...

[3]http://www.wsj.com/articles/limits-sought-on-gmo-corn-as-pes...

[4]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neonicotinoid#Toxicity

The article's point is that generalizations about GMd foods are ignorant and each case needs to be evaluated on it's own merits and dangers.

It's very well sourced (though it does occasionally fall prey into cherry picking) to show cases of both positive impacts like GMO Papaya and Golden Rice and negative like increased RoundUp usage.

Would be great if public perception adopted this skepticism and questioned practices that aren't discussed for labeling like widespread Bt spray usage vs the GMO included one.

First of all, I don't think anyone has a serious objections to GMOs that are modified to increase output or resist natural predators

The only fear of GMOs that I have is knowing that certain crops have been genetically modified to not die when they are caked in pesticide. Good for plants, bad for me, as I have not been genetically modified to eat crops with layers of pesticide on them.

First unintended victim may be the monarch butterfly. http://blog.nature.org/science/2013/04/04/the-monarch-butter...

GMOs are to liberals what Global Warming is to conservatives.

It's quite sad, really.

How is that? The way I see it, liberals consider both GMOs and global warming large problems that must be dealt with or fixed. Conservatives tend to not agree with the assessment that either is really a legitimate problem.

I think it was a comparison of views.

Science says global warming is a problem, conservatives ignore that and say that science is wrong because {poor reasoning here}.

Science says GMO is fine, liberals ignore that and say that science is wrong because {poor reasoning here}.

Except the science on GMOs is much further from settled. And science hasn't really addressed some of the theoretical concerns.

In many cases it has been largely settled and we even have decades of data proving it. The article even provides several examples - cherry picked or not [0] - that provide evidence to the irrational fear bits.

The Bt example is a great example. Being produced by the fruit or sprayed on after being produced by bacteria has the same results and the "sing a different tune" to try and pass laws against it is telling that there is a larger (money-driven) agenda behind making people fear Bt-enhanced items compared to Bt-sprayed items.

The claim, in many (but possibly not all!) scenarios is very similar to tobacco companies saying "the science behind tobacco smoke being harmful to humans is far from being settled and science hasn't fully answered some of the so-called issues". I'll call bollocks on the tobacco companies and claim that they might have some other ulterior motive behind making scientific claims that tobacco isn't harmful and their cigarettes do not cause lung cancer.

I don't trust companies that would profit from a GMO ban on the harmful effects of GMO when unbiased results are opposing the findings of the anti-GMO groups. I also don't trust misleading claims used for fear-mongering because people don't really understand something but pretend to. [1].

[0] I don't follow the GMO issues super-duper closely so concede that there might be cases, many perhaps, that aren't as "case-closed" as the examples in the article. But whether these examples are cherry-picked or not they do show several GMO issues that should be "case closed" but aren't.

[1] http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html

From my perspective it's not that all GMO foods are bad. I think the problem is that a lot of staff is being engineered into food that is not good for us. And we don't know which is which. It's a much finer-grained point than GMO vs non-GMO. However, if we can't even LABEL the GMO food "GMO", what do you think will be in it? When corporations are fighting the GMO label so furiously, this can't be a good sign.

It took 80 years to figure out trans fats are bad. How long will it take to sort out every single invented GM food?

People have been breeding and cross-breeding our food supply for thousands of years. What can we do about that? I know! Let's use the Internet to identify which foods are pure. Then we can be sure to stick to just those foods when we shop at the grocery store.

I don't understand how this argument supports GMO. If anything, it weakens support for GMO.

Any programme that encourages rapid change in the germline in isolation from the wider ecology is asking for unpredictable outcomes when those isolated organisms come into contact with the environment that has not had the chance to exert selective pressures.

I wanna see that happen, if only to go to those organic groceries and see the disappointed looks on people's faces.

Breeding <> GMing. One is natural, the other is artificial. And that's precisely the point.

There are a lot of natural things that are bad for you, and a lot of synthetic things that are not bad for you.

That may be but doesn't change the concern here with respect to food manipulation.

Actually I'm not so sure they are bad. Two decades ago fat was declared very dangerous, that caused huge anti-fat histeria. The same for eggs. There were papers and researches to prove those statements. And now we have researches that prove reversed things.

Another point. How could you be so sure that some regular onion (breed that was created decade ago) is safe? It was created by replacing huge amount of genes!

Journalist uses anecdotes to prove that GMOs are safe and science is difficult.