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comment by thundara
thundara  ·  3723 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The Debate About GMO Safety Is Over, Thanks To A New Trillion-Meal Study

    What's wrong with naturally occurring plants? GMOs have already been linked to Colony Collapse Disorder in Bees. Since most European nations have banned them, they've noticed their bee populations come back.

Citation? And there's a fair bit of safety research on GMOs in humans... (See comment in other chain)

    And what's wrong with "alternative medicine?" If natural medicines were the original medicine, aren't pills made to cure symptoms instead of causes made in a laboratory with extreme side effects the alternative?

Well yeah, that's just called herbal medicine; it's less controlled dosage and more potential contaminants, but still viable for plenty of people. The trouble is when you start getting into with proof of patient improvement for more off-the-road treatments. There is some value to the placebo effect, but when you're comparing that to drugs not found in nature, you're usually worse off (Not that every illness deserves a drug, but for those that do). Besides, pretty much every drug, natural or synthetic has side-effects, the point is to characterize them and prescribe them in cases where appropriate (Not that that is always the case, either =/).





BLOB_CASTLE  ·  3723 days ago  ·  link  ·  
thundara  ·  3723 days ago  ·  link  ·  

A lot of speculation in there and not a lot of evidence to make any conclusions (and it's from 2005, almost a decade old now)... There's also no mention of the EU's ban on GMOs or the changes in their absence... perhaps you're thinking of their more recent neonicotinoid ban?

user-inactivated  ·  3719 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I actually have read about the CCD issue before, and if it's still happening it's a sad problem -- but in no way enough evidence to be skeptical of GMOs. Just too much upside.

BLOB_CASTLE  ·  3723 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Perhaps. But to be frank, I am skeptical of many modern conventions. I am from the school of thought that believes things were better when they were simpler. Sure, there may have been more deaths, but then the world wasn't rife with issues brought by overpopulation.