I may die from what you are trying to put into my food and yet you don’t see this. In answer to “Before the 20th Century we didn’t have supermarkets. For the best part of 10,000 years before that we were eating vegetables that were infected with CaMV”. This is your best excuse that we should be eating a CaMV virus? Have you actually noticed that there are no longer major problems with food poisoning now-a-days but prior to supermarkets and health and hygiene improvements there were deaths from eating food? This is because of hygiene and knowing that we are not eating viruses, bacteria and other life threatening food problems. And yet you are wanting us to go back to the ice age of people possibly dying from something the chemical companies say is safe to eat? I don’t think so.

As I have said before I am seriously allergic to cucumber and you will be possibly putting a cucumber virus into my food. I don’t want the chance that this will kill me. How are you going to stop that? As I have said before cucumber is not a common part of my diet, neither is melons, squash or zucchini because they are the same family of cucumber and I have slight problems with the family. Do you understand where I am coming from or are you so caught up in “some people may die but the strong will survive” attitude and your underlying dollar value that you are so caught up in. If I die from your virus that you are wanting to put into my food, I will come back and haunt you for as long as I can.

Oh Agronomist, how shallow you are.
The main debate counter you have is attacking the people who say anything against GM and bringing up their potential conflict of interest, yet you expect us to swallow hook line and sinker everything you say while refusing to reveal your name or your funding.
Benbrook is dead right, the pro-GM activists shout that GM is precise but common sense tells you it is not.
Pro-GM activists like yourself shout that it is going to be an economic benefit for farmers yet common sense and simple maths tells you it is not.
You are apparently an agronomist but you feel that you have the expertise to try to convince consumers there are no health issues. You are ignoring the fact that consumers have the power to manipulate supply chains to reject this product which will dominoe down the line to cause both GM and non-GM farmers economic loss if governments neglect their duty of care and accept GM in under proposed management plans.
The only way forward is to do the independent health tests that consumers want. Why on earth are pro-GM activists against this?

Further input from Arpad Pusztai who would prefer to discuss this directly with scientist rather than through a proxy:

"1. I have never said the CaMV 35S has oncogenes.

2. I am sure, your source has heard of the JIC, Joh Innes Centre, the Sainsbury lab in Norwich. All staff 1OO% copper bottom pro-GM scientists, such as Paul Christou, Kohli, Dale ,etc. If your source wants to find "who says so" he should read their publications and annual reports that I am not going to detail here. Can find these from their webpage.

3. As I said before if foreign genetic material cannot get incorporated into another genome then all pharma companies are wasting their money and time to try to develop edible vaccines in plants See adjuvant development studies, such as:

Forsman, A., Ushameckis, D., Bindra, A., Yun, Z., Blomberg, J., 2003. Uptake of amplifiable fragments of retrotransposon DNA from the human alimentary tract. Mol. Gen. Genomics, 270, 362-368. Jones, D.H., Partidos, C.D., Steward, M.W., Farrar, G.H., 1997. Oral delivery of poly(lactide-co-glycolide) encapsulated vaccines. Behring. Inst. Mitt., 220-

4. This argument I must have heard thousands of times before. The (infection binding) specificity of a virus for cruciferous plants is determined by its protein coat. In GM crops the CaMV 35S promoter is naked (no protein coat). With this when we eat GM crops the naked CaMV 35S DNA will not be eliminated by our immune defence. See your other scientist's references to an experiment in Tromso showing that in cell culture (Caco2 cells in a closed in vitro system) that the CaMV 35S promoter can drive the expression of reporter genes (other similar references quoted in the paper). True, it's activity is less than 1% of a very active promoter, such as the cytomegalovirus promoter but in an in vivo system such as the gut the extent of the reaction efficiency is mainly determined by the flux and the availability of the binding transcription regulatory elements and these can vary a great deal in different cells in vivo."
cont...

"I never said that all DNA in general is taken up very frequently. However, in science the words such as little or common have very little meaning taken out of context. Very small amounts of biologically active chemicals may have disproportionally large effects in a given dynamic biological system in vivo. It is therefore the duty of the scientist to make sure by direct experimentation that the effect is not going to harm us. Please, understand and do not deliberately give words into my mouth to the contrary: I don't try to exaggerate. The observations of DNA uptake in the gut are there and established but apart from very rare instances (like edible vaccines etc.) we have no idea what the consequences will be. Theoretical calculations in a closed system have very little meaning and are useless, particularly when the effect could be established by direct experimentation.

Does your expert know the number of papers on Bt toxins showing that they can be strongly immunogenic and have immune adjuvant effects amplifying the immune efficiency of poor antigens. Does he want references?

"No biologist worth its salt would take calculations of uptake efficiency in a cell culture system with one type of transformed cell line as a serious representation of what can happen in an open in vivo system. What Traavik and his colleagues wanted to show once for all that the CaMV 35S promoter did work even in an animal (human) cell culture system (contrary to what had been asserted by the biotechnology industry experts before) because the two reporter genes' expression was significantly exceeded that of the CaMV 35-less controls. The misrepresentation was that the O.8% was taken out of its biological context and, I am sure, your expert does really know this."

Arpad has suggested you can take up any discussions with him directly.

Are you against independent research that shows that all GM in its many forms and mixed with other GM produce is not going to harm me? I am even more convinced that GM is a biohazard.

I admit isitsafe, I always thought the "biohazard" you mention was a little over the top but you may be interested in this quote:

The Mutational Consequences of Plant Transformation by Jonathan R. Latham, Allison K.Wilson, and Ricarda A. Steinbrecher
Journal of Biomedicine and Biotechnology Volume 2006, Pages 1–7

“We conclude that much remains to be discovered about genome-wide and insertion-site mutations. In particular, lack of information, especially for crop plants and particle bombardment, means that plant transformation may be even more damaging than is apparent from this review. Even with the limited information currently available it is clear that plant transformation is rarely, if ever, precise and that this lack of precision may cause many of the frequent unexpected phenotypes that characterise plant transformation and that pose a significant biosafety risk.”

FYI

GM rethink as Stanhope sees biotech future for Canberra
Andree Stephens
Thursday, 16 March 2006

Canberra could play a leading role in the development of bio-defence and other commercial biotechnology, ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope said last night.
In a speech which also signalled renewed consideration on ACT's moratorium on genetically modified crops, Mr Stanhope told a two-day biotechnology summit that the science was "insinuating itself into our daily life in ways none of us can ignore".
"Biotech is not just about medical miracles. It is about breeding bacteria that can eat oil slicks and building tiny bio-sensors for environmental monitoring," he said.
Mr Stanhope was addressing the Bio-technology in Canberra and Region Summit at Old Parliament House.
Biotechnology is the use of biology in industrial processes such as agriculture, brewing and drug development. It also refers to the production of genetically modified organisms and the manufacture of products from them, and the more recent activity of modifying genetic material of living things - that is, genetic engineering.
Mr Stanhope said Canberra was a town designed for research and much of the biotech activity was being driven by the science facilities here. The challenge now was to "take the science from the lab and create products" to sell at the market...