OP - fields of beaten gold (GMO piece)

[mr friendly guy]

I am confused. Are you now saying we should judge large organizations not by the actions of their CEOs?

No.

Are you now claiming that we should view those actions as an isolated few, apart from the large organizations on whose behalf they act?

No.

Why are you not extending the same benefit to Greenpeace (after all, only low-level people there are doing the destruction, whereas we here have CEOs acting directly?)

Not relevant as I answered no to the above, so I can't fail to extend a benefit I never gave. However I would like to point out

a. Of those standards I apply, I give the same standards to GP. The nuclear companies get a new CEO, pay compensation and show attempts to improve performance. I didn't say they should be banned. I already said GP should make recompense and improve its behaviour. I did not state they should be banned. Same standards.

b. Describing GP vandalism as done by low level people may be true, but when GP higher ups agree with it, they can't just hand wave it away. Going on, its not just the low people in GP that does it. The head director of Greenpeace UK personally joined in on the act.

All I see here is that the Chinese Government noticed problems in their study and acted on it. Aren't you a big believer in believing the chinese government? Is the Chinese Government lying about errors in the work?

Ha ha ha. I see you have a sense of humour. How's this one for size? Are you saying you now support the actions of brutal one party dictatorship. Or is it only when they agree with Greenpeace.

But back to the topic, I pretty much stated no one is beyond criticism in an earlier encounter with you. I do stand by my statement the Chinese government freaked out given that lots of clinical trials are done all over the world (for example with new drugs), and this one only garnered attention because of the GMO angle and the sensationalist language of GP. Testing new products by consuming them is hardly new. The Chinese government even compensated people in the control group, ie those who didn't get any GMO rice.

Oh BTW - The Chinese Government isn't "lying about errors in the work" because they didn't accuse the authors of inaccuracy. They did allege things like hindering the Chinese investigation, failure to get new approval for the test when they changed location (even though essentially the experiment the same), mentioning the rice was a nice one with beta carotene but did not say it was genetically modified.

Going on Tufts university who did the study in conjunction with Chinese researchers released their statement in response of GP accusations (which BTW involved a third party also providing their own review)
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7hhP5Q ... lZLTA/edit

Long story short, no concerns with safety or accuracy, but problems with compliance with full regulations. In other words Greenpeace can't attack the science, so it will attack the bureaucracy. Personally I think Greenpeace was just butt sore because the study disproved their claim that for GR to be effective a person would need to consume 12 kg of it a day.

Also, looks like similar trials went through some opposition by scientists themselves. Read this. Though I don't know any of the authors, so who knows how valid that is.

I am tempted to ask you to summarise rather than have me read it, or I could simply cut and paste from the Golden Rice website, but that would be lazy debating. So here goes.

1. I find it interesting among the scientists include one with a degree in geography and one in mathematics. What, couldn't they find enough in the relevant fields of biochemistry?

2. They accuse it of having no regulatory approval. Well firstly the Phillipine statement by their department of agriculture in 2013 states that GR has complied with "national biosafety regulations."
linky
Now this petition was up years before the statement. Now as tempting as it is for me to just say, even if it was true then, its not true now, I am not going to leave it at that. That type of argument is bordering on being circular, depending on regulatory approval for what. If its for commercial use, well of course you won't until its been tested, but the petition opposes testing. If its to test, then its passed the US rules (which as they claim is less stringent than EU rules) and then saying it breaks regulatory approval is deceptive. Take your pick.

3. GM crops bad bad, and "We are all senior scientists / academics with a professional interest in the health and environmental effects of GMOs."

This kind of gives the game away. Plus they got David Suzuki's signature.

All new products should be tested. It should be tested because we can't be absolutely sure what it will do. Not because its a GMO product and GMO products are somehow more inherently dangerous just because they are GMO. This is like saying thalidomide causes birth defects, then <insert drug here> will also cause birth defects, because they are both unnatural. This type of tactic is poisoning the well.

4. "More specifically, our greatest concern is that this rice, which is engineered to overproduce beta carotene, has never been tested in animals, and there is an extensive medical literature showing that retinoids that can be derived from beta carotene are both toxic and cause birth defects. "

Well I could point that's because animals kind of absorb metabolised beta carotene different from humans, which makes it somewhat dubious. for testing whether GR can be converted to sufficient quantities of vitamin A.

Going on the next point. Humans can metabolise vitamin A into toxic retinoids such as RA (retinoic acid). Since animals metabolise it differently, its usefulness in toxicity is doubtful. Secondly, GR has less beta carotene than carrot. So carrots must also be MORE toxic (and yes carrot toxicity has apparently been reported).

Now I am not going to freaking read all the articles this petition links to, but I did read one. It hypothesises that the rice itself can metabolise beta carotene into toxic retinoids. This is based on the claim that rice could have similar enzymes to humans (hence it can metabolise to the toxic products), and we consume it directly. This is of course even though rice doesn't utilise beta carotene the same way animals do, so it will be unlikely to require enzymes which can metabolise it. Of course the fact that GR has been tested in an American study in 2009 and a Chinese one in 2013 with no side effects would suggest other wise.

This is a false comparison. You do know that Greenpeace annual budget =/= money spent on fighting GMO, which after all is only one part of many of their organizations. If you want to make this argument then show how much money Greenpeace spents fighting GMO vs the combined budget of GMO research + PR, or the combined budget of Greenpeace vs the combined budget of all companies investing in GMO.

Ah funny man with the . I could point out that I defend the science rather than big business, and I could point to my posting history showing that when the science and big business clash, I supported the scientific evidence. Like when I supported Australia's use of a carbon tax to combat climate change despite the whining of Australia's big business. But I don't think you care about the science, do you? Its more like GP is the little guy against the big bad corporations and I am being mean to them apparently holding a double standard. Somewhere.

Two, its not my fault GP picks fights against multiple opponents. However against GR, its financial resources are superior. Golden Rice is not the whole of the GMO industry.

Three some of those GP targets are not big. For example the small farmers whose crops Greenpeace destroyed in the UK in 1999. If you think you can hand wave this away on the grounds that GP also fights the big boys, then next time you complain about any other country that isn't the US for doing something wrong against a small fry, I am going to point out its ok because they have geopolitical rivals whose combined economic, and military power is superior to theirs.

The once I mentioned were. All of them no. But then again, not every Greenpeace action is illegal either.

Sure not all of their actions are illegal. However they certainly deserved condemnation for the illegal ones, and some of legal ones. Convincing someone not to take life saving food on false grounds is certainly not illegal, but its immoral and you know it. Just like how anti-vaxers convince people not to vaccinate deserve condemnation even if its legal.

Which was?

"The protesters argued that they had lawful excuse under the Criminal Damage Act 1971 to uproot the crop, as leaving it to flower and pollinate would have led to a greater crime - the contamination of other crops in the vicinity".

In other words it would damage someone else's property via pollination, therefore we can lawfully destroy those GM crops.

That doesn't actually answer my point.

So clarify your point. Because I thought you were blaming the perception of evil GMO's on the fact that GP had a better PR department.

[Lagmonster]

I wonder if anyone has tallied the direct victims of eco-terrorism to see who the targets generally are. I think you'll find that it isn't corporate fat-cats who suffer at the hands of these thugs, but academics. Even de-converts like Mark Lynas have admitted that the point of the anti-GMO movement was fear of science, not industry (seriously, read his speech to the Oxford Farming Conference - this was a guy who ripped up crops himself telling you what they think and why they do it). There was an intersection there with their hatred of capitalism, but that was just sweet icing. The worst eco-terrorist events I can recall recently weren't targeted at corporate infrastructure, but occurred all on university property, targeting the buildings and work of academics and scientists. It's hard to view these groups in the light of their most PR-friendly accomplishments or by what they write in their mission statement, when they knowingly include public vandals, thugs and arsonists in their rank-and-file.