Reactions to the article: Transgenic plants - the fear and the necessity by the editor of this site, as they appeared in Issue 61 of the Galileo journal. The article itself was published in issue 60 and is also featured on the Hidan website
Cartoons comparing genetically modified food to Frankenstein. Irrational resistance?
hello editor,
In response to Avi Blizovsky's article about the genetically engineered plants from issue 60, I am very disappointed by the reporting on genetic engineering that deceives the public into believing that there is no scientific basis for the risks of genetic engineering. In my opinion, the article is superficial, lacking in facts and biased in the direction of "no danger". I ask myself, is public health to that extent a subject to be ignored? What kind of seriousness does the author show by closing interest with words like Frankensteinian claims or claiming that there is no scientific basis for the danger? While there is a scientific basis for the proven dangers of genetic engineering, he does not even bother to provide a scientific basis for the fact that genetic engineering is safe.
Why don't you interview people who know the facts and present a public health position? The genetically engineered food will not save the third world but on the contrary, the whole story with saving the third world is false public relations and I will prove it later in the letter. The fact is that many countries in the third world oppose genetically modified food - they are interested in safe food.
I will base all of my above statements, and I hope that you will be able to see beyond the economic interest because this is a real danger and not the psychological madness of green organizations and from the fairness that you will present the facts to the public. Dr. Arpad Possetai gave genetically modified potatoes to laboratory animals, and significant damage was caused to their immune system, brain, kidneys, spleen and thymus gland. The lining of the stomach thickened and the intestines looked like they had a virus infection.
The two experimental groups that received non-transgenic potatoes - did not show these symptoms. Therefore Potstai concluded that the damage was caused by a certain aspect of genetic engineering. He was fired from his job after warning against genetic engineering, although he has been a leading researcher in the field for 35 years, his findings are important in every sense to humanity.
A Japanese company (Shua Denko) produced a genetically modified tryptophan food supplement. She engineered the food additive to make production cheaper. In 1988... the engineered tryptophan went on the market in the USA. Within a few months, 37 people who ingested the supplement died, and 1500 became permanently paralyzed, developed heart and neurological problems, swelling, cracked skin, memory loss, headaches, light sensitivity, and fatigue. The reason it took time to discover the source of the problem was because the supplement was not labeled as genetically engineered, in the experiment it was found that engineered yeast produced a poison at a concentration 30 times higher than the non-engineered yeast. Genetic engineering uses proteins from organisms that have never been in the human food chain. Therefore, the genetically engineered food can cause allergies. In 2000, a genetically engineered corn called Starlink was sold to people in the US even though it was only approved for animal feed. The genetically engineered corn contained a poison that caused allergies in people and as a result was returned..
Antibiotic resistance: A study done by the British Standards Institute in 2002 showed that antibiotic resistant genes can reach human bacteria in the intestines after just one meal. Two years earlier, the British Medical Association warned that the risk to human health from antibiotic resistance that develops in microorganisms is one of the biggest public health threats to be faced in the 21st century. Increasing corporate control: companies; Biotech buys seed companies. which creates monopolies. Monsanto and du Pont are the largest seed companies in the world. As a result of their control of the seed industry, farmers report a decrease in the availability of a variety of non-GM seeds.
The corporations issue patents on the genetically engineered seeds and thus farmers, even those of the third world, cannot re-sow the seeds but have to constantly buy more seeds, which develops economic dependence on American corporations, meaning that genetic engineering increases economic control and puts the farmers of the third world into financial difficulties - which caused Already to the suicides of farmers. Final technology Transgenic seed cannot be sown more than once. Prevents farmers from physically sowing and saving seeds, they depend on the genetic engineering corporation, have to pay the corporations a technology fee according to the size of the field, the farmers have to buy more herbicides because crops from the weeds are resistant to them, the farmers are under contracts with the corporations that control them.
Genetic engineering does not increase productivity. on the contrary. Reports from farmers have revealed that genetic engineering has reduced crop yields, and the US government
It is now admitted that genetic engineering does not increase yields. Genetic engineering technology can expose us to bacteria that cause diseases, develop resistance to antibiotics, which can cause uncontrollable epidemics.
These are only a small part of the problems caused by genetic engineering; Europe will not suffer from a lack of food, but will enjoy natural, healthy and unmanipulated food. The belief that the article instills in the shocking sentence "the possibility to genetically modify any organism is a notable victory for man" stems from complete ignorance of the fact that the games of genes cause damage to man's genes, any change in nature and the creation of substances unknown to nature and man causes a toxic reaction in man, including mutations. Playing in the gardens by people motivated by purely economic interests, and chasing the patents that will bring them the millions while ignoring the consequences for public health, is not a victory but a great loss for human health and a threat to the environment and the food chain.
Many scientists with responsibility and a public conscience are concerned about genetic engineering and have written petitions because it is clear to them based on scientific knowledge that it is not a matter of victory but of loss,
Whereas the manipulating scientists belong to corporations and are driven by economic interests and do not want public health to interfere with their profits. They prefer to bring new products to the market quickly even when they don't know what the long-term consequences of the garden games are.
It is completely irresponsible to declare victory when the information about the dangers of genetic engineering is hidden from the public.
Iris Atzmon
Hello editor Galileo.
The article about the genetically modified plants ends with the fact that the Europeans will suffer from hunger if they delay the development of the use of genetically modified food according to Prof. Gafni. President Bush also accused the Europeans of encouraging African countries not to consume genetically modified agricultural products that could have prevented famine. Many African countries hope to penetrate the European market with organic produce, therefore they hope to ensure that their products are not based on biotechnology.
If the United States cares so much about the hungry in Africa, it should help them develop their own crops in a good and efficient way and not force the genetically engineered seeds of the corporations on them. If the issue is truly free from economic and profitable considerations, researchers should be allowed to examine the issue critically and thoroughly so that they will not be threatened when they find damages (as is happening today), and will not harm their laboratories and the reports they publish, but will face
with the real facts. All this points to ulterior motives. When capital intensive corporations want to impose their genetically engineered products. It is not the concern for hunger that guides them, but the profits that stand behind them.
Biotechnological developments are not tested over time to ensure safety, but are immediately put into public use (the stock market is waiting).
In addition, they are not interested in marking them in order to keep the public in Irpole and in the pits. Under the Law on Freedom of Information and the Public's Right to Know, companies must be required to label any product that contains components that have undergone genetic engineering. In this matter, transparency should be fully expressed. The public must be allowed real and not fabricated freedom of choice. He will decide if he is interested in consuming genetically modified food.
Eve Yehuda
Avi Blizovsky's response:
There may be non-biological scientists who oppose GM food, their opinion is no different from that of any private citizen. There are also physicists who oppose the theory of evolution, for example. So what? Even in this case their opinion is like that of any private citizen and the fact that they are scientists does not change anything.
Among the scientists involved in the field of agriculture, there is unanimity in favor of genetic engineering, and they also know, as Prof. Gafni did, the caveats and are the ones who help form an opinion in the field. Certainly the limitations were not hidden in the article, such as the fear that the resistance properties will be transferred to wild species and weeds and thus we will not be able to get rid of them.
I know that this is a charged field, but all the experts in this scientific profession think like him, I have not found a single biologist who would support the opposing opinion.
Zvi Atzmon's response:
I often think of the first caveman who put fire into the cold, dark cave.
It seems to me that we will come across comments of the form: What about you? Fire in a cave? This is a terrible danger! Since then, this call has been heard hundreds and thousands of times throughout the history of mankind, when the fire is replaced by different inventions and the cave - by different circumstances and places. Some warned that traveling by train at a speed exceeding 50 km/h would cause all the air to be sucked out of the lungs and death by suffocation, and some claimed that alternating current would kill thousands of people every day. Respectable people claimed that camera and phonograph-recording are works of the devil and terrible dangers are expected for those who use them.
And by the way, the division between conservatives and innovators is - like everything human - not sharp and not always predictable, and certainly does not coincide with the division between the wise and the foolish. For example, Edison, the wonderful inventor, strongly opposed the use of alternating current. In no way do I intend to paint here every invention and innovation as a good and perfect thing. definitely not! People are electrocuted to death from the alternating current. Many people are killed in train collisions. Road accidents (admittedly, there were still such during the era of carriages, before the invention of the automobile - in such an accident, for example, the celebrated physicist Pierre Curie was killed) have already been called "the enemy within". It is difficult to think of any invention that does not directly or indirectly have negative and even extremely severe consequences. The fire did cause terrible fires and a horrific loss of human life, and the invention of the wheel is indirectly responsible for car accidents, the Inquisition's torture wheel, and air pollution. There are inventions whose unreasonable and irresponsible use caused net damage. After the discovery of X-rays, they were used in a blatantly arrogant way - today We would say. Criminal use, among other things in shoe stores. To check the fit of the foot to the shoe... and shortly after the discovery of radioactivity, agile entrepreneurs started selling cosmetic ointments... radioactive, because the concept of radioactivity was then "IN"!
conclusion? - Completely trivial: every invention must be carefully examined for its merits, with vigilant criticism, honestly and courageously, but not to be intimidated. The cultivation processes of agricultural plants and farm animals are among the developments that have completely changed the fate of humanity. Humanity was influenced by them a decisive, qualitative and quantitative impact. We would not be what we are (for better, and for worse) and most of us would not exist at all - without the cultivation of agricultural plants
and farm animals. But even these inventions are not free from multiples, not at all. Jared Diamond points out in his book "Guns, Bacteria and Steel" (Am Oved, XNUMX) on the connection between food production and the development of human beings, the flourishing of culture in its various aspects, conquests and brutal extermination of populations. By the way, it's a shame that the matter of food - which is so central to the panoramic picture that Diamond outlines - is not also reflected in the title of his book. And yet: in the grains of wheat and emmer grains, which are the foundations of mankind's nutrition and history, there is also the protein gluten, which causes terrible suffering to celiac patients, and the seeds of the peanut legume - a food especially rich in protein, causing severe allergic reactions in sensitive people extremely, to the point of death. Indeed, there is no good that is without dangers, there is no perfect good, without evil.
But nothing can describe humanity without cultivation - by way of selection and hybridization of fertile and nutritious varieties that are not the products of nature, "artificial" varieties. Is it possible to describe our lives without "artificial" assembly in plantations, without plowing, fertilizing, artificial irrigation, greenhouses, adopting plants from parts Different world? Indeed, there are those who believe that in each region it is appropriate to eat only crops that grow there. This matter seems fundamentally absurd to me, but the fact is that there are people (they themselves, by the way, in many cases emigrated from other parts of the world...) who believe in this, what is more appealing than the claim that what has always been in nature is good and pure, while the transfer of crops from region to region is artificial and therefore carries ill effects?
It is clear that the huge increase in the human population - following the development of agriculture of various kinds (along with sanitation and medicine - literally destroys every good part of the earth, causes horrific ecological damage and will (some predict so) ultimately wreak complete havoc on the human race (which is not to say - about thousands upon thousands of wild species.) But to attack another method of creating varieties in agriculture? Nothing better than six billion people tomorrow raiding the wild fields and the too few remaining forests in an attempt to collect the food that nature has provided,
Including game meat?
Yosef, who saw to the establishment of food silos for the years of drought in Egypt. Rise to greatness, humans are not angels. As usual, they expect compensation and recognition for their developments. Hence the patent laws, hence the exclusivity granted to developers for a limited time in the production of materials (including medicines!) and facilities. Entrepreneurs, companies and corporations are definitely interested in profits, specifically - this is not a "hidden motive" but an open and known one. Israeli agriculture also took pride in exporting fine seeds, "agricultural hi-tech. An export industry that requires relatively limited physical resources (land, water). When the knowledge resources are a central component, I don't find anything wrong with that. As long as we are talking about humans and not angels from above (who, by the way, may not need food at all).
It would be so good if we did not need food; Oh, then we wouldn't hurt and we wouldn't be exposed to dangers. But in reality food production is one of the main challenges facing the human race. No single species will solve all of humanity's problems, and every new species designed to contribute to the human race's handling of challenges, like any innovation, involves dangers. These dangers must be examined, and added and examined, in a sober manner, and any censorship must be denounced, but not dismissed outright. It is indeed necessary to invent from a point of assumption that it is very possible that this is a mixture of advantages on the side of dangers.
