Wayward Son

GMOs are not an ingredient. And I already explained the reasons why I opposed mandatory labels for things like GMOs. If you wish to discuss that you can go back to that post and refer to it. About 95% of food allergies come from 10 or 12 foods. I would like to see the causative proteins altered or removed. If it is done, it will be GMO that does this, saving many lives. Allergy testing does not take 3 months. I will not click on a link to Globalresearch which is on par with naturalnews, infowars, and David Icke for conspiracy insanity. However, I already know that author must be Smith, who is a liar and a lunatic. He does actually believe he can fly.....seriously....He is an advocate for transcendental meditation and all kinds of other whacky crap. But of course, it is his scientific credentials that should matter most. And his scientific background is solid....all none of it. No scientific training what-so-ever. He often makes claims that someone with high school science should be able to see through easily. His claims that you quote, like every claim in his books and articles are laughably wrong. It comes from completely misinterpreting a single study which was not measuring soy allergies, and was conducted before GM soy ever became available in the UK. Those should have been the first hints to Smith that his claims are wrong, baseless and hilariously stupid, along with the fact that he admits no such results have ever been found anywhere else. I used to be anti-gmo. In fact I read Smith's first book Seeds of Deception back in '03 or '04, and thought highly of it. A couple years later I started to question some of the anti-gmo claims I was reading about, and went back to Seeds of Deception as I now had scientific training and the ability to judge both the scientific claims as well as the sources that were being used. As I read along I saw one embarrassing mistake after another, and when I traced his claims to his sources....oh boy. I actually started my own drinking game where I would take a drink if I traced back one of his sources and found it to either be ridiculous, or legitimate information that was completely misinterpreted, or if the source actually didn't lead anywhere (ie source to an article by Smith, which in turn uses another article as a source, which in turn sources the first article). It led to some pretty bad hangovers. It is sad enough that Smith has made himself completely ignorant about science and reality. It is worse that he has spread that ignorance far and wide.

I am going to assume that you don't actually know anything about the "traditional breeding" that has actually been going on for the past 80 years. The breeding that has fed the world. I am actually going to have to assume that you don't actually know much about the traditional breeding that went on for centuries before that. The difference between our food crops and the ancestors from which we developed them from is that we heavily manipulated their genetics. Just because our ancestors didn't know that they doing such, doesn't mean that is not what happens. Our food has been heavily manipulated on the genetic level. That is a very good thing. None of my argument was made up. I did give a simplified example of what plant breeding does in the hope that you might actually know something after you read it. My hope was in vain. Organic farming using pesticides. Agent Orange was not a pesticide. All kinds of things can cause health problems, but it is dose which makes the poison. I would rather swim in DDT than have much exposure to several common organic pesticides. Organic pesticides did not have to pass the stringent modern safety tests that synthetics do. They were grandfathered in. So they use copper sulfate which does not biodegrade. They use rotenone which is a highly neurotoxic. Compared to most synthetics in use, rotenone-pyrethrin is not only likely far more dangerous, but it generally has be applied several more times. And, as you are so interested in labels maybe you should check out the labels on organic pesticides for things like toxicological effects and persistence in the soil. These are things that you will find on all synthetic pesticides, but on organics they will most likely say that it is unknown. Why? Because they haven't been studied, and do to the organic lobby, they don't need to be. The EIQ is known for several organic pesticides though. A scoring of 10.0 would mean that an ounce in a stream would kill the fish in the surrounding area. Rotenone, the neurotoxin, scores a 33.0. Sabadilla, another organic pesticide, 35.6. The positive thing however, is that because the doses are so low for the consumer, they don't have to worry. The farm workers, however do, where they are often poor migrant workers exposed to higher levels of pesticides because they do not biodegrade as well as the synthetics. 1) roundup is not a pesticide, so it would hardly result in pesticide resistant weeds. 2) all plants develop resistance to herbicides, pesticides and fungicides whether they are synthetic or organic. It is called evolution. It happens to organic ones as well, and the only reason it does not happen more quickly is because organic farming makes up a small percentage of agriculture. If all farms went organic next week, you would likely see complete resistance in a couple years. A whole bunch of people would starve - a whole bunch more than would starve initially when the organic farming take over didn't come close to feeding everyone. But that is small price to pay to uphold an anti-science fairy tale, right? So what? Maybe you should look into the Ames test and you will find that all plant food is jam-packed full of pesticides they naturally produce and all kinds of other toxins, most of which have found to be mutagenic using the Ames test. The human body can fend off trace residues of pesticides with ease. Experts in toxicology and immunology have a far different view of these than the general public does, because they have actually studies these issues and they have not found it to be harmful, and possibly beneficial. Science and reality do not conform to the naturalistic ideology, for the simple reason that it is complete nonsense. You don't think that the organic industry has their little grubby hands lobbying government. There is a reason why for example organic pesticides don't need to pass the same tests as the rest. There is a reason why organic pesticides are still being used that wouldn't get certified for regular agricultural use, but have been grandfathered in. All farming harms the environment. Organic farming has the added effect of requiring more land to produce the same amount of food and continuing to use old crappy pesticides instead of mainstream farming where new safer synthetic are always being developed. You have? Seemed like one big naturalistic logical fallacy to me. Organic farming is based on pseudo-science. That is why it is promoted through mass media (although finally some of the media has realized what nonsense it is), instead of through science and publishing in journals. It is based on pre-scientific ideas like vitalism. It promotes the idea that a plant knows the difference between an organic potassium or phosphorus and a synthetic one. It continues to burden itself with a bunch of rules that are based on ideology instead of science. And as I have said before, it requires more land to produce the same amount of food. I like natural spaces and don't want to see them needlessly turned into farm land because the general population is illiterate when it comes to science.

This is a thoroughly ignorant response along the lines of "Let them eat Cake." But at least Marie Antoinette likely never said the lines that are attributed to her. I can't imagine anyone alive today not knowing that there are a whole lot of extremely poor people living in places like Southeast Asia who don't have access to doctors who might tell how to eat, although seeing as they survive on less than a dollar a day and on a single staple - mainly rice, telling them to eat more varied diet is kind of an extremely stupid thing to say and only the most ignorant people in the First World could manage to be that clueless. These people are not deficient in vitamin A because they love rice so much that they refuse to eat anything else. They are vitamin A deficient because rice is that only thing they have to eat. Maybe you should take the time to look out why golden rice was developed and where it is meant to deployed before you say that these people should take a hop to the store to buy some beef liver with collard greens and cheddar cheese. It is not these people who are ignorant, it is you.

1) This is not going to be a scientific study. 2) Legal personhood is determined not by biology, but by law and policy.

This is simply a case of throwing out any argument you can find to see what sticks. I have had this kind of conversation several times before (sometimes about allergies, sometimes about butterfly populations, and sometimes about the other various untruths that are spread about the technology). Why do you oppose GMOs? Allergies. So if it was shown that GMO technology can reduce allergic reactions then you would support it? No. So you don't actually give a damn about allergies, and can't come up with legitimate reasons to support your position. (There have been millions of allergic reactions to foods. Number from GMOs? none)

To me at least, calling it a product generally implies that it is being marketed or available for purchase. Monsanto has long promised that they would not use terminator (GURT) technology. They have never even done field trials. In 2007 Monsanto bought Delta and Pine Land because it was a leader in cotton seed breeding. That company also held a GURT patent that it was developing. Since that time Monsanto has held true to its commitment to not develop GURT. If anything, their purchase of DPL has meant that Monsanto has stopped GURT from hitting the market. There should be more than enough reality-based claims about Monsanto's misdeeds to stick to those.

Traditional breeding leads to many new strains each year. That is the whole point. So what? The percentages I was using were a made up example. I think that BH answered your question pretty accurately. I feel that there are some positive techniques often found in organic agriculture. Those techniques that are positive should be picked up and used by other farming methods. The overall problem with organic farming though is that it is anti-scientific and promotes myths and and mythical thinking. For instance sythethic pesticides are forbidden, while "natural" ones are ok (while spreading the myth that they don't use any pesticides at all.). An intelligent environmentally friendly policy would be to select the best ones and use no more than is required. Organic farming bans such sensible environmentally friendly methods because they are more interested in ideology. If think that it is best to accomplish something by handicapping yourself, fine, but my agenda is that things like feeding people are important enough to put reality ahead of superstitious thinking.

I have no doubt that big business has a lot to do with it and on a personal level I feel that fears of big business are more than legitimate. However, at the same time I think that opposition to GMOs, and the need for increased security to stop experiments from being destroyed has pushed the research away from universities, away from governments, and away from small biotech firms. If you create an atmosphere where only the biggest players can play than the only players will be the biggest ones. I hope that some time soon rational understanding will allow those other players to play the larger role they should be playing, and with that the results of GMO research will fall more inline with the needs of society, as right now firms understandibly devote their resources towards the desires of the farmers who support them.

When is a product considered new? Let's say that we have 3 types of potatoes: A, B, and C. And that there is a trait "Y" that would be ideal in saving yields by making the potato more resistant to a certain fungus which is currently being fought with an environmentally questionable fungicide. Potato A is great on many levels but lacks the gene(s) for trait Y. Potato B is also pretty damn good, and has the gene(s) for trait Y, but one of the genes is turned off. Potato C is a pretty good potato, but is it is unsuited for the local environment. It does produce trait Y. Which one of the following is a new product? Potato A is bred with potato C thousands and thousands of times until an offspring is produced with trait Y, but while still maintaining most of the characteristics of potato A. Of the 1% genetic difference between potato A and potato C it is 70% similar to potato A and 30% similar to potato C. Seeds for potato B are subjected to radiation to produce mutations which allows them to find seeds for which the gene(s) for trait Y is now turned on. GMO Scientists use the natural process of horizontal gene transfer to transfer the needed gene from potato C to potato A. Of the 1% genetic difference between potato A and potato C it is 99% similar to potato A and 1% similar to potato C.

And this is why I see people like you as being as much my enemy as I see the fundamentalists who you denounce. You think that the solution is to ban things that some people find offensive. I don't. I feel that people do not have the right to not be offended, and that protecting people from being offended only increases the number of things that they find offensive and the intensity of the response when they feel offended. You think that a bunch of Christians stopping other people from seeing a film that they (a) want to see and b: have every right to see is an example of them exercising their freedom of expression. The reality is the opposite. They denied freedoms to others. And it was not a case that either one group or the other would lose freedom. Protestors did not have to go see the film, but they still felt that it was their right to deny others the right to go. They were and are pig headed. As Philip Pullman wisely said: “It was a shocking thing to say and I knew it was a shocking thing to say. But no one has the right to live without being shocked. No one has the right to spend their life without being offended. Nobody has to read this book. Nobody has to pick it up. Nobody has to open it. And if you open it and read it, you don't have to like it. And if you read it and you dislike it, you don't have to remain silent about it. You can write to me, you can complain about it, you can write to the publisher, you can write to the papers, you can write your own book. You can do all those things, but there your rights stop. No one has the right to stop me writing this book. No one has the right to stop it being published, or sold, or bought, or read.” Sure. I guess you could say that it is a matter of opinion, but in all honesty if anyone has seen both The Last Temptation of the Christ, and the trailer for this islamic film and manages to think that the Last Temptation was more offensive or even in the same ballpark then they are probably completely insane. I disagree completely. Many books, magazine articles, documentaries and films that have been considered anti-muslim have been produced with reaction ranging from none to severe. That seems to indicate that reaction must be related to perceived offensiveness. I know two fundamentalists who have lived most of their lives in the Middle East, but came to Canada for a couple years. One has returned, and one still resides in Canada. Their reactions to things were the same as the fundamentalist muslims I know who have lived in the West their entire lives. I don't find this surprising, seems to correspond with psychological research into group dynamics, deindividuation etc. This corresponds to my response to your next point. I don't think that the fundamentalist christians I know are any different from the muslims I know. If they found themselves in a group dynamic similar to what was found in the Middle East, I expect that they would react the same way to insults towards Jesus.

To me the OP is about comparing of the most extreme Muslims and Christians. The former riot and burn down places according to the OP. The latter deal with offense in a civilized manner (again according to the OP). My opinion of the their reaction to the movie in question is that it was not an example of responding in a civilized manner. They could have allowed those who wanted to see the movie go see it, and stayed home themselves. But that didn't happen. Imagine if instead the internet was around and their children could have just found the movie, or the trailer, in seconds on youtube. Do you think that would have dialed up the response? I do. Imagine if the movie was far, far more offensive. Do you think that would have dialed up the response? I do. When I compare the fundamentalist Christians I know to the fundamentalist Muslims I know I see little difference to the way they react to slights against their religon. Although the ones I know only make up a small number of people, all of them agree with the idea of free speech, but any insults towards their religion quickly shows that they feel blasphemy should not be allowed. What do they do about it? Nothing. But that is only because of time and place they find themselves in now.

Personally I would think that any legitimate comparison between the reaction of Muslims to the recent film disparaging their prophet would be the reaction of Christians to The Last Temptation of Christ. Seems no one remembers the bombing of Saint Michel theatre by a group of fundamentalist Christians leaving 13 injured - 4 of whom were severely burned, and left the threatre out of commission for 3 years. Another Christian group (Christian Solidarity) said that they would do what ever was necessary to stop the film from being shown, and would not hesitate to go to prison. The fanatics largely won in stopping the film form being shown in most theatres - In the US General Cinemas, United Artists and Edwards Theatres with more than 3650 theatres between them refuse to screen the film. Other theatres had their screenings shut down by individual cities and towns banning the movie from playing. And Blockbuster Video refused to carry the movie (a policy which remained in place). (And keep in mind The Last Temptation was offensive by promoting things like saying that Jesus led and ordinary life, got married and had sex with the woman. Oh my!!! Imagine their reaction at the time if the film promoted Jesus as a child abuser, a homosexual and someone who has sex with a donkey.)

"Education professor Ben Levin, of the University of Toronto...noted that Catholic schools may be more selective about which students they keep." This is my guess based on anecodotal evidence. A close relative of mine has a child with a learning disability. When that was discovered the catholic school board recommended the child be switched to the public school board as they claimed that they did not have the resources to deal with it. My relative said to them that they received the same funding per student as the public school board and therefore should be providing the same services. And was again directed to the public school board. I should also say that I believe that the Catholic School Boards get more funding per student than the public school boards. Is that true? Beats me, but according to this site for 2006/07 Public School boards in Ontario received $8264 per student. Doing the calculation from the numbers for school fundings for all boards I calculate $8637 per student at the Catholic boards. For a difference of $373 per student. I hope that I am wrong about that, so if anyone can provide better numbers, please do.

This paragraph seems totally disjointed. If genetic manipulation to become resistant to a herbicide is unnatural, then when plants evolve to become resistant to a herbicide - as they have done many times - are those plants behaving in an unnatural way? If a company uses a bacteria to move a resistance gene from one plant variety to a target plant variety is that unnatural? Even though this horizontal gene transfer method happens in nature? Is it because it was done by humans? If things are unnatrual because they were done by humans then nothing in agriculture is natural anyways so why does the argument apply here, but not anywhere else in agriculture? Then you hop from herbicide resistance-to patents-to terminator seeds as if they are easily related. To cap it all off, Monsanto does not use terminator seeds. No one does - except the conspiracy theorists who don't care about what is true and what is not.

Well I have no idea what you are referring to, but I will assume that you are referring to my statement that the benefits and risks of each method for generating power differs depending upon location. That is for the simple reason that certain methods of power generation are far more or less suited for certain locations. If you live in location with more direct sunlight the benefits of solar power are increased. If you live in a location with a large waterfall or a large rapid stream that shifts the benefits and risks for certain methods of power generation. If you live in an area for which large earthquakes are likely that shifts the risks of certain types of power generation. You are repeating the argument from authority logical fallacy. Relying on a lone "expert" because that person happens to say the things that you agree with is one of the main problems today when anyone on the internet can find an expert to support any notion that exists. Arnie may have a masters, but lots of people have Masters and/or PhDs, and if you gathered the opinions of all those experts you would find that Arnie is way out on the fringe. Sometimes people way out on the fringe are right, but it happens extremely rarely. Generally there are real simple reasons why a lone expert is way out on the fringe: use crappy methodology, place their ideology above the facts, lack an understanding of related expertise which shows their fringe ideas to be crap. Arnie can obviously gain a large following by saying the things that some people want to hear. But, if Arnie wants my support then he has to do what experts in the science and engineering fields do: publish studies in legitimate peer review journals, which then stand up to scrutiny from those in the field. If Arnie can't win the support of those who know the most about nuclear energy then it seems pretty arrogant for non-experts to conclude that he is right.

I admit, that is a very impressive reply. I do agree that what you found about food irradiation is true, however, it may have been more helpful if you had looked up what I was actually talking about, instead of looking up something completely different and then assuming that the different technology you looked up was what I was referring to (and my link only refers to the use of radiation - used since the 1930s - and not the also popular and long used chemical mutagenic plant breeding techniques). And there lies the real problem. Scientists have to deal with people who not only have been completely misinformed and lied to about GMOs, lack knowledge and understanding of genetics and molecular biology, and also have a completely fanciful belief of the breeding techniques that were widely used before GMOs came along with their superior and safer techniques. They are dealing with a public for which the little they do know is nostolgia to never never land. But never never land nostolgia techniques would not have come close to feeding the 7 billion people currently living.

The problem with such a conclusion is that there are black and white issues in which high level politicians and a small number of scientists find themselves on the wrong side. Evolution, for example. The level of distrust in the US towards evolution signifies nothing about the rigor of the science - those who oppose it know nothing about the actual science, and what they think they know is most often wrong. A large percentage of the population is simply wrong. Because of that there are a large number of politicians who promote political policies that are also wrong. As with anything there will always be a small minority of scientists who advocate for the non-scientific side. In Europe the level of distrust towards GMOs signifies nothing about the rigor of the science. As would be expected in an area where there is significant public distrust of a scientific area, many politicians hold the same views, and a small number of scientists advocate for that popular position.

I disagree. When it comes to science there are methods that people can use to discern the likelihood that a scientific story is true or not (or that a scientific study is rigorous or not). The general method is scientific skepticism and when applied, stories which promote pseudo-science or bad science will generally shoot up red flags. Red flags don't mean that the story or study is nonsense, but do indicate that one should approach the story pretty cautiously. This most recent story shot up a lot of red flags.

Ok. Explain to me the the significant difference between GMO technology and mutation breeding technology through radiation and/or chemical bombardment which had released more than 2500 varieties by 2007 - varieties you eat all the time. I am really interested to know why you feel that the only one which is accurate instead of just rolling dice, the only one which almost guarentees the addition of desired traits do not also bring with it undesired traits, as well as being the only one which is actually tested is the one that is the problem. All plant breeding is an experiment being carried out. Nothing in science can be proven safe. No food you eat is proven safe - you may think that it is because humans have been eating it for X number of years, but that is simply nonsense. The foods we eat now are very different than the foods we ate a couple hundreds years ago, and even if it were not there is no way to actually know if common foods that people have ate for centuries do not lead to increased numbers of certain chronic diseases or certain types of cancer. There is really no easy to accurately test for it. We don't know if the food we normally eat is safe, but we assume it is. The great irony is that the only food which is tested at all is the food which some people are convinced is not safe. No other products are tested at all. As I have already shown above the examples that we have of plants that caused acute harm have come from the old traditional plant cross-breeding between two very similar varieties. Any breeding leads to an offspring that is different from its parents. Mutations can occur naturally, or through being enticed, and even naturally occuring mutations can lead to the switching off or on of several genes leading to a plant having undesired traits expressed, or being toxic, as has occured with potatoes and other plants in the recent past.

I already covered this at post #6. 1) Canada did not shut down it's radiation detectors. 2) They decreased the frequency of data collection from those detectors because radiation levels were tiny and falling. Just because some people don't understand the levels of natural background radiation, or that taking a 5 hour flight would naturally expose you to up to 50,000 times the radiation detected on the Canadian coast from Japan doesn't mean that taxpayer funds should be used indefinitely to beat the living s@#t out of a dead horse just to try to please some conspiracy theorists. And even so they were still testing, just less frequently, if they saw a change in the trend, they would have increased frequency, but until that time they were devoting more efforts to more productive areas. 3) Mike Adams is a complete lunatic. He has never found a conspiracy he would not promote, even conspiracies that completely contradict other conspiracies that he advocates. People who read his ridiculous nonsense become dumber as they progress from knowing nothing about a topic to knowing things that are completely wrong. They possess negative knowledge which is far worse than knowing nothing, especially as he infuses it from top to bottom with paronia.

I don't claim that any method of generating power is completely safe. For each one their are benefits and risks to be evaluated and those benefits and risks are different depending on the location in which power generation may be done. Why? I know who he is by the way and saw him several times on TV after Fukushima making claims that I don't feel were accurate. I tend to look at what the majority of relevant experts have to say. Arnie is both in the minority and not really an expert.

I believe that this story first appeared when Mike Adams, the uber-conspiracy nut wrote about it in natural news. There is a grain of truth to it. As Canada found that the radiation levels were extremely low and diminishing they decreased the frequency that they were collecting data (decreased - not shut down, but don't expect Mike Adams to worry about reality when there is a conspiracy to believe). That could either be an example of Canada disregarding the safety of their citizens, or it could be that experts used their brains to evaluate the risk levels based on available data.

I think that punked summed it up perfectly.

Whether or not GMOs should be labelled is not a science question, so I really don't care a huge amount one way or the other. Voting populations are free to make decisions that are intelligent or stupid if they wish. The best one can hope for is that they make decisions that are informed.... On a personal level I oppose it for several reasons. Primarily because manditory labelling costs considerably more than voluntary labelling (the latter of which costs almost nothing). Companies are already free to voluntarily label their products as GMO-free. If the population actually cared about whether they were consuming GMOs they have the option to buy products which are labelled GMO-free (or organic products), yet those products do not seem to be taking over. In fact it seems to be the case that with the exception of a small percentage of consumers, no one cares. This may be because they are apathetic. Or it may be because they really don't trust the claims made by those who oppose GMOs and at the same time recognize that GMOs have been with us for a while now without ill effects. However, a GMO-label law would be a mandatory labelling law, and as such laws require significant costs in regulation and monitoring it would be expensive. It seems that those opposed to GMOs have realized that the only way they can win is to increase the price of their competitors product. While polls have shown that consumers generally support lebelling by a large margin, that support falls dramatically when they are told that there will be a cost involved. People will generally agree that they want information even when they feel it is meaningless. When you add a cost to that information then the value of the information is taken into consideration. Another reason I oppose it is because it is arbitrary and I don't think laws should be arbitrary. Mandatory labels are supposed to provide material information and warnings about health risks. We don't have labels to indicate which foods have come from seeds that come from a line in which radiation and/or chemicals were used to induce mutations - although that would be a high number of them and these methods of mutagenesis have led to many foods that people love. We don't label foods like banana's indicating to consumers that they are genetic freaks that bare little relationship to what they would have looked at in nature. We don't have a label that lists which fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides were used. Instead we determine what is considered safe, and if the product was made and produced in a manner that fits within those parameters that is good enough. Is it perfect? No. But the major cases of harm have been caused by natural breeding methods. Whether you are referring to organics, conventional or GMO's the product is at least slightly different every year, but only the GMOs will have been tested at all. In the 1970s there was a traditionally bred potato type that was very toxic. They were beautiful potatos, and a lot of them were planted, but the glycoalkaloid levels were too high and it caused severe poisoning (another example for potatoes is a similar incident in Sweden in the 90s or 00s). Celery is another example where traditional breeding methods has led to a product that was toxic. In that case though it was so toxic that people developed rashes just from holding it, but had it been less toxic people would have been eating it. Cases like this from GMOs? Zero. People have developed a fear of GMOs that I feel comes in large part from believing that pre-GMO farming methods are the "old mcdonald" methods. They were not, and such methods could not come close to feeding the world, nor would they necessarily be any safer for those lucky enough to eat. The thing I find saddest about this whole organic/GMO battle is that we have significant environmental issues that are very real, not imaginary. Why people would want to spend time and resources battling the imaginary dragons they have turned GMOs into is beyond me. How any environmentalist can claim to be fighting for the planet's future while advocating the least efficient method of farming - organics - for the large population that exists on earth is beyond me too. Would you prefer to trade off small concentrations of pesticides on your food that can be washed off for more wild spaces, or do you prefer no pesticides being used, but much more wild spaces turned into farm land? I chose the former. Pesticides are considered a great evil, but people should understand that plants are packed full of pesticides that they have evolved, and just because these pesticides are natural does not mean that they are not harmful. Many of those natural pesticides were put through the Ames test, and you probably don't want to know what the results were. But in the real world it doesn't matter. It is the dose that makes the poison, and both natural and synthetic pesticides enter the body at extremely low levels (on top of the fact that synthetic pesticides can be developed with the aim of not being mutagenic or acting on humans, whereas the plants/evolution obviously don't care). If we were to adopt a farming method that no longer used pesticides breeders would select the individuals that held up the best to insect onslaught each year and breed them. What that does is selects for the crops that put more of its resources into being the most toxic to insects. I would rather be eating food that is bred to put it's resources into plant growth and nutrition and leaves the insect killing to pesticides that can be applied and washed off. But to each their own.

I don't know if you are aware, but you are referring to two different studies. The study that is referred to in the link above was by the same author - Gilles-Eric Séralini - responsible for the current media blitz, but is an earlier paper. Like every paper by this anti-gmo crusader it has significant flaws in methodology and would only be done by a scientist who is more interested in getting specific results than doing proper science. Because of the obvious design problems and bias it was declared invalid by the European Food Safety Authority. The current study also seems to be full of methodological flaws and should have been dismissed out of hand when Seralini prohibited journalists from seeking outside comment on the study. It appears to me that Seralini knew full well that his study would crumble under even slight critical evaluation, so he released in a way to gain as much exposure as quickly as possible to increase the flow of money into his anti-gmo organization and anti-gmo book sales. I do believe that Seralini does believe that GMOs are harmful, but apparently not enough to do proper studies. I view him no differently than climate change deniers, anti-vaxers and creationists. Along the same lines, those who agree with him don't seem to know or care that his studies are crap, and when his studies are shown to be crap those who agree with him increase their support and come to believe that there is a "big science" conspiracy against their valiant crusader.