Should sugar be regulated?
Hell no

We're lucky that fat wasn't "regulated" - even without regulation there's still plenty of people who are fat deficient.

I think that health experts who write for Nature Magazine should be regulated, along with moralists and militarists.  Throw in there deconstructionist professors, corporate executives, tree cutters, and other threats to public health.

One last thing, GMO ought to be heavily regulated.  If there is a real threat to public health, it is that!

With respect, bull.  

There are now seven billion people on earth.  My daughter is thinking of doing University Honors in plant technology, researching ways to use GMO to make, for instance, rice with iron content to battle anemia in places like India and Africa.

To produce new varieties of wheat with a heavier yield that are resistant to infestation by fungus, parasites, diseases etc.  

To develop oil plants that require less land and water to grow.

To research plants that can desalinate or otherwise sequester dangerous chemicals from the soil.  

The beneficial possibilities of GM are endless, and far outweigh the bad.  The only way we are going to be able to feed our billions is by researching and thinking NOW.  And to blithely say, "Oh, GM is BAD!" is childish.  May just as well claim that vaccines cause autism.

Alison

I know you can buy corn syrup. I believe that's the natural version. I haven't seen HFCS on the shelves, but I also haven't looked for it.

Never seen it d'olson, although I've never actively looked either, I can only assume it would be where the honey, golden syrup, treacle, sugar, sweeteners, glucose syrup is. Not that I would ever want any, unless I have reason to include fructose in growth media for something I'm working on. For my own consumption...ick, no thanks!

As for GMO technology, I think its a perfectly valid, and indeed, necessary area of study. We do need to have regulations in place though to ensure people aren't stupid with it, people have a track record of being stupid, and pissing on our own front door, so to speak. For example, ensuring that weedkiller-resistance genes do not spread to the weeds themselves, like antibiotic resistance genes have spread like wildfire due at least in part to misprescribing of antibiotics, along with patients neglecting to finish their courses and ensure the last vestiges of infection, whilst no longer a threat to them, are exterminated to prevent something altogether nastier evolving and getting loose. Or that plants that have been altered to produce their own pesticides, such as for instance, plants that have been transfected with the gene producing Bacillus thuringiensis biotoxin, we need to make sure we do not accidentally wipe out our already ailing bee colonies and trash the ecosystem by wiping out a large number of pollinators. If said plants are to be used that would be a good example of a time where regulation is needed, regulation to prevent use of toxin producing plants wholesale? no, I don't think that the answer. But to make sure that the gene expression is limited to plant tissues, and kept out of both pollen and nectar and in so doing, prevent our new breed from wiping out pollinators and other harmless or benefical insects. Entirely wiping out ones that are pests even, would be a bad idea. As ecosystems are never so simple as to make us able to say 'that there critter is a pest, lets exterminate it'

What is a pest to us, is quite probably a vital part of the diet or reproductive strategy of something else, which either is beneficial to us, or controls some other pest, keeping it at manageable levels, not eliminating our losses from said pest, but keeping them at the levels they have generally been. Kill one thing, and you kill others indirectly, an ecosystem is a very good demonstration of the butterfly effect. Many insect species can't/won't just switch to other food sources if their chosen prey is no longer available, they will starve before eating something else. And thats just a simple example, any one species is likely to have a number of predators, some will eat anything they can catch, others specialise, there will be parasites and parasitoids, the latter are generally extremely dependent upon a single host, and quite possibly, the pest is keeping something else in check we don't know about.

We need to stop and think very carefully before acting, this is an evolving technology (or rather, entire discipline with a large set of technologies being used) which we are still making every effort to master. And with the potential knock-on effects of something like that, predictable or not we can't afford to be complacent, stupid, or let big industry have too much control over it.

Why do I say that last bit? because that has already happened. Look at terminator strains. They are plants, food plants usually, such as cereal grains which are mutated in such a way that they do not set fertile seed. You can still eat it just the same, but plant it, and it will not grow. That is done to force the buyers of seed for farming into buying more seed from Big Agrotech, monsanto and the like, instead of being able to save seed back from the previous year to raise a new crop, and thus keep the third world people-feeding machine dependent on their product.

So we do need regulation of the GM technology, I do not believe for one second that Big Industry, in any sector, can be trusted to regulate itself, and do what is responsible. Monsanto and the other huge megacorporations of that ilk can be trusted. They can be trusted to do what profits them. They can be trusted to distort figures, come up with propaganda, sick the lawyers on whistleblowers and dissenters, start dirt-digging smear campaigns against inconveniences or outright lie through their eyeteeth as and when needs be.


Quote:ali 'to develop new oil plants which require less land and water to grow'

Lets hope that they aren't just hacking down rainforests to grow said plants. Doesn't mean, if they do get planted where we have raped mother gaia to make way for a monoculture that because less land can be used, less rainforest gets slashed and burned. What it means is that the same amount will be wasted, and more plants can be grown in the same amount of land we would have used anyway.

In case anyone can't tell...I am not the biggest fan of Big Industry, Monsanto and their vile breed especially, and I have strong feelings about the environment. We should already know this, but greed for gaia's resources will leave nobody left to be greedy in the end. Try as we may have, over centuries, we have not become the master of nature and its forces, nor should we try.

Absolutely not; but then, I also say that about absolutely every currently controlled narcotic. But still, no.

I agree, "GM = bad" is certainly childish.  With the caveat that we can't just let any random person get their way.  We never have before, and there is no reason to start now.  The control upon regulations that "As long as it doesn't hurt other people" is a pretty good one as well.  

For instance I don't think we should allow suicide genes.  This is just a symptom of a basic effect that corporations try to create in other industries as well, namely that it is not enough to destroy consumer choice, but they also have to enslave the consumer as well.  I've purchased music CD's that literally destroyed my computer as part of the RIAA's attack on people who are not the RIAA, as part of a scheme to prevent CD's from being copied.  There was a recall, but the damage was still done.  I lost a lot of data.

You can say that suicide genes and CD's are not the same thing (one is a luxury the other is blatantly NOT a mere luxury) but that's exactly the problem: it doesn't matter.  As long as corporation are allowed to look at customers as property then the social potential of any new technology, no matter what it is, will always be hamstringed.

We haven't let them get their way, conlang? I beg to differ. Big Industry are always walking over everybody else. Look at the shady practices of Monsanto, Pfizer are another one, hiding evidence of side effects, secretively and furtively shoving clinical trials that didn't show good results under the carpet

And I already mentioned about suicide genes, I just used different terminology (terminator strain)

No state-level society has ever allowed just anyone to get their way.

It's true, we have allowed select individuals to do so, usually justified by their ownership of tremendous amounts of property and control of a large portion of one or more markets.  

We need to end this justification.  Once we do, GMO's in general will then be as safe and progressive as the internet.

As progressive I am sure. As safe....its different, a different beast entirely than the internet. Don't get me wrong, GM technology is a personal interest of mine, and I am no opponent of it, I just am of the opinion that the potential for harm if its used carelessly is certainly there, and potentially great.

Horizontal spread of certain genes, particularly terminator genes or biocide producing ones, such as Bt toxin producing maize, via viral vectors to the ecosphere is one thing that concerns me. Well, less so the terminator genes, given they are inherently anti-selection, and could only be propagated thus, hopefully negating the possibility of there being any significant spread of an escape beyond the epicenter after the initial event, but pesticide-producing wild plants is something that does definitely give me pause for concern.

GMO as in Genetically Modified Organisms?
Please explain how this is always a danger to public health.

I don't know what the laws about it are in the UK, but in America, it's not required that something be proven to not be harmful before it's marketed. It's only required that it isn't proven to be harmful.

There are really two big concerns I can see with GMOs. First has to do with food allergies. It's obvious that someone who's allergic to peanuts shouldn't eat peanuts, but is it safe for them to eat, for instance, corn that's been modified with peanut genes? The second issue is that we know that many genes have more than one function. Are we absolutely certain that giving a food product genes that it doesn't normally have wouldn't activate harmful qualities in the food? If you can answer "yes" to both questions for any given GMO, then I think that GMO is acceptable to market.

I think that the real issue is corporate ownership of the genome.  In other words, the idea that life can be owned is the problem.  It gets to the heart of what it is philosophically.

I must also admit to a skepticism, based on the Godelian Imcompleteness of any formal system, as to whether humans have the wisdom to geo-engineer whole planets.  I know that we have domesticated in the past.  This, however, is getting in to the genome and managing evolution on the molecular level, which is best left to manage itself.

I am willing to look at the issue of world population and necessity.  However, would not the real solution here be a combination of birth control and the lifting of people out of poverty with real sustainable agriculture?  (Organic and family farm based.  By "family" I am not necessarily saying the nuclear family; rather, community based agriculture that is neither corporate nor statist)

No, I am not an anti-vax activist.  Vaccines=saving of lives.  And, if vaccines caused my Asperrger then more power to vaccines for both saving my life and making me the awesome dude I have become today.  Seriously, I am not an alarmist.  I am simply raising a point as to where formal models end and actual biological systems transcend them.  Is there always wisdom in abstract models?

If Alison is any indication of how intelligent her daughter is, then I am sure that we have the best minds working on the subject.  Honestly, I am being serious.  I feel better knowing that we have good intellects on the subject.  Sadly, however, corporations and governments often over-rule the scientists, as we have seen with the latest attempts to deny global warming.  That is what concerns me more than anything.

D'olson, it appears that your concerns are validated. There has been incidence noted of a change in the allergenic potential with transfer of a gene from one species to a closely related species, from a bean plant IIRC, to a pea. The result was that the protein expressed was more allergenic than it would otherwise be. Possibly as a result of it folding differently and as such assuming a slightly different structure in the pea than it otherwise would have in its native species. On the other hand, the reverse is possible-using GM techniques to eliminate proteins that are responsible for allergies entirely by such means as targeted knockdown with antisense oligonucleotides, morpholinos, etc. that neatly pair up with the appropriate sense-strand of DNA, (I.e that coding for the allergenic protein of for instance soy, peanuts, etc. but preventing translation of mRNA into the coded-for protein)

I'm tired of so-called experts telling me what I should and shouldn't eat. I'll eat what the *** I like.

This post was last modified: 02-06-2012 07:44 PM by Suedehead.