On Establishing Safety In Science and GMOs

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Is your internet connection safe? That is, do you know that the wifi signal going through your house is safe? That it isn't slowly killing you? That it isn't causing brain cancer, lung cancer, heart disease, or any number of other serious conditions? Or maybe it's just slowing your metabolism down, making you more slothy and depressed, and making you fatter. (Hey, that last one ain't even so far-fetched!). Maybe it's causing autism in children. Maybe that's why we've seen such a massive increase*.

Any of this sound like it makes sense? Starting to worry about how safe your internet connection is? After all, there are no long-term studies examining the effects of a wifi signal. There's a stark lack of evidence surrounding its safety for any number of conditions. So how can we trust that this stuff isn't secretly killing us?

Well, the answer is a bit complex. First off, "safe" is a really relative term. Is water "safe"? Well, yes... Until you have too much of it and die of dilutional hyponatremia. What's more, if water caused, say, cancer, we certainly haven't run the tests. So why haven't we run these tests? Well, because there's no reason to believe that water, like our wifi signal, could have that effect. There's just no prior suspicion, no reason to think that it could or should do that. But even if we did run that test, guess what: all we've done is added data that does not indicate that wifi causes cancer. We haven't shown that it doesn't cause heart disease, or diabetes, or any number of other conditions, each of which requires an individual study, and we have not even "proven" that it does not cause cancer, we've merely offered evidence that it may not cause cancer in this case. Actually demonstrating "safety" is an impossible, Sisyphean task.

No, in science, we talk not about safety, but about risk. It's never a question of "is this safe" but "is it harmful". Typically, if there's no good reason to believe something is harmful, it isn't examined. And we examine specific issues. Not a vague "could this be harmful in any way shape or form" but "does this cause or contribute to this specific malady".** We don't suspect that wifi could be harmful, because there's no reason to believe it could be harmful.

Now what does this have to do with GMOs? Well, a lot of people believe that, despite the extensive testing that has found no significant harm, GMOs cause all sorts of diseases and disorders, from leaky gut to autism to diabetes. And they claim that the research has not proven them to be safe yet. But keep in mind - safety in research is a myth. What we can do is establish relative risks, attempt to determine what may or may not be problematic, and examine to see if there is a problem. With GMOs, the prior probability is extremely low - nobody has, to date, provided any sort of workable hypothesis by which the act of genetic modification itself could cause problems, nor how the individual modifications currently on the market could lead to such issues***. Individual risks have been examined, both in animal and human populations, and so far, we haven't found anything. And yet, many are still worried. Why is that?

As Biofortified so eloquently put it:

The absence of single papers demonstrating safety is often used to invoke fear and doubt, and impossibility of proving a negative is often capitalized in anti-GMO rhetoric (this recent article by a medical doctor in the New York Daily Mail is a perfect example of such arguments): “Do we know that GMOs don’t cause cancer? Do we know that they don’t cause male infertility? etc.” Well, no… We don’t… But in the many feeding studies that have been conducted, there’s absolutely no evidence to suggest that it DOES cause cancer, there’s no logical mechanism proposed by which this might occur, and the null hypothesis still stands. You could virtually make the same argument about anything. “Do we know that eating pomegranates doesn’t case male pattern baldness? Do we know that typing on a keyboard doesn’t cause STDs?” No… We don’t… I don’t think anyone has ever done those studies. But strangely enough, no one has proposed a ban the use of keyboards until someone proves that typing on one doesn’t cause herpes, nor has anyone suggested that I should uproot the pomegranate tree in my backyard. Remembering that safety can never be proven and that we can only demonstrate a lack of relative risk can allow us to view such claims with skepticism.

Or, as I put it on facebook:

Can I prove that GMOs are safe? No. Can you prove that internet connection is safe? I mean, sure we have no good reason to believe that it's dangerous, but maybe it's spewing out an as-of-yet undetectable form of radiation that causes serious harm with extended use! We haven't had long-term studies on the topic!

I'd like to make a bit of a statement here - if you can't provide evidence that the internet itself is safe similar to the overwhelming consensus in peer-reviewed science journals that GMOs are safe, and you'd still think GMOs are dangerous, maybe you're better off staying away from the internet. Here's looking at you, Mike Adams.

(It is my sincere wish that the very last article on Natural News be "Internet proven dangerous, please turn off your internet ASAP". Oh, what a glorious day that would be.)

*I feel the need to pause here and point out that we haven't had an increase in incidence, we've gotten better at diagnosing it and broadened our diagnostic criteria. There is no "autism epidemic".

**Clear exception to the rule: medication, because we have prior suspicion merely based on the fact that it's a pharmacologically active substance. It's designed to cause some sort of change to the body, and will inevitably have some sort of side-effect. This is by no means comparable to most other fields, be it electronics or agriculture.

***This in and of itself makes the data produced by Seralini et. al., Carmen et. al, and the like questionable - you need a working hypothesis for how this happens, and "there were significant problems in how the animals were raised" is most definitely a working hypothesis, particularly in Carmen's case.

 

[#HBC | Acrostic]

Some issues:

A. Public perception on GMOs is irrelevant and the public realizes this due to the lobbying power that organizations like Monsanto have over Congress and Senate. As far as I'm aware, there are no requirements of GMO products to be labelled as such therefore leaving the American consumer unaware of what they are exactly purchasing. This is not to say that our current system of identifying consumables is sufficiently accurate, as it was revealed that corporations like Ocean Spray requested the FDA to make themselves exempt from listing their "added sugar" content because they explained that cranberries are naturally "unpalatable" and "astringent."

The fact that misrepresentation exists even in labeled products in the United States brings to question whether corporations can be trusted to distribute consumable products that are unlabeled and unmonitored. What you failed to touch upon was the fact that GMOs as a consumable resource enjoy a level of consumer secrecy that doesn't exist for many other common products on the market. Even vitamins list that their information is not verified by the FDA and yet there is a level of trust among the consumer basis because there exists a level of transparency that the public desires before deciding to make a purchase.

B. GMOs can't be compared to other products on the market because you are not going to ingest a keyboard or your network data plan. When it comes to consumable products it needs to be stressed that there is stringent testing being performed on these products before being released on the market because their anonymity holds them non-accountable to the general public therefore leaving them inculpable from retroactive guilt or lawsuits.

If we were to even pretend that GMOs were comparable to non-consumable products, then they still are inexcusable in many regards because they are exempt from a burden you are mentioning which is "consumer education." If someone invents a more advanced product based on an existing model, the company responsible bears the burden of informing the customer of how their product is superior. It is often due to this education channel which needs to be breached that certain products can only be sold on infomercials or through other channels that offer a means of "educating" someone on the advantages of buying the product. Take for example a bag that offers hidden pocket space and is fundamentally lighter than most bags, however for all appearances looks like your typical handbag that hangs with all the other bags at Macy's or some other retail store but has a heftier $ because of having superior fundamental design.

Companies that manufacture GMOs do not have this burden and in fact are the more disfavorable product on market with people preferring non-modified and limited pesticide products. However, the level of anonymity they have when it comes to redistribution by farmers means that the only burden companies like Monsanto need to take are as wholesalers towards farmers and agriculture market channels. Monsanto's reputation as a wholesaler is ethically questionable as the company is known for carpet bombing neighboring farms "suspected" of utilizing their GMO varieties without being licensed when many of their cultivars are known for being strong pollinators and having a wide area of travel when licensed farmers do not put in sufficient control mechanisms in place to contain said pollination outside the vicinity of their own farms.

C. Having a lack of sufficient evidence should never be considered adequate when it comes to public health when it comes to mass distributed products. We have observed that lax supervision of products have resulted in consumers i.e. the entire human population have been affected when food distribution agencies have not been strictly regulated. The Mad Cow Disease i.e. Creutzfeldt - Jakob disease spread as a result of sick or injured cattle being recycled to be used as feed to young cattle due to it being a cheaper alternative to soy. CJD being a prion based protein disease that encourages misfolding of other protein is a disease that is deadly due to it's ability to contaminate across species and having the same affect on the human central nervous system. Although there is a level of discernment one can take between having apprehension out of ignorance, there isn't sufficient justification to state that apprehension of consumable products is unmerited in a strongly unmonitored and capital oriented system of food distribution.

I am not going to share my opinion on the larger theme, because it is a large theme that I'm not sure how to tackle at the moment. I don't think I can attribute GMOs as being a net positive or a net negative for human society. However, there is a lot of room for growth and accountability to increase their reputation to non-informed consumers.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Some issues:

A. Public perception on GMOs is irrelevant and the public realizes this due to the lobbying power that organizations like Monsanto have over Congress and Senate. As far as I'm aware, there are no requirements of GMO products to be labelled as such therefore leaving the American consumer unaware of what they are exactly purchasing.

I find this point a little bit of an issue, because the odds that someone doesn't know what they're getting with GMOs is exceedingly small. See, if you buy GMO potatoes, chances are very good that somewhere on the label, they'll be called "potatoes". Because that's what they are. Potatoes. Potatoes with no significant differences for the end user. It would be like demanding that we label which farm they come from, or whether or not the people who grew them were Christians - as far as we can tell though extensive testing, there are no differences for the end user. The exception to this rule are things like the Inherent Potato or the Arctic Apple, but they're likely to be labeled either way, as the entire purpose of their modifications was end user satisfaction.

The fact that misrepresentation exists even in labeled products in the United States brings to question whether corporations can be trusted to distribute consumable products that are unlabeled and unmonitored. What you failed to touch upon was the fact that GMOs as a consumable resource enjoy a level of consumer secrecy that doesn't exist for many other common products on the market. Even vitamins list that their information is not verified by the FDA and yet there is a level of trust among the consumer basis because there exists a level of transparency that the public desires before deciding to make a purchase.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by unmonitored, or by "consumer secrecy".

B. GMOs can't be compared to other products on the market because you are not going to ingest a keyboard or your network data plan. When it comes to consumable products it needs to be stressed that there is stringent testing being performed on these products before being released on the market because their anonymity holds them non-accountable to the general public therefore leaving them inculpable from retroactive guilt or lawsuits.

But what about the low-range radiation from Wifi signals? Our bodies are "consuming" that on a day-to-day basis, and it seems just as difficult to hold those responsible accountable, no?

If we were to even pretend that GMOs were comparable to non-consumable products, then they still are inexcusable in many regards because they are exempt from a burden you are mentioning which is "consumer education." If someone invents a more advanced product based on an existing model, the company responsible bears the burden of informing the customer of how their product is superior. It is often due to this education channel which needs to be breached that certain products can only be sold on infomercials or through other channels that offer a means of "educating" someone on the advantages of buying the product. Take for example a bag that offers hidden pocket space and is fundamentally lighter than most bags, however for all appearances looks like your typical handbag that hangs with all the other bags at Macy's or some other retail store but has a heftier $ because of having superior fundamental design.

Companies that manufacture GMOs do not have this burden and in fact are the more disfavorable product on market with people preferring non-modified and limited pesticide products. However, the level of anonymity they have when it comes to redistribution by farmers means that the only burden companies like Monsanto need to take are as wholesalers towards farmers and agriculture market channels.

Well yes, that's sort of the point, isn't it? Monsanto isn't selling to the end consumer. They're selling to farmers, and when it comes to educating people on the advantages, they've been phenomenally successful! Most corn, sugar beets, soybeans, and numerous other crops currently grown are genetically modified. The fact that the end consumer wants to differentiate between two products that are pretty much exactly equivalent says nothing about whether those products are legitimately equivalent.

Monsanto's reputation as a wholesaler is ethically questionable as the company is known for carpet bombing neighboring farms "suspected" of utilizing their GMO varieties without being licensed when many of their cultivars are known for being strong pollinators and having a wide area of travel when licensed farmers do not put in sufficient control mechanisms in place to contain said pollination outside the vicinity of their own farms.

Okay, hold the phone. Not only does this not happen, but an actual court decision was based on this, well, not happening. Trace contamination will not lead to a lawsuit, and now they have to uphold that, because if they don't, there are some rather crucial legal decisions which might get appealed.

C. Having a lack of sufficient evidence should never be considered adequate when it comes to public health when it comes to mass distributed products. We have observed that lax supervision of products have resulted in consumers i.e. the entire human population have been affected when food distribution agencies have not been strictly regulated. The Mad Cow Disease i.e. Creutzfeldt - Jakob disease spread as a result of sick or injured cattle being recycled to be used as feed to young cattle due to it being a cheaper alternative to soy. CJD being a prion based protein disease that encourages misfolding of other protein is a disease that is deadly due to it's ability to contaminate across species and having the same affect on the human central nervous system. Although there is a level of discernment one can take between having apprehension out of ignorance, there isn't sufficient justification to state that apprehension of consumable products is unmerited in a strongly unmonitored and capital oriented system of food distribution.

But that's how we deal with essentially every product. Nobody blinks when a new strain of wheat hits the market when it was born out of traditional breeding methods or mutagenesis. Only GMOs. Or, to bring it back to the OP, my wifi router bathes my entire home in electromagnetic radiation. What are the long-term effects of this? We have no idea, but that didn't stop us from putting the product on the market, did it? We don't act like this even with other kinds of food.

 

[Dandy_here]

Read chapter 5 of omnivore's dilemma . Us getting most of our stuff from ourselves and local farms should suffice as a boycott against gmo's.

 

[AfungusAmongus]

As Bill Nye realized, there's nothing inherently wrong with genetic modification. Care to make/paraphrase an argument against GMO?