EnviroLink Forum

Monsanto goes marching on with their "bad science". This is truly alarming.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w437uQf_A7c

The video is not very accurate in the presentation. For example, the on the case between Monsanto and Schmeiser and the interview with Schmeiser presented a far different representation than the facts of the case do.


http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/schmeiser.cfm

"The appellants actively cultivated Roundup Ready Canola as part of their business operations," a majority led by Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin and Mr. Justice Morris Fish concluded. "In light of all of the relevant considerations, the appellants used the patented genes and cells, and infringement is established.

"By cultivating a plant containing the patented gene and composed of the patented cells without licence, the appellants deprived the respondents of the full enjoyment of the monopoly," they said, writing on behalf of Mr. Justice Ian Binnie, Mr. Justice Jack Major and Madam Justice Marie Deschamps. "The appellants' involvement with the disputed canola was also clearly commercial in nature."

Mr. Schmeiser saved the seed and reused it "for production and advantage," the majority noted. "Whether or not patent protection for the gene and the cell extends to activities involving the plant is not relevant to the patent's validity."

<snip>


In assessing damages after the original trial, Judge MacKay noted that tests revealed that 1,030 acres of the canola on the farm were more than 95 per cent resistant to the herbicide.

_________________
With friends like Guido, you will not have enemies for long.

“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none”
Arthur Schopenhauer

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
Albert Einstein

Today, my son informed me that the three bags of tortilla chips I bought at City Market had Monsanto GMO corn in them.
I have found that the antennae and very large ears we have developed are very good for enjoying my solar acid electric blues metal guitar playing. Today was some of the heaviest I have ever played in all my years since 1965. The antennae let me remember the return to the songs made up for our Creator and from Him. I have also been able to feel the presence of animals and people observing me for many years. I have been able to stand outside the universe and within a meson cloud at the same time since 44 years ago.
No Monsanto GMO then, but I have been able to communicate with plants for a number of years. Swarm intelligence is understood but still confounding to my antennae. I can close my ears and hear music of beauty when unpleasant noises like rap are briefly on the TV or garbage trucks going by once a week, cause disturbance. I can see for miles and miles and miles, and travel the windswept sands and currents in time back and forth billions of years, and back 137 years to the mutilation of my friends. Now for Gary Owen!
Thanks Monsanto!!!!! Have a chip!!!:lol:

_________________
"With every decision, think seven generations ahead of the consequences of your actions" Ute rule of life.
“We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children”― Chief Seattle
“Those Who Have the Privilege to Know Have the Duty to Act”…Albert Einstein

Johnny, I'm not sure what you are on, but could I have some please?
Sometimes I think it might be quite the ride being you!
But for now and with certain issues such as this one ..... I'm on the ground.

I'd like to say ..... "Keep on Rockin' in the Free World" ..... but the free world doesn't seem to exist anymore as much as I like Neil Young's song.

"The video is not very accurate" you say... and give one example of ..... Percy Schmeiser.

We can talk about him if you like, but the video is about much, much more than old Percy and his canola plantation ....... But now for the "presentation".

What Dr. Suzuki is sounding the alarm bells for is way beyond Percy and canola. He is speaking out, with his geneticists feet firmly planted on the ground, against a "population experiment" which is going on without our consent. The multinational and transnational corporations are marching ahead in their bad science which they are due to profit from. They are about to become much richer from these experiments while the general population, the environment, food production , and our forests is/are about to become much poorer.

Suzuki is sending out the alarm bells for those who are able to listen.

He is attempting to educate us about vertical inheritance vs. horizontal inheritance. This is NOT Mendel. This is Corpitocracy regardless of which side one votes.

It's an experiment upon all our heads because genetically modified trees .... and food .... is an inherently uncertain process and therefore hazardous. The experimenters do not know what's going to happen or how it's going to land and yet those pushing for it are going to gain enormously which is good reason to sound the bells ... and hear them. Profit is being promoted as opposed to our own well being as well as the very fundamental well being of our environment. If we don't have that, we have nothing.

With little public discussion, the technology is being pushed into our food, sprayed onto our fields, and engineered into our medicine without our knowledge even though there are profound health, ecological, and economic ramifications. The industries are rushing ahead because of the dollar value. They are testing a hypothesis and we are the guinea pigs.

As Suzuki so eloquently explains, real science actually tests out the hypothesis and, done correctly, acknowledges there are trials and errors. If it doesn't work, we toss it out and revise. It is the way science progresses. But in this case, the hypothesis is being rammed down our throats with little experimentation and no possibility of consent. This is a case of corporations experimenting on people and the environment we both live in and depend on. They are rushing this experiment through. We are at the beginning of the hypothesis but without the application of the precautionary principle. There has been little experimentation done except for the scientists who work for the corporations themselves. It's more than likely that these corporate scientists are biased.

Genetically engineered trees are supposed to resist insects and toxic herbicides while they are engineered to be sterile meaning they cannot produce seeds, nuts, pollen nectar or fruit.

The idea is to insert Bt toxin into the cells of trees which would cause every leaf, flower, and fruit pollen of the tree to produce this insecticide. Advocates claim this would reduce the need to apply chemicals because pests would be exterminated by eating the tree, yet we already know that using a pesticide this way selects resistant insects who breed with other resistant insects which puts industry on a treadmill of using an endless stream of different and more toxic pesticides. Expensive ones.

'The pesticides cannot be washed off because they are in EVERY cell of the tree so there is no specific target and no real limit to what or whom can be harmed.' Monarch butterflies, for instance, .... the ones who do the job of pollination, even as we see the demise of bees. Already Bt toxin have unintentionally resulted in the evolution of Bt resistant bugs and more toxic pesticides are needed to control them. At great expense to the farmers ..... while a corporation's main goal is profit.

The long term consequences of toxic trees is unknown, but Monsanto, who also invented DDT and proclaimed its safety, effected animals up the food chain. Check out the peregrine falcon whose eggs were so thin that they failed to hatch ... as a result of DDT. Monsanto would not inform you of such perils because it would hurt their corporate wallet.

Bt leaches into the soil and water systems. In the soil they alter the microbial composition via the roots of corn, for example. The bacteria picks up the toxin and spreads it outwards into the entire ecosystem's ground and surface water. The Danish government has banned the glyphosate used on 'Round Up Ready' because it has contaminated their drinking water! (Example of responsible government).

In areas that are growing in high concentration of Bt corn, are found abnormally high content in the water systems and we are also seeing diseases triggered by immune reaction. Suzuki cites the Philippines as one example where this is happening.

Look at what is happening in Hawaii. Papaya growers have been subject to a 50% contamination rate of organically grown papaya ..... as well as the folks who are growing it in their yards .... contaminated! They have lost their organic certification because of the spread of GE seed which they are finding in the seeds of their fruit. Their crops are suffering from a fungus spread by GM that they are having to spray every 10 days. Many have had to go out of business. As one grower stated, the National Academy of Science has released a report which states the potential risk of unintended side effects of GM foods is greater than from natural process. Round Up Ready comes with a very high price tag. It isn't cheap.

We are subjected to massive experimentation without the provision of informed consent. The corporations are writing the rules and we have absolutely no say .... except in the recent and widespread protests. But while we are hitting the streets in record numbers .... the corporations are in bed with governments which have profit and big business going for them, and so there voices are louder.

As far as GM trees and with patent laws being what they are, and with the propensity of pollen being distributed by air/wind, birds, etc ...... Monsnato can now OWN all trees, private or public, because if 1% of their genetically modified seed is found to have blown into Yosemite or Yellowstone ..... the forests then belong to the corporation and they can do whatever they like ...... it is then "intellectual property" and they own the forests just as they "legally" own organic papaya plantations or Canadian canola.

They made an example of Schmeiser and he knew it. "When Monsanto made the law suit against Percy, they admitted it was a test case and they wanted to see how far they could exercise through patent law, control over a farmer regardless of how a seed got into a famer's field. 2 1/2 weeks of trial, the judge ruled "It does not matter how any of Monsanto's GMO seeds or plants got onto a farmer's field." He (the judge) then went on to describe how this could happen .... cross-pollination, wind, birds, floods, etc. ----- doesn't matter. Even if the contamination rate is 1%, ALL your field belongs to Monsanto."

And now, with these patent laws enforced and with the advent of GM trees, and the inevitability of pollen and wind contaminating both private and public forests, the corporations own us as well as the places we call our own. They own life. They have a patent on it. It's called intellectual property and because it's legal, we may as well all shut up. We may still enjoy Yosemite and other places, but without lingam, which is also an attribute of trees that genetic modification wishes to manipulate, the trees will have no structural integrity and will be blown over by the wind and subject to unintended disease so that we can enjoy crawling over them rather than walking under them.

What a discouraging mess. But we can overcome.

Kinkos, for example, has agreed to not buy any GM tree product for the paper they use.

The suggestion is that we squeeze the companies who do .... out.

No, he is giving his opinion and that opinion is supposed to be supported by evidence. When any of that evidence is found to be a misrepresentation ALL of the evidence becomes questionable until it can be confirmed. Thus, the video is its own worst enemy because it shows it misrepresented the facts and cannot be trusted.



With misrepresentations to back up the claim? That is hard to believe unless you really want to do so and really do not need evidence to support your belief.



And using what amounts to lies to sway them? How is that not a problem if the truth does not support the view?



No bias here, what facts are there to show an issue with horizontal over vertical inheritance? How is a random mutation different from a gene insertion exactly?



What uncertain results have there been exactly? Is this supported by evidence or merely an assumption?



Really? What are the uncertain outcomes of the genetic experiments with insertion and random mutation, for example?



Give us evidence to show the well being is actually threatened, but use the truth and not misrepresentations thereof.



Little public discussion? The number of blogs, protests, court actions, articles, forum discussions, meetings, videos, commentary, and the like belie that claim.



Except this is not the case. There have been decades worth of experiments to support the branch of science. What failures are there to cause a change? That is where the video fails because it cannot show that but instead has to try to manufacture issues.



Really? Maybe you can provide some data to support this hypothesis because one of the largest funding bases for any research is the government to academic researchers. These researchers did years worth of work before any commercially viable concept became possible.



And encasement of the pesticide in the item being protected instead of general application to the environment as a whole is worse how? Or are you just opposing pesticides in general and picked only this niche to fight?



How is this different from applied pesticides exactly? Other that being specific to the protected items, of course. What are the "great expenses" to the farmers? If the expense is so high they would not accept it unless the benefit was higher .... or the expense is also a misrepresentation.



The long term consequences of "toxic trees" is different from the corn or cotton how exactly? I find it amusing that you use the claim of misrepresentation of DDT to impugn the industry in the defense of the claim of misrepresentation by the opposition to GMO. Do you know what term can be used to describe such an action?



Evidence of this claim is where? Not a video or a blog but real honest to gosh science published in a reputable peer reviewed source.



There were restrictions on Autumn applications presented in 2003 and removed in 2004. The use of glyphosate increased 2003-2007 over 1998-2002

http://croplifefoundation.files.wordpre ... n-2007.pdf



Given the previous errors, specifics would be better than these generalizations. Papers?



I saw that mentioned, but the video also mentioned things I knew were not truthful. Some specific research would be better than the anecdotal presentations.

.

As long as you ignore the whole research oversight thingy .....



Not exactly, which is why the misrepresentations cause such a problem.



No, but why let the truth get in the way of a good lie. The court case was about the harvesting of the seeds from the contamination and using them without the proper approval. The field in question was 95% GMO, which is far different. Please give us a legitimate reference to the quote of 1% contamination making the entire crop the property of Monsanto, if you can. If you cannot how does it feel to repeat a lie after being told the source was lying to us?



Why not just make up something? Nevermind, I see you already have.




Marketing is a wonderful thing. You do not believe big corporations when they tell you something, unless you want to believe it?



Go for it. But the problem is providing evidence to sway those who do not already believe and what happens when that evidence is found to be a lie is not often pretty.

_________________
With friends like Guido, you will not have enemies for long.

“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none”
Arthur Schopenhauer

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
Albert Einstein

The top five myths of GMO seeds from an unconnected source:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/1 ... eds-busted

_________________
With friends like Guido, you will not have enemies for long.

“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none”
Arthur Schopenhauer

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
Albert Einstein

There's little more amusing than a self-proclaimed science proponent suffering from a bad case of GMOphobia.

_________________
TANG SOO!

Who is the self proclaimed science proponent?
Definitely not me!
And if you mean Suzuki, well there is nothing "self-proclaimed" about him and his credentials as a geneticist.

Could ya just ... like maybe ... actually contribute something if you are going to pipe in?
Like, you know, maybe contribute just a little something? Something substantive, maybe something a little controversial or food for thought'ish? .... rather than morsels and scraps? Like, you could actually "ENGAGE". Or would that be too strenuous?

Or ..... forget it .... never mind ... just keep throwing popcorn.
But wait, maybe you would like to throw GM tomatoes that are trained to throw themselves ..... the ones that have been engineered to side with whatever the winning team is ...... much easier than to think for yourself and actually ENGAGE in the discussion.

If you are not going to get in .... well, the obvious is to get out.

If that is not obvious to you, then say something worth responding to.

quote="Wayne Stollings"]The video is not very accurate in the presentation. For example, the on the case between Monsanto and Schmeiser and the interview with Schmeiser presented a far different representation than the facts of the case do.[/quote][/quote]

"The video is not very accurate" you say... and give one example of ..... Percy Schmeiser.

We can talk about him if you like, but the video is about much, much more than old Percy and his canola plantation ....... But now for the "presentation".

What Dr. Suzuki is sounding the alarm bells for is way beyond Percy and canola. He is speaking out, with his geneticists feet firmly planted on the ground, against a "population experiment" which is going on without our consent.



NONE of the evidence has been misrepresented. His opinion is well-founded and has not been represented as conclusive. He is asking questions as any good (traditional, sincere) scientist does. He's doing his job. He questions the haste and readiness that his colleagues submit to in an area that is still revolutionary.

The multinational and transnational corporations are marching ahead in their bad science which they are due to profit from. They are about to become much richer from these experiments while the general population, the environment, food production , and our forests is/are about to become much poorer.



No, not misrepresentations .... he has not concluded anything. He is keeping the door open by asking questions. He has not shut the door on Percy regardless of the conclusions of the supreme court of Canada. He is a scientist, not a lawyer.

Suzuki is sending out the alarm bells for those who are able to listen.



Not lies but questions ........

He is attempting to educate us about vertical inheritance vs. horizontal inheritance. This is NOT Mendel. This is Corpitocracy regardless of which side one votes.



Bias? Does he stand to gain economically as the corporations do? Might they be biased?

But you ask a good question. And it is one that he is asking. He poses the question, as you seem to, ... What difference does it make if we pull out a gene from one organism and insert it into another? We know about vertical inheritance but horizontal inheritance? ... not so much. The biotechnologists are saying that genes are genes and it doesn't matter where you stick them as they'll just function the way they normally do. Right?

But genes do not function alone. They function within the context of the entire genome. The whole orchestration is an integrated genome that acts as a complete entity. To take a gene from a fish and stick it into a plant alters the "context" in which the gene is found. Genes do not act alone. To believe that they do is mechanistic.

He offers this fact as a query, not as a lawsuit!

See? It's an inquiry. See?

He is giving HIS OPINION, which is not shared by the majority of other geneticists. In the presentation of his OPINION the video makes several false claims which does not reflect well on ANY of the other aspects of the video.



Except for the claims concerning ownership based on a misrrperesentation of litigation, which was itself misrepresented.



No, there are clear statements made in the video, which are false. There are no questions asked about ownership of trees on public land which are supposedly cross polinated with GMO trees. There are false statements made, however.



Assuming it is "bad science" since that would be the question being asked.



And the proof of this statement is where? In the QUESTIONS asked in the video or the false statements?



Yet you just said "the general population, the environment, food production , and our forests is/are about to become much poorer" which is a conclusion. It is not from the video then?



He may not have shut the door on Percy, but the video allowed Percy to lie and also misrepresented the legal case significantly. When such statements are made in a video such as this EVERYTHING in the video must be questioned regarding accuracy and truthfulness.



The video is sending out more than that, which is why I mentioned the misrepresentations.




No, there were clear lies presented in the video and I have already pointed some of them out.



In the process there are lies presented in support of this attempt and those lies are in the same video as his attempt at education. Do we believe all of the video or none of the video until we can determine what is actually the truth? I take the latter and it seems you take the former.



Economics are not the only basis for a bias. The question still remains of how gene insertion is different from a random mutation exactly?



But you miss the random mutation aspect, which is important.
Do you know how many plants we have which have been randomly mutated as opposed to planned mutation? How is one bad and the other not exactly? It is not the inheiritance as much as it is the change that is the question.



And how does a random mutation differ in this case? Is not that the basis for the theory of evolution? How a proto-human can evolve both into an ape family and a human family through random mutations, which would alre the "context" of the genes.



There are also legal "facts" presented which are neither legal nor facts.




No, because an inquiry does not make firm claims as did the video and even yourself when discussing the video.

_________________
With friends like Guido, you will not have enemies for long.

“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none”
Arthur Schopenhauer

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
Albert Einstein

][/quote]

"The video is not very accurate" you say... and give one example of ..... Percy Schmeiser.

We can talk about him if you like, but the video is about much, much more than old Percy and his canola plantation ....... But now for the "presentation".

What Dr. Suzuki is sounding the alarm bells for is way beyond Percy and canola. He is speaking out, with his geneticists feet firmly planted on the ground, against a "population experiment" which is going on without our consent. [/quote]

No, he is giving his opinion and that opinion is supposed to be supported by evidence. When any of that evidence is found to be a misrepresentation ALL of the evidence becomes questionable until it can be confirmed. Thus, the video is its own worst enemy because it shows it misrepresented the facts and cannot be trusted.



With misrepresentations to back up the claim? That is hard to believe unless you really want to do so and really do not need evidence to support your belief.



And using what amounts to lies to sway them? How is that not a problem if the truth does not support the view?



No bias here, what facts are there to show an issue with horizontal over vertical inheritance? How is a random mutation different from a gene insertion exactly?



What uncertain results have there been exactly? Is this supported by evidence or merely an assumption?



Really? What are the uncertain outcomes of the genetic experiments with insertion and random mutation, for example?



Give us evidence to show the well being is actually threatened, but use the truth and not misrepresentations thereof.



Little public discussion? The number of blogs, protests, court actions, articles, forum discussions, meetings, videos, commentary, and the like belie that claim.



Except this is not the case. There have been decades worth of experiments to support the branch of science. What failures are there to cause a change? That is where the video fails because it cannot show that but instead has to try to manufacture issues.



Really? Maybe you can provide some data to support this hypothesis because one of the largest funding bases for any research is the government to academic researchers. These researchers did years worth of work before any commercially viable concept became possible.



And encasement of the pesticide in the item being protected instead of general application to the environment as a whole is worse how? Or are you just opposing pesticides in general and picked only this niche to fight?



How is this different from applied pesticides exactly? Other that being specific to the protected items, of course. What are the "great expenses" to the farmers? If the expense is so high they would not accept it unless the benefit was higher .... or the expense is also a misrepresentation.



The long term consequences of "toxic trees" is different from the corn or cotton how exactly? I find it amusing that you use the claim of misrepresentation of DDT to impugn the industry in the defense of the claim of misrepresentation by the opposition to GMO. Do you know what term can be used to describe such an action?



Evidence of this claim is where? Not a video or a blog but real honest to gosh science published in a reputable peer reviewed source.



There were restrictions on Autumn applications presented in 2003 and removed in 2004. The use of glyphosate increased 2003-2007 over 1998-2002

http://croplifefoundation.files.wordpre ... n-2007.pdf



Given the previous errors, specifics would be better than these generalizations. Papers?



I saw that mentioned, but the video also mentioned things I knew were not truthful. Some specific research would be better than the anecdotal presentations.

.

As long as you ignore the whole research oversight thingy .....



Not exactly, which is why the misrepresentations cause such a problem.



No, but why let the truth get in the way of a good lie. The court case was about the harvesting of the seeds from the contamination and using them without the proper approval. The field in question was 95% GMO, which is far different. Please give us a legitimate reference to the quote of 1% contamination making the entire crop the property of Monsanto, if you can. If you cannot how does it feel to repeat a lie after being told the source was lying to us?



Why not just make up something? Nevermind, I see you already have.




Marketing is a wonderful thing. You do not believe big corporations when they tell you something, unless you want to believe it?



Go for it. But the problem is providing evidence to sway those who do not already believe and what happens when that evidence is found to be a lie is not often pretty.[/quote]

Which Schmeiser did not use for personal gain in the end. The court case ended with Monsanto paying Schmeiser for clean up costs, even though Monsanto "theoretically" won.

He still did not present a FACTUAL representation of the situation. He discussed much lower percentages. He also did not reference this "saving" the modified seeds, which negates the "accidental contamination" being the cause of the case he wanted to present. Such blatant misrepresentations do not help the credibility of the presentation in the whole video. Either the fact checking was non-existent or the use of misrepresentations was intentional, but everything else would have to be questioned until it could be confirmed.

_________________
With friends like Guido, you will not have enemies for long.

“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none”
Arthur Schopenhauer

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
Albert Einstein