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Comment by higherpurpose | Hacker News Reader

Really? You think people hate Monsanto now because of stuff that happened 50 years ago? Everything bad I've heard about Monsanto has been from the past 5-10 years.

Also:

1) I don't think "GM food" per se is bad, however if I had a choice, and knew ahead of time what I'm eating, I probably wouldn't choose GM food, whether from Monsanto or others, because I see GM food as "beta food", and I don't want to be the beta tester. Come back to me after 30-50 years of research for that type of GM product.

2) I do think Monsanto is bad as a company

3) I do think patenting lifeforms, like others have said is bad.

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If you look through the comments here, you'll see several people specifically mentioning agent orange as what's wrong with Monsanto.

A lot of the current activism against monsanto is due to pressure groups who have hated them for a very long time. Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth (both of which I used to be a member of until I realised what anti-science crap they were spouting about GMOs) have both had long-running campaigns which have strongly affected the public mood about GMOs. The 'Frankenfoods' Greenpeace campaign set the UK down a particularly crippling path.

I get extremely suspicious when I see super informed commenters defending a controversial corporation like Mosanto.

If you look into them, common sense will tell you Greenpeace and the modern environment movement in general are full of shit. So you don't need to take the word of internet commenters on that one.

Blahah, after reading this for a few hours it's pretty easy to conclude, you are oblivious, as well as uneducated to this beautiful thing call self education and peer to peer sharing. AKA, The internet. Countless studies have been released stating the dangers of GMO's, glyphosate, agrobacterium, prions, and everything that has to do with MONSANTO..... Short of being shocked at your ignorance it's people like you holding back this movement.

Do you use any medicines invented in the past 30 years?

I'll wager GM foods are a hell of a lot safer than most of the pharmaceuticals that pass FDA review.

Personally, I think drawing the line at genetic manipulation is arbitrary and not really backed up by science. Given a few years, there are plenty of everyday foods that you can breed into something poisonous.

In a sense, all food is "beta food" since the precise combination of genes that made up that plant may not have been tested before. ( I guess clones like bananas are safe. )

> Come back to me after 30-50 years of research for that type of GM product.

The roundup ready trait has been available to consumers for 18 years[1] now. Do you mean we need 30-50 more years of research, 48-68 total, or do you mean we only need 12-32 more years of research? (We'll ignore any research done before releasing the product to the public)

Also, while I understand your point, it seems funny to still call something that has been around for eighteen years, and already released a version 2.0, a beta product. Imagine if we treated software lifecycles like that.

[1] http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/pages/roundup-ready-patent...

I agree with you. The amount of pro-Monsanto sock-puppets [1] in this HN thread just goes to show that Monsanto's evil extends far beyond what the general public should be 'allowed' to discuss freely. I really recommend watching the documentary about Monsanto's evil [2].

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/libertycentral/2010... [2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6_DbVdVo-k

I know, it's alarming how they even have the internet monopolized in a way....these quacks are everywhere

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