Data says GMO corn increases crop yields and provides health benefits | Hacker News Reader

Data says GMO corn increases crop yields and provides health benefits

geneticliteracyproject.org

86 pointsfelixcatus97 comments

For an organization whose motto is "Science not ideology," they sure have a lot of ideological backers[1]:

The Templeton Foundation has a record of supporting research on theistic evolution and conservative British politics.[2]

The Searle Foundation is the largest funding source for the American Enterprise Institute.[3]

The Center for Food Integrity is an industry group[4] that grew out of the Grow America Project, a lobbying vessel.[5]

I am not categorically anti-GMO. But I doubt the intentions of this source.

[1]: https://geneticliteracyproject.org/mission-financials-govern...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Templeton_Foundation#Core...

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Searle_Freedom_Trust#Grantees

[4]: https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Center_for_Food_Integr...

[5]: https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Grow_America_Project

Agree. Whole Foods is going to have to publish this before anyone buys it.

I can't quite put my finger on when - but sometime about 5 years ago we stopped arguing the merits and started allowing guilt by association as a valid argument.

There's no "guilt" here -- I'm just pointing out that accepting the premise (that organizations like these are funding and publishing honest research) will lead you to conclude what they want, not necessarily what our actual best science tells us.

The ills propagated by companies like Monsanto and DuPont are well documented and, in light of them, it's perfectly reasonable to question the motives of their lobbying groups.

Its the very definition of an Ad Hominem fallacy:

"When the source is viewed negatively because of its association with another person or group who is already viewed negatively."

https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFalla...

At no point did you address any of the actual claims in the article.

You can read what I think about ad hominems here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14121456

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13964490

Here's the short and sweet version: it's not fallacious to consider the character of actors if past experience indicates profound dishonesty/irrationality on their part. I think Big Ag's lobbying arm satisfies that condition.

Unless you're actually claiming that this site represents our best science (and not a bunch of think-tank-funded, cherry-picked studies), you're missing the point: all of the links above are good evidence that we should take this source with a grain of salt. They're not an outright dismissal; only more information.

Except you haven't linked any evidence that the specific authors have conducted bad science in the past, merely that they have accepted money from people you don't like.

You're right: I've committed the grave sin of counting on it being common knowledge that (for example) Monsanto ghostwrites papers claiming that Roundup is safe[1], and that groups like the AEI have tried to bribe scientists into critiquing global authorities on climate change[2].

Give me a break. HN is an educated audience, and just about everybody in North America who reads the news knows at least something about Monsanto/DuPont/Exxon/whoever manipulating the scientific process.

[1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-09/monsanto-...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Enterprise_Institute#...

Nah, you commited the grave sin of not considering that any of this isn't theatre for an ambulance chasing legal firm. That's actually covered in the article, and since you've been following this, you should be able to see the emails are pretty tepid stuff if read soberly.

Usually they're perceived ills that are misrepresented, so no, not really.

Is there a FSF equivalent for GMO?

Like code, I'm sure there's potential benefits to GMO. Like code, I'm sure that letting opaque corporations monopolise production with their patented technology will lead to lots of bad behaviour that's anti-consumer and potentially catastrophic.

Patents for plants expire relatively fast, then the problem is to keep up seed production - code can be copied forever, seeds have to be 'made'. Costly especially if your plants' yield depends on hybrid vigor, which is lost in subsequent generations, in that case you have to recross the two parental lines to make more seeds.

Having said that, there is the Open Source Seed Initiative: https://osseeds.org/ (you still have to buy the seeds since there is a cost associated with production and shipping)

There are also special licenses for some GM plants, for example, if you're a seed company from a poor country you can get the license for golden rice (extra Vitamin A) for free, not the seeds themselves, you have to make those.

>> if you're a seed company from a poor country you can get the license for golden rice (extra Vitamin A) for free, not the seeds themselves, you have to make those.

How convenient....what about not paying any license at all regardless of the "golden" seeds you produce?

Presumably the idea is to have seed companies who can afford the license pay for the R & D cost so that it can be subsidized for poorer countries.

I see it more like enslaving poorer countries to always pay licenses(as much as they can). These poor countries will always be at the mercy of some corporations.

I don't see how they could ever develop their own seeds if the licensors increase the license price. See the "pharma bro" case (Martin Shkreli). I bet the U.S. gov wouldn't be that upset if the customers were from a shwhole country.

How do free licenses enslave poor countries to always pay licenses?

"the first hit is always free"

Who decides when they need to start paying and what thought process do they apply to that decision? Profit maximisation probably involves putting alternatives out of business first.

Similar to how Microsoft and Adobe we're okay with piracy in developing nations on the basis it would kill competition and they'd get paid later.

Are the free licences perpetual or time limited?

Is Darth Vader going to alter the deal further?

No, the idea is to expand the rent-seeking on copyrights and patents to staple foods.

AFAIK, Golden Rice is a spin-off from university research and not owned by the big agriculture companies, so I think you are wrong in at least this instance. It's really no different from Qt being available both under the GPL and a less restrictive commercial license.

Sure, gene patents and proprietary software are both manifest evil, but not everyone working within the existing framework is acting maliciously.

That's an exceptional situation in that they determined that they weren't going to be making money on it so they instead turned it in to a pro-GMO PR exercise.

Read more on this here:

http://www.goldenrice.org/Content1-Who/who4_IP.php

So your claims about ownership appear to be false, and you still need a license.

I'm not sure about the "not making money" -> "use it as PR" causality. From that website, it reads like the researchers retained the right to make it available to poorer countries when they sold the patent, i.e. before Syngenta found that they wouldn't be making money with it. So I don't think it is fair to accuse them (the researchers) of only doing it for the PR.

As well as the researchers' patent, actually growing golden rice requires licences for a thicket of patents on the underlying technology from dozens of companies (and it required some wrangling to even get permission to license that patent for free since the government grants they got would usually require commercial licensing). They managed to get free licenses to those as, basically, a PR exercise - it was worth it to all those companies to do it because it let them spin opponents of their profitable products as monsters who wanted third world people to suffer. The licenses also had conditions that made them basically unusable, so if someone did miraculously manage to make golden rice viable they didn't have to worry about losing out on their cut.

You still have to buy the seeds; however, once you do they belong to you to plant, create your own stockpile, share with others, crossbreed or use selective methods to create a better strain for your specific environment/needs...

The threat of GMO is not in direct health effects, it's in corporate control of the food chain.

Isn't that threat independent of how the seeds are developed? Corporations have controlled the food chain in the US for a lot longer than GM techniques have been around.

There's a lot more centralization of ownership in farming than there used to be - and the way in which you obtain your seed is one of the biggest examples of that.

What does that have to do with GM? Doesn't this business model for seeds predate GM crops?

No the business model is very different now in some key ways. First, I'm not aware of any seed manufacturers having any motivation or ability to prevent the genetics in your seed from spreading before. They didn't license what you could and couldn't do with descendants of your crop. They were suppliers of materials (seeds), not licensors of the genetic code they contain. It's quite analagous to buying and owning a BSD CD with freedom to do what you want with minor conditions vs buying a license to possess a music CD and listen to the music under certain conditions. Second, the higher barrier to entry and how recently GM became a factor (and how significant the advantages are, especially the short-term ones) has essentially allowed a monopoly to form, and there's even less competition than there used to be.

Do you see GM crops as a short-term or a long-term problem then? As technology improves and the barrier to entry decreases, that should also help with the ownership/leasing issue.

I don't see GM crops themselves as a problem at all. I think they come with some potential downsides that deserve some special consideration we haven't had to do before. Maybe the monopolization will decrease eventually, maybe Monsanto will be able to push out potential competition before it becomes viable. We'll see. But generally speaking this issue of licensing genetics is new territory. What if they spread organically? What if we become too dependent on too few crops - all our eggs in one basket that might have long-term effects we don't know about yet. I'm just pointing that the open-source analogy was actually pretty good - open-source has benefits but you have to make sure it gets funded to compete. The money has to come from somewhere, and you need to make sure it's not so low-quality that it starts causing it's own problems.

Aren't the licensed crops generally designed to not spread organically?

We're already dependent on too few crops. Genetic modification gives us more ways to increase diversity and preserve crops that would otherwise fall out of use.

I've definitely seen cases where someone was accused of distributing seeds to a nearby farm but claimed they hadn't. I'm inclined to believe that's at least possible. To quote the mathematician from Jurassic Park, "life will find a way" - he's not wrong.

Which incidentally, is how a lot more open-source software used to be. You had to pay for the original CDs to help cover the costs of distribution, etc. but you were then free to do what you wanted with it - even share it with others for free if you wanted and were okay to cover the cost of doing so yourself.

Unfortunately, the usefulness of both herbicide-tolerant and insect-resistant GMO crops also expires relatively fast as weeds and insects develop resistance.

But you can slow down that process by crop rotation, for example in canola there are many known resistance genes for blackleg (fungus) infections. Farmers are in many places advised to rotate their canolas to different resistance genes so the fungus cannot build up resistance so quickly

See for example https://grdc.com.au/resources-and-publications/groundcover/g...

I cannot find any data where that particular fungus has gained and then subsequently lost its resistance to a plant resistance gene, but it wouldn't be impossible as long as the particular plant variety is not sown

Also, as the known GMO opponent Nassim Taleb points out, it's better to avoid unknown downsides completely that happen while chasing small gains from an unproven technology. GMO has a big downside with a small upside to it.

Known GMO opponent with no formal training in biology or agricultural science and a long history of lobbing ad homs at his opponents instead of having open discussions with them.

It really irritates me when "GMO" is categorically touted as beneficial or harmful. Each modification has to be evaluated individually, there is no blanket assessment for GMO in general.

This is a Syngenta/Monsanto sponsored website, it would be very surprising if they had anything critical to say about GMO.

Do you have a source for that?

Already linked elsewhere in the thread:

https://www.motherjones.com/food/2012/02/atrazine-syngengta-...

Domain Name: GENETICLITERACYPROJECT.ORG

Registry Registrant ID: C100814327-LROR

Registrant Name: Jon Entine

Registrant Organization: ESG MediaMetrics

Registrant Street: 6255 So. Clippinger Dr.

Note that both sides of the GMO debate are playing tricks and that it is usually good to research the source a bit before becoming an unwitting footsoldier in either army.

Its a joint website amongst all the multinational players in the GMO space (Bayer, Dupont, Syngenta, Monsanto, BASF, etc.).

It may look like a biased source, its not too bad. Most of the opinions/articles are backed by peer reviewed research. I think the purpose of the site it to put faces/ human touch on people that work directly with this stuff. Not some faceless corporation

No, the purpose is to be a PR vehicle to promote GMO.

Peer reviewed research can be cherry picked to promote one view or another. There was a time when 'peer reviewed research' was a badge of merit that would lead to general unquestioned acceptance. But when this was noticed and subsequently weaponized it became just another weapon in the arsenal of companies.

Here is another nice example of this (Big Tobacco & science):

http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/welcome/features/20071114_cardi...

> There was a time when 'peer reviewed research' was a badge of merit that would lead to general unquestioned acceptance. But when this was noticed and subsequently weaponized...

Everything is weaponized: science, religion, philosophy, any form of art or culture, any signifier of identity or group affinity, etc. If you think it and say it or express it publicly it will be used against you.

Propaganda is the plague of our age. It's like the informatic equivalent of the Black Death in the Middle Ages.

Edit: I'm not necessarily anti-GMO but I do not trust... anything. I just don't trust anything anymore. Every source of information is guilty until proven innocent.

> I'm not necessarily anti-GMO but I do not trust... anything. I just don't trust anything anymore. Every source of information is guilty until proven innocent.

I think that's the right attitude to take to media. You'd have to spend way too much time to follow the money trail in order to determine who is paying the piper this time around to get anything useful done.

Yes. I also tend to be suspicious of anti-GMO stuff which could just be shilling for organic food.

Or just unfounded panic. The good news is that producers of organic food tend to have much smaller marketing budgets than the GMO giants, even so you are absolutely right that you can't trust either camp to have your best interests at heart and you should be wary of any article that picks one side over the other without being totally transparent about the party that commissioned the article.

I hope that in the future we will be able to solve this problem because access to unbiased information is super important if we are to move forward as a species.

> The good news is that producers of organic food tend to have much smaller marketing budgets than the GMO giants

Sure, food producers, at least individually, have less money than big seed companies.

But don't kid yourself that the organic vs. GMO side makes a big difference. Often, its the same companies.

What's being said here is that current commercial crops of GMO corn are seeing increased yields, and are not causing health problems. (The headline is, as usual, overstating things.)

Separately, while you're right that each individual modification needs to be examined individually, the same is true of non-GMO foods, plastics, products, etc, etc. Singling out GMO is foolish.

One might even expect, with time, enough evidence to accumulate to be able to answer the ("blanket") question "all other things being equal, does application of GMO as a modification technique cause problems?" Indications thus far are that the answer is "no".

You can't make blanket statements about something as general as GMO, but you can make them about human nature and greed.

I don't think GMO is fundamentally different from processed foods. Processed foods can, in theory, be beneficial for us. But in practice they add all sorts of crap to make it taste better and reduce costs. It's an arms race between food companies trying to find new, cheaper substitutes that haven't been proven harmful yet and others who are concerned about health effects of processed foods.

If someone is messing with my food, I'd love to believe he's doing it for my benefit, but somehow greedy bastards are much more motivated and organized than altruists. Greedy bastards start companies and corporations, and it certainly helps to be one to rise to a CEO position. Food, like many products, is optimized to reduce production costs.

I don't have good sources at hand, but I keep reading that processed foods are linked to X or Y disease or Z deficiency, or some civilizational disease like allergy or cancer. Norwegians start admirable initiatives by donating large sums of money to other countries for humanitarian efforts and preservation of natural environment... yet their fish farms are just awful. Industrial scale fish farming is awful, even though fish are very healthy to eat in theory. There's nothing inherently harfmul about panga fish, but the way they're farmed in China would make you throw up.

Finally, I have an issue with GMO because we know so little about genetics and even plain old food and it often takes decades to find out some kind of food or ingredient is harmful. Look how long it took with sugar. Modifying one gene can affect others, unforeseen aspects of an organism. We don't have unit tests for DNA yet !!

My conclusion: GMO is one more way to obfuscate my food.

> substitutes that haven't been forbidden yet

FTFY

You can say that about any technological advance. If we're doing the evaluation and only picking the beneficial ones, doesn't that make the technology as a whole beneficial?

This is probably good for some balance:

https://www.motherjones.com/food/2012/02/atrazine-syngengta-...

This too (John Entine is the executive director for the GLP):

https://usrtk.org/hall-of-shame/jon-entine-the-chemical-indu...

What is interesting is that they're not even trying to hide their involvement anymore. At some point in time these companies must have realized that it doesn't even matter whether or not their involvement is made public or not because the only thing that matters is the volume at which they are blaring out their messages.

Also interesting is the frequency witch which this site gets posted on HN.

Yeah, except no one bats an eye when anti-GMO editorials get linked, or when said editorials quote legal firms involved in class actions against the GM giants. Or when anti-GMO lobbying groups are cited for 'balance' as in the previous comment.

The problem is every time a bee fly on or off your field you are committing copyright infringement.

Or in the case of maize, whenever the wind blows.

Or the wind carries seeds from the adjacent field... or... or...

Looks simply too risky for me. Health reasons aside, you're becoming dependent on the GMO producer.

Citation needed. This is listed as a myth in a NPR article about GMOs:

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/10/18/163034053/to...

That article says that Monsanto hasn't sued when only trace amounts of patented genes are found, not that growing plants with the patented gene (due to pollination or otherwise) without permission doesn't constitute patent infringement.

That was a good read, I had heard previously about the Canadian farmer who was sued for having the roundup-ready gene is his canola. Taking a look at the court record, it shows that it was a bit more intentional:

https://decisions.fct-cf.gc.ca/fc-cf/decisions/en/item/38991...

[39] In an attempt to determine why the plants had survived the herbicide spraying, Mr. Schmeiser conducted a test in field 2. Using his sprayer, he sprayed, with Roundup herbicide, a section of that field in a strip along the road. He made two passes with his sprayer set to spray 40 feet, the first weaving between and around the power poles, and the second beyond but adjacent to the first pass in the field, and parallel to the power poles. This was said by him to be some three to four acres in all, or "a good three acres". After some days, approximately 60% of the plants earlier sprayed had persisted and continued to grow. Mr. Schmeiser testified that these plants grew in clumps which were thickest near the road and began to thin as one moved farther into the field.

[40] Despite this result Mr. Schmeiser continued to work field 2, and, at harvest, Carlysle Moritz, on instruction from Mr. Schmeiser, swathed and combined field 2. He included swaths from the surviving canola seed along the roadside in the first load of seed in the combine which he emptied into an old Ford truck located in the field. That truck was covered with a tarp and later it was towed to one of Mr. Schmeiser's outbuildings at Bruno. In the spring of 1998 the seed from the old Ford truck was taken by Mr. Schmeiser in another truck to the Humboldt Flour Mill ("HFM") for treatment. After that, Mr. Schmeiser's testimony is that the treated seed was mixed with some bin-run seed and fertilizer and then used for planting his 1998 canola crop.

The argument is often made that GMOs are simply a sped-up process of the sort of guided evolution carried out by farmers since the start of agriculture so I find it hard to sympathize when the GMO proponents sue a farmer for doing exactly that.

That's OK, farmers using Monsanto product are sorting out those pirates^H^H^H bees too.

That is, frankly, bullshit.

For a rebuttal of that myth see npr: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/10/18/163034053/to...

This dates back to a time where a farmer planted 95% GM canola on his field without a license, and when Monsanto told him that he had no right to do so he said it all blew onto his field.

That doesn't change the fact that they tried to sue him. And to correct the parent post, it's patent infringement not copyright violation.

I don't follow the GMO debate closely, so I can't really say anything interesting about the data presented here, but it's interesting to me that these sorts of articles never talk about the larger systemic risks which I personally find to be by far the more salient argument.

Sure GMO products are probably safe to eat, and it's pretty obviously in farmers' immediate economic interest to use them. But what about the risks of agricultural monoculture? How diverse is the GMO and non-GMO corn that's grown around the world, and what are the trends in that diversity? What about trends in diversity of staple crops in general? How fast can the GMO industry react when a new blight or weed or bug comes along that's immune to the built-in resistance?

Finally, this article is published on a site that's devoted to promoting GMO foods. So, take its claims with a grain of salt. They may be entirely right, but an advocacy site is not going to post an article that questions the premise of its very existence. So from the point of view of trying to learn about the subject, this is probably a really poor place to start.

> But what about the risks of agricultural monoculture?But what about the risks of agricultural monoculture?

Most of agriculture, GMO and non-GMO alike, is monoculture. It was monoculture long before GMOs were even invented.

Maybe linking to the study itself instead of a pro-GMO lobbying site or at least to some popular science news without an agenda would be the safer choice.

You just have to look at the domain name and you already know that this is backed by someone with a clear agenda and probably paid by lobbyists. I don't know why they all have to name their domains in the same style. Must be SEO I guess.

The Union of Concerned Scientists says the exact opposite. One is funded by industry, the other from individual contributions. I know which one I think is right.

https://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/our-failing-food...

Being funded by the public doesn't mean the studies won't be biased. Just as the study proposed might have been biased, since it's financed by GMO producers, your study could be biased because of an agenda of the members doing the study or pressure from the bigger funders or commercial interests.

As an aside, it does not mean that the study you linked is wrong, I'm trying to say that everyone can be subject to bias.

This is like saying “100 years of data confirms coal provides lots of power cheaply!”

Yeah, we know. That was never the issue and it’s a red herring from the real issues. For GMOs there’s multiple issues with the licensing programs and how it affects farmers. But more importantly to me is the potential side effects in terms of these new strains going wild or interbreeding or being a monoculture that is potentially extremely succeptible to future problems and in the long run makes our food supply weaker instead of stronger. (See banana fungus problems, which is not due to GMO but due to the banana supply being a monoculture.)

Also saying broadly “GMOs are safe to eat!” seems as naive to me as broadly saying “GMOs are not safe to eat.” It totally depends on what is being modified and how.

Although i disagree with your undertone (GMOs are unsafe), i think you bring up valid points--Wide range in what is being modified, and how, makes all the difference in the world

See I didn't get that from their comment (that GMOs are unsafe), I understood it as the user is worried about unknown unknowns with it.

Even the best things in life have downsides, and GMOs are no exception. I think there is a literal solution to world hunger here, but it needs to be done carefully and with a lot of oversight.

The last thing I want is DRM in my potatoes...

Correct. At the scale of the world and feeding it, there will be drawbacks to whatever solutions. I agree there needs to be oversight and proper regulations. But GMOs, to me, unfairly suffer compared to every other technology. Nobody was calling for bans on cell phones in the early 2000s because they might cause brain cancer (and are an environmental disaster). Silicon valley type tech seems to get the benefit of the doubt, while agriculture innovation is still fighting perception with already accepted truths (GMOs are safe)

> Nobody was calling for bans on cell phones in the early 2000s because they might cause brain cancer

Actually, plenty of people were and even now there are studies being done in order to 'prove the negative'.

>This is like saying “100 years of data confirms coal provides lots of power cheaply!” Yeah, we know. That was never the issue and it’s a red herring from the real issues

Did you read the article? The yield of GMOs has been attacked by New York Times and organic food lobby. If that's a red herring, maybe you should be angry at the organic food advocates for this instead of research that proves this anti-GMO propaganda wrong.

It's kind of like trying to prove evolution to evolution-deniers. If you don't respond to their red herring arguments, they will go "gotcha, you can't prove us wrong!" and when you do, they just move on to another subject because "that's not an important issue".

The "gotcha" people and the "not important, I already knew that" people are usually not the same. Thinking that there are only two sides to any issue is usually quite shortsighted. (Same for being angry at the NYT instead of TFA: you can be angry about both.)

Of course, but we need all of these people to be educated about this. More scientific information is not bad, even if you think it's not important to you.

Yeah I think the point here is the reductionist mentality that we can just change one part of a system and everything else is uneffected. You see it in western medicine and GMO farming is just an extension. Our ecosystems are incredibly complex and we understand barely a fraction of how they work. When you mess with one part of the ecosystem it can have potentially catastrophic effects down line.

Regarding GMO and health benefits it may be interesting for others to read about Golden Rice [0]. Especially interesting is this line: "In June 2016, 107 Nobel laureates signed a letter urging Greenpeace and its supporters to abandon their campaign against GMOs, and against Golden Rice in particular."

Greenpeace has much publicity and their uneducated views are sadly picked up by media without further investigation. As the post linked here shows, GMOs are not the evil thing people usually connect it with, and people developing them don't seem to want to kill/poison/whatever the world.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rice

Just for the non-GMO/non-multinational crowd out there... there exists many corn/soy varieties which do not have transgenes in them and have reasonable yield performance...

And yet, the market shrugs. These GMOs are providing value and the ones currently deregulated may been proven safe for humans (by a long shot in my opinion). The environmental claims are more complex, but farmers were spraying nasty, nasty stuff 50+ years ago. That does not scale well

So, I started looking into this, just based on the very shady domain name of the place it was published.

The [original Italian study][0] that the article is promoting is probably worth paying attention to. It was published in Scientific Reports, Nature's open-access mega-journal. Their peer review is generally considered solid, though they do also offer a fast-track for a fee.

The Genetic Literacy Project, though, is a fully-industry-funded public relations mill, as discussed in [this Chicago Tribune article][1] In this thread, jacquesm provides a link to [a Mother Jones article about the industry connections of the sites' founder][2]. Another contributor to the site [had his emails with Monsanto execs FOIA'ed][3].

If we take HN seriously as a news site, it might have been more appropriate to link to the scientific paper than a PR site, especially given that the paper is not paywalled.

[0]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-21284-2

[1]: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-wp-blm-monsanto-0c061...

[2]: https://www.motherjones.com/food/2012/02/atrazine-syngengta-...

[3]: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2303691-kevin-folta-...

I'm more concerned about the legal implications of GMO crops and the way it's played out with massive agriculture corporations vs farmers.

I think there's also been a corresponding spike in human-consumed glyphospates that GMO proponents conveniently overlook.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/26583...

The TL;DR:

There are 2 types of GMO corn: Insect Resistant and Glyphosate Resistant, (Glyphosate is a herbicide, so it can be sprayed on fields killing weeds but not resistant corn).

Corn resistant to pests has less loss, therefore higher yield. Also, since there's less insect damage, there's less chance for rot, and therefore fewer mycotoxins, (mycotoxins = toxins that come from fungus). It also hasn't been sprayed with as many pesticides as a non-resistant variety would be, so there's less actual poison on the corn.

Corn with no competition from weeds has higher yield, and glyphosate makes it really easy to kill everything else in the field.

More corn = more food = better health.

Let's pick this apart a bit!

Ignoring the lobbyist domain, since the study also appears in Nature[1], there are some sneaky twists here:

> GMO corn crops had lower percentages of mycotoxins (-28.8 percent), fumonisins (-30.6 percent) and thricotecens (−36.5 percent), all of which can lead to economic losses and harm human and animal health

Fumonisins are a class of mycotoxins, so that 30.6% reduction is already included in the 28.8% reduction of mycotoxins.

The word "Thricotecens" only appears in Google as part of this study, and isn't in my computer's dictionary. Is there a scientist that can explain what it is? Is it another sub-group of mycotoxins?

Is it a good idea to be consuming corn that grew up with glyphosate[2] in the fields? It seems pretty poisonous, and I didn't see anything about balancing the benefits of more corn vs. less glyphosate.

We can also talk about if having more corn in our diet is really a good idea if we want, (spoiler: generally no, especially if you live in North America).

[1]https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-21284-2 [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate

Thricotecens is probably a misspelling of Trichothecenes, which are mycotoxins: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichothecene

From the Wikipedia link: "Trichothecenes are a very large family of chemically related mycotoxins produced by various species of Fusarium, Myrothecium, Trichoderma, ..."

Wikipedia says that Fumosins also come from Fusarium, so it looks like one particular group of mycotoxins is reduced.

Granted, Fusarium is a problem in gardens all over, (Fusarium Wilt will kill almost any food plant), but still, if all we're doing is sort-of beating one particular plant ailment it might be worth a cost-benefit analysis, externalizing as little as possible.

What is the claim here? That yields increase? Ok, sure.

That it reduces specific contaminants? Maybe.

That it provides health BENEFITS? Definitely not.

That it is SAFE in the long run? Definitely not.

Do you have sources for your final statement?

Uh, are we just making stuff up now? Most accepted scientific consensus is GMOs are safe...

It all comes down to your standard for safety. Potatoes that produce significantly more alkaloids would be more resistant to pests, but might become too poisonous for humans to eat. I'm pretty sure that you wouldn't call those GMOs safe. But of course that can also happen with classic selective breeding, so GMOs are not automatically less safe. See e.g. this story about the Lenape potato: https://boingboing.net/2013/03/25/the-case-of-the-poison-pot...

You don't have any source for your final claims. Here [0] is for you an open letter from 129 Nobel laureates in support of Precision Agriculture or how most people put it: GMOs.

[0]: http://supportprecisionagriculture.org/nobel-laureate-gmo-le...

Who would win the argument, 129 Nobel price scientist, or one anonymous Hacker News boi? According to most of the comments here, it's the Hacker News boi. :-(

To all you chaps asking for "proof", just think about it from the precautionary principle perspective: it's incumbent on those introducing large change into a complex system to prove the lack of harm, instead of us proving that there definitely will be harm.

A simple analogy:

We don't know for a fact that climate change can result in catastrophic disaster for the earth. But from a precautionary perspective, we need to do what we can to minimize our impact on the environment.

Similarly, the first few years of smoking a cigarette will show "no harm". However in the long run that is not the case.

GMOs are frankly too new, and too risky a proposition to blindly accept, even given so-called "expert" opinions. I also don't buy the sensational title, that GMOs "provide health benefits". The article makes claim about reducing contaminants, but it's a bridge too far to go all the way into "health benefits" territory.

I fully expect the down-voting from the Monsanto and GMO shills, but for the reasonable, independent readers, hopefully some of the above points make sense.

To be clear, you support GMOs that have only had small changes made to them, but are opposed to those with large changes? Or are you opposed to all GMOs regardless of how large the change is?

> That it provides health BENEFITS? Definitely not.

We can engineer genes for producing vitamins not found in the original strain of the crop, thus increasing their nutrition value. See Golden Rice[0].

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rice

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