Yes, I know thats the term they use. And its LOL.

Do you know what the benefits of GM foods are? Its great to throw crap like that around, but GM has the potential to have massive benfits.

And the point I'm trying to make is that people DONT weigh the benefits and the costs, they simply shriek about the costs and totally ignore or dramatically understate the potential benefits. Thats how it is in medicine anyway. Benefits are nebulous and hard to grasp concretely, whereas costs are dramatic and anecdotal and personal. Thalidomide babies are horrible, and tragic, and sad. The number of people who die of cancer for want of risky, experimental treatments are faceless and vague. Same as the people who starve to death or who cant afford good, nutritious food.

Sometimes I get confused though, so many people are arguing against organ selling and yet the thousands who die waiting for transplants each year don't have that same effect on the overall reaction.

This might help: Gallup poll

the thing that ****s me the most is that anti-gm food lobbiests have actually convinced third world countries to reject GM foods

thats just ****ed

Its the omission bias. LETTING someone die because you dont take steps to prevent it is seen as far preferable to CAUSING someone to die via some action you take, even if your intentions were good. By outlawing organ selling we are just LETTING the people who need organs die, and they are dying from other causes. If we legalized organ selling, the fear is that we might CAUSE deaths via people kidnapping homeless people and harvesting them or something. So, its too bad, so sad for those who need organs, but their blood isnt on our hands right? That one is God's fault, or whatever.

The same is true of drugs. The risk/reward has to be RIDICULOUSLY skewed in order to approve a drug. If there are severe, life-threatening side effects, it practically doesnt even matter how much benefit it is going to have. Those people that this drug will kill are worth so much more, in terms of public consciousness, than the people who the lack of drug will allow to die.

This seems to be a universal human trait though. People ALWAYS see acts of commission as far worse than acts of omission.

GM foods are sinful like condoms LDO

well it seems to me before we change over our entire food supply it might be wise to know more about what benefits are "potental" , and what are real.

I know, this is pretty outlandish though. full steam ahead and hope for the best. emphasis on hope.

that's pretty funny. like some family farmers and fringe groups have more clout than multibillion dollar companies.

How many scarecrows did you make out of that straw?

well if you think GM foods have been tested for safety you're pretty sadly mistaken.

the argument basically boils down to

pro GM - preliminary tests aren't poisonous (well some are but those products arent' on the market), so full steam ahead.

anti GM - prelimary tests show aren't really really safe. could be long term danger. must proceed with caution and continue testing but delay changing the biosphere from natural to GM.


seems to me the rational difference between the 2 views is simply how much risk you want to take.

Not at all. But even in that sense, a cost-benefit analysis is the most appropriate solution, not a dogmatic support for one option over the other.

Do you have any idea how much testing costs? Do you have any idea what decades of testing would do to the business producing the product? In the marketplace, testing a product for 20 years before releasing it is not viable. And if you want the government spending trillions of dollars per year on really exhaustive testing, why don't you tell the people and the politicians about who's going to foot the bill?

Furthermore, if a product has the potential to save thousands of lives every year, then clearly much greater risk is acceptable. It's nice to take a perfectly principled stance where lives are concerned, it's very convenient. But it's wholly impractical.

And please dont forget that every one of those billions or trillions of dollars that the government spends, even if you DONT object to taxation on principle, are still dollars that could have been spent elsewhere. Those trillions of dollars ARE, unequivocally, X number of human lives.

honestly the reason I coampare gm to the milk hormone thing is that i don't really see any benefits. a lot of hype and superb marketing, but no real benefit.

We got into this a little bit in Politics, but no offense, who really cares what benefits YOU see in it?

well what benefit did bovine hormone give? there was already a milk surplus. there was no need to artificially get cows to produce more milk.

I mean it was superb marketing by the makers of the hormone, but for consumers *and* ultimately for producers, it was just no good. I mean for producers it was just a "race to thte bottom" situation. I mean the best thing for producers would have been to get some kind of hormone that would cut the cows prodcution of milk, and get legislation or someting so everybody involved in commercial milk would have to use it.

not a direct analogy to GM foods, but really, what is the big problem we face that we need to totally redo the biosphere? I just don't get it? I mean didn't we learn our lesson from banning hunting deer or whatever (foxes and rabbits ro something where populations grow unchecked which wrecks the ecosyustem). and GM stuff is like a million times more complex.

It doesnt matter. What benefit do green legos give? How about red sports cars?

in a nutshell the food supply safety externality that becomes your personal internality problem.

so first you say my opinions on the benefits of bovine growth hormone don't matter, then when I restate that basically there are no benefits then you say ok no benefits but still so what.

well when you or your children or grandchildren are starving then you might get thet point.

"Benefits" are subjective. That's the point he's making - you don't get to arbitrarily define the standards here.

If farmers consider BGH beneficial enough to be worthwhile, then I pretty much have to take their word for it over yours. After all, this is their livelihood - which not only means they have some authority and knowledge of the subject, but also that if they use something they don't need, they are at a disadvantage relative to their competitors. This doesn't necessarily mean that they won't all use BGH (even if it's useless), but it seems unlikely to me that they're all this stupid. Moreover, if a few of them are smart enough to avoid paying for unnecessary products, then they will have an edge and (given a long enough time) will outcompete those using BGH. But I don't see this happening.

Furthermore, your talk about milk surplus seems to miss the point. Obviously this situation involves some deep nuance, and I can't pass judgment without being aware of the subtleties. But I will say one thing - if you can make each cow produce more milk, then you need fewer cows to produce the same amount of milk. Each cow represents a significant cost, so if you can meet demand with 5 cows, that gives you a huge edge over meeting demand with 10 cows. The situation may not be this simple in practical terms, but at least over the long run BGH offers clear benefits. If there is a bottleneck or bureacratic mess or subsidized incompetence going on, then BGH may not offer any benefits right now - but that hardly implies that it doesn't have strong theoretical benefits.

I think the non bst shamrock milk isn't any more expensive than the bst milk. tillamook cheese has always been kinda pricey I htink though so I don't know how that compares.