GMOs cause genetic deformities, they can be used as a biological weapon, and all the studies confirming the safety of GMOs, made money on the corporations. Whether so it actually?
Opponents of GMOs peculiar style of controversy, which is called the “Gish gallop” in honour of the famous creationist Duane Gish. A feature of this approach is the consecutive enumeration of a large number of inaccurate, erroneous or irrelevant to the case statements, as a rule, are common clichés. As a result, the opponent is forced consistently to refute them, looks impenetrable bore.
One of the most famous opponents of genetic engineering — doctor of biology Irina Ermakova. She is known for some pretty funny and ridiculous claims. Quote taken from her website, where she substantiates the view that men evolved from women, but rather, from the Amazons, hermaphrodites.
“It is possible that violent sexual crimes perpetrated mainly by men, are a manifestation of the complex the loss of ancestral function and, as a consequence, hatred for the women who can give birth.
The possibility of sex change, as well as the fact that significantly more men than women want to change gender to the opposite, also likely associated with the origin of men from women-hermaphrodites”.
No comment.
Below I will try to disassemble all the main myths about the dangers of GMOs. A substantial part of myths borrowed from the speeches Ermakova.
“GMOs are, by definition, cannot be safe, because any intervention leads to the appearance of organisms with unknown properties”
In each generation of living organisms arise as new mutations. In addition, the result of the sexual process, the formation of new combinations of existing alleles of genes. In this sense, any act of reproduction leads to the emergence of organisms with unknown properties, and the accusations, voiced in the address of GMOs, can equally well be addressed to any living beings.
Most often we do not know which new mutations arose in a particular organism as its genes changed in comparison with the genes of his parents. Impact on the phenotype, that is, the characteristics of the organism?
If we are afraid to eat the organisms with altered genes, then we should be afraid of all organisms without exception, not just GMOs.
In nature there are more subtle examples of changes in DNA. Retroviruses can integrate their genome into the cells of plants, fungi and animals. Bacteria can absorb genetic information from the environment, and to exchange plasmids with each other. Bacteriophages carry genes from one bacteria to another. Agrobacteria inject its genes into plant cells. I have already mentioned that sweet potatoes bred by selection, is transgenic, that is, contains the running genes of bacterial origin.
Today, scientists are finding more and more examples of horizontal gene transfer when genetic information is not transmitted from parents to offspring, and from one species to another, for example, through the same viruses. Found hundreds of examples of alien genes in the genomes of various animals, including the human genome. Gene transfer of this magnitude, which is found in nature, in laboratory conditions has not been undertaken. In the end, we must either come to the conclusion that it is safe for human consumption of organisms do not exist, thereby reducing the thrust of the thesis about the potential dangers of GMOs, or to assume the risk of any product you want to assess and explore separately, regardless of GMO or not GMO.
“Earlier, too, was a genetic deformity, but not in such numbers as now, and this is due to GMOs. In confirmation it is possible to look at pictures of children with congenital diseases. In developed countries, where they eat GMO, increasing the incidence and other diseases”
When I say that the number of children with congenital diseases is increasing, usually do not indicate which countries and the diseases in question and what are proof of that. But even if there has been an increase of some genetic diseases, it does not follow that there is a causal relationship between said process and the use of products created by genetic engineering.
Correlation is deceptive and does not always indicate causation. Is there a connection between global warming and decline in pirates? Between the increasing incidence of autism and the growth of sales of “natural” products? Between the number of homicides in the United States and the share of Internet Explorer in the market of Internet browsers? But such correlations do exist and some are even published in scientific journals, even in jest.
For example, in 2004 in the journal Paediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology published an article, “New evidence for the theory of the storks”: the smaller the population of storks, the less babies born in the study area.
Remember the problem of multiple comparisons? If you long to look for correlations, something will be found.
There is no scientific evidence that eating foods of any registered varieties of GMOs increases the likelihood of genetic diseases in newborns. But there is every reason to believe that the frequency of some genetic diseases depends on the age at which women give birth. For example, the frequency of down syndrome. In many countries women on average give birth to it later, and if in some countries it is kompensiruet development of early diagnosis of down’s syndrome and other diseases, the other diagnostics are poorly developed and the incidence is increasing.
Probably some hereditary diseases are increasingly common because they used to be deadly and is now being treated. Because of this, defective genes are more actively transmitted to the next generations, because their possessors thanks to modern medicine is able to survive and leave offspring. And in General, life expectancy is increasing, and with it our eyes grows and the frequency of diseases that previously just did not have time to manifest. You can make an analogy. A warlike tribe, in which the first one did not live up to thirty years because of the constant bloody wars, decides to go on an experiment and make a century of peaceful coexistence with its neighbors. Soon reform begins to criticize: “Previously of unknown causes died only 1% of the population. And now most of the teeth fall out and my hair turns gray, and the skin mordenite, and die not clear from what!”
The factors are not a reason to refuse of new drugs and other technologies that save lives. It is an occasion to develop new methods to prevent the spread of harmful mutations in populations. For this you can just use a genetic diagnosis, artificial insemination and genetic engineering.
“All the studies confirming the safety of GMOs, made with the money of corporations
It is easy to verify that this is not true. For example, in 2010 the European Commission published a detailed report (with this book) about fifty research projects carried out between 2001 and 2010 at the expense of research grants of the European Union. In these studies spent €200 million, and they concern the impact of GMOs on the environment, security of the use of GMOs in food, GMOs as sources of biomaterials and biofuels and so on. The project involved 400 research groups. To quote the main conclusion of the report: “Biotechnology and in particular GMOs, are not large risks than traditional technologies of cultivation of new varieties”. USA, Russia and many other countries are also financed from the budget of the research into GMO, which were the findings that these products are not dangerous.
The vast majority of studies on the subject of GMOs, which are links in my book, made at public expense. For example, an article in the journal PLOS One, showing that the transition to the cultivation of GMOs reduces the use of insecticides in the fields, was funded under a research grant from the European Union and the Federal Ministry for economic cooperation and development of Germany.
In this work, the authors separately analyzed whether the funding source on the findings of scientific papers on the subject, and received the answer: not affected.
“GMOs can be used as biological weapons”
The project “in Short, “Wikipedia” gives the following definition: “GMO — a gene gun, have been successfully used to reduce the population of Earth from 4 billion to 7 billion people. But seriously, the idea is this: the bio-terrorists to create poisonous varieties, in order to harm the population of some countries. To create poisonous GMO’s theoretically possible. However, if you are seriously motivated someone to slack off and has invested heavily in the creation of GMOs, apply a little extra effort, and name your poison product natural! It will be better to buy! Do members of a secret world conspiracy will not find a way to hide the fact of genetic modification? The more that this will help to avoid additional checks (including toxicity) that are exposed to varieties of GMOs before release to the market. It is obvious that the makers of “venom” decided to act outside the law, so perhaps they will stop bans on the cultivation, sale or transportation of GMOs or legislation that forces these products to label.
Finally, create a poisonous plant varieties without any genetic engineering breeding methods. If you want to harm the environment, and create nothing. Let’s see how much trouble gave normal rabbits in Australia. In the absence of predators, rabbits multiplied and destroyed almost all the grass. Another example is the cow parsnip Sosnowski.
It is a large umbrella plant tried to cultivate in the Soviet Union, until it turned out that it easily penetrates into natural ecosystems, displacing wildlife, and, in addition, emit toxic substances, because of which people touching Hogweed, get to light serious burns.
If out of fear of biological weapons we need to ban genetic engineering, let us from the fear of chemical weapons ban to deal with the chemistry, but from fear of nuclear weapons — nuclear physics.
