What do you guys think? Awesome or dangerous?

Ok let me give you guys an example.

There is a GM product called Golden Rice. It has been genetically engineered in a lab to produce Vitamin A. The aim is to grow this Golden rice in poorer areas where vitamin A deficiencies are estimated to kill 670,000 children under the age of 5 each year. In 2005, 190 million children and 19 million pregnant women, in 122 countries, were estimated to be affected by VAD. So its a real problem which this product could help to solve.

Yet there is opposition. Why? That's not rhetorical. I am genuinely interested in why people are against GM foods?

i don't like foods from GM foods, in china we have GM potatoes corns tomatoes. I think its a plan to stop our human race to develop. and GM foods cause so many popular diseases. since i read and watch some videos, they says we still not completely got full knowledge of Genetic technology, its pretty unsafe to modificate those plants. we are too ego to try this so far.

I can't explain well in english but i have been read and learn a lot from website. I agree with those scientist who against GM food.

You know the simple cabbage leaf?



Well, brace yourself this shocked me when I learned this: through years of selective breeding we transformed the cabbage leaf into a multitude of vegetables, kolhrabi, the sprout, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Bok Choy as well as the obvious red cabbage and chinese cabbage. Did you know that carrots were originally black? But we bred the least black ones together and now we have orange ones.

We've been messing around with this stuff for centuries.

interesting ! my first time know this carrots are original black haha. i don't eat the morden GM carrots only the normal orange carrots. *.* the GM ones looks more pretty compares with normal orange carrots but i heard it would made woman could not be able to pregnant. and the GM ones can only plant for 1 time since they have no seeds..ahh my poor english getting even more worse...

Your English is fantastic

thanks for courage me 0.0! hope all of you understand me well. since I work with chinese most of the time, I forgot tons of english vercabulery ><

I was talking to some people over dinner about this today and was reminded of another example.

There is a potato which has been genetically modified to commit suicide if it becomes infected with disease. Sounds like a joke doesn't it. But I assure you there is no punch line! The theory is that it would stop the transmission of illness to other potatoes and eventually humans.

I kinda think its a good idea but this one is a little more worrying than the Golden Rice example. I mean imagine if somehow that got into humans? You get a cold and bam, dead. I think most of the fear around GM crops relates to this idea that the effects could be passed on to humans.

You know when they invented inoculation against disease (remember before they wiped small pox off the face of the earth) people were worried having the injection would turn you into a cow because it involved injecting a small piece of cow pox...

In India we produce red carrots...the orange one are supposedly from foreign countries.

It seems like you guys need me more than ever here ('w' a)

First, selective breeding is not GM. Literally selecting from different options available in the nature. Artificial selection but still 100% natural.

Mark, you are right about the rationale behind GM approach. But the problem is that it is not a fundamental solution but rather a temporary solution for what they think is the 'major' problem at the moment (vit A deficiency for example). This way of thinking is the big problem in modern medicine. They focus too much on how to manage the superficial symptoms and fotget the fundamental aetiology. It is important to look at the broad picture Mark, especially if you are already one of the few who perceive what most can't.

The consequence of trying to manage the superficial problems is that it often leads to 'other' superficial problems, usually bigger problems than the first one, like Essa mentioned. As a medical biochemist, I am well aware that there are no magic bullets that are artificially and physically created - almost all man-made products/drugs always have minor to severe unwanted effects with tons of flaws.

Natural products on the other hand are precise. Most of them have no or very mild adverse effects unless they were designed for toxic effects (eg toxic mushrooms). At the chemical level, many natural compounds have more chiral centres and have structures that could never be developed by human mind alone. In short, Nature is precise, Man is not. That is one of the most important lessons for human.

As an additional note, altering genes is considered as being against the nature - it's bound to have problems at least in a long term.

Mark Mauvais wrote:

You know when they invented inoculation against disease (remember before they wiped small pox off the face of the earth) people were worried having the injection would turn you into a cow because it involved injecting a small piece of cow pox...

I can't believe you believe in vaccination. Vaccines are nothing but bullshit. Developing antibodies for a set of strains tested in the lab won't work against the vast viral strains due to natural mutation.

For this, you can read "the other side of the story" on http://avn.org.au/vaccination-information/chicken-pox/

And might as well read other vaccines too such as the ones for diphtheria
http://avn.org.au/vaccination-information/dtp/diphtheria/

The site is new so it doesn't have all information but it will give you a general idea how fucked up the world is. Trust me the world is much much much MUCH MORE CORRUPT THAN YOU THINK. Stop being so naive like some angel. I know you've been complaining about the society, then time to look at the bigger picture. I'm here to help you with my logic as much as you can help me with your intuition. Uniting those two is the key for the new human world.