Dear Bugsy
Research
My reference to funding for research was to show that it is very difficult to come by. Since Government has made policies of “public/private” research it is likely that funding for research into RNA is not seen as a priority. This would be just as likely in health as in agriculture.

If you are concerned that something 20 years old or a lack of studies must be wrong I suggest you read “The Shadows of Consumption” by Peter Dauvergne. It details how lead was introduced to petrol in the US in the 1920’s. It was approved even though several scientists spoke against it. The US Surgeon General’s report recommended continuing research but was ignored. Critics of lead in petrol were called “misguided zealots” and “incompetent”.

The most noted scientist was Robert Kehoe. He was the founding director of a lab (Kettering Laboratory of Applied Physiology at the University of Cincinnati) opened with a donation from General Motors and DuPont. For 40 years the labs findings were that leaded gasoline was no danger to health.

Finally in 1965 a geochemist, Clair Patterson, found that lead in the atmosphere was 1000 times higher than natural levels and this was due to leaded gasoline.

The industry fought an enormous campaign to maintain leaded gasoline and was defeated due to proper studies finally being funded into the health of children, the loss of lobbying power and the development of catalytic converters.

Developments in genetics and epigenetics
The whole basis of biotech needs rethinking as there is no such thing as an industrial patentable gene. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/01/business/yourmoney/01frame.html?ex=1340942400&en=e8a6202e0162538f&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Shallow MADGE
You regard MADGE as shallow. I suggest you look at our website www.madge.org.au

Jam
Not everyone likes jam. However women are generally the ones who shop, cook and prepare food. We see the connection between good food and good health on a daily practical level. We try and eat sensible during pregnancy and make sure our kids and families thrive.
This is why the introduction of inadequately tested, unlabelled, unnecessary, scientifically flawed GM food is such an outrage.

Hi, Madeleine, I thought you MADGErs found the level of discourse here not to your liking, but you are back? Like, Bugsy I am unsure what you were expecting. To have everyone agree with you?

I have been following this discussion for the best part of 20 years. For the last 13 I have seen the crops in the ground and dealt with farmers growing them. To be brutally honest, the crops have done nothing that you MADGErs, Merri bee or Julie Newman say they do. Food regulatory agencies around the World have looked at them and approved them as safe. There has been more scientific scrutiny of GM crops than any other food we eat. Despite this scrutiny, there is no harm that can be pointed at GM per se. Or as an acquaintance of mine likes to say “There has not been as much as a sniffle cause by GM foods.”

Allow me to let you in on a secret. I know a large number of farmers who grow GM crops. They do so because the crops work for them. It is really as simple as that. If they didn’t work, these farmers would not grow them.

And just to put some more myths to bed. Monsanto didn’t invent DDT – Geigy (a Swiss company) did.

The problem with Showa Denko’s L tryptophan was due to poor filtering, not GM. You can read the reports from the US FDA and CDC http://vm.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/ds-tryp1.html, http://vm.cfsan.fda.gov/~lrd/tp5htp.html, http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/NEW00064.html, http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/ds-ltr3.htm

Yes lillian, I looked at your website, that is one reason I find your whole line of argument exceptionally shallow. You have effectively compiled a great of websites, news releases and junk science papers that agree with you, well done.

There are more than a couple of logical fallacies and intellectual sleight-of-hand going on here and on your website. For example, overlaying the anaphylaxis admissions and GM crop approvals is cute. It looks especially amusing when you have taken two independent phenomena and change the axes to make them look like they correlate. Why don’t we just put a trend graph for CO2 emissions as well?
The trouble is, the data for crop approvals starts at 50, the axis has been dodgied and the trend towards higher anaphylaxis admission rates starts well before any GM was approved, even according to your own graph.

Madeleine has pinpointed why I have generally given up commenting on these types of threads. Your argument basically runs: You cannot prove the safety of the food, before consumption therefore it must not be consumed.

Completely ignored is the fact that other statements are also true: You cannot guarantee the safety of ANY food before consumption. There are daily health scares on all sorts of foods, the vast majority of which are completely unrelated to GM.

This exposes the weakness of the argument: it is far easier to prove adverse health effects than a notion of ‘safety’ (safety has to be carefully defined or you will constantly be shifting the goalposts). And yet it appears that you cannot prove anything either way and so taking the a priori position of it being unsafe is a faith-based proposition.

It’s very difficult to argue against this position as you might as well try to reason a fundamentalist out of their religion. If one persists, they very seriously run the risk of being accused of being in league with the devil, or in this case Monsanto (or both).

That you also have to enlist the help of (unrelated) junk science, speaks volumes on the strength of your position.

Agronomist

"There has been more scientific scrutiny of GM crops than any other food we eat. Despite this scrutiny, there is no harm that can be pointed at GM per se."

I have yet to be convinced that any of this 'scientific scrutiny' you speak of has ever extended to the point of conducting objective and comprehensive studies on the long term health ramifications of consuming GM food.

Madeleine's Hansard reference to the interchange between Senator Siewart and Food Standards Chief Scientist, Dr Paul Brent, very much confirms to me that there has been no such 'scrutiny'.

Dr Brent's words bear that out very clearly — "There is no post-market monitoring per se. There were attempts in the UK to do some research on this issue. The UK Food Safety Authority or agency actually commissioned some research to see how difficult it would be to do post-market monitoring on GM foods. I think the result of that and the consensus was that it was virtually impossible to do that sort of work. I think the UK spent almost £1 million on that research and it was dropped."

A fairly damning admission, wouldn't you say?

No one truly knows that this food is safe. You and the scientific fraternity are asking us to take you on trust. And when I look at history and recall the trajectories of some of our past 'scientifically-tested' products, things like thalidomide, asbestos, tobacco, DDT, leaded paint and petrol and alcohol, I'm afraid I just don't feel very reassured at all.

I don't have a science degree. I'm just another one of the women Lillian referred to who are "the ones who shop, cook and prepare food" and who "see the connection between good food and good health on a daily practical level." My natural protective instinct is kicking in strongly here and telling me that something smells about all this so-called 'scientific scrutiny' and the glib assurances that go along with it.

Bronwyn, I don’t think that the comments of Dr. Paul Brent are at all damning. Perhaps you might like to point out the post-market monitoring that has been done on the effect of chemical mutagenesis on food? Or perhaps those done on irradiation of food? Or even those done on release of new food types? What about kiwi fruit? Where is the post market monitoring of this crop? What about atrazine-resistant canola? Has there been any post-market monitoring of that?

Effectively, what I am saying is that you are seeking to hold GM food crops to a standard that you wouldn’t even consider for any other food product. This is despite the fact that there is no evidence at all that GM per se will produce a dangerous product and that regulatory agencies around the world assess GM foods before they are introduced. Kiwi fruit weren’t assessed before being foisted on the public, despite evidence of harm that can occur with this food. Atrazine-resistant canola was not assessed by food regulators either. All you can offer in support of your position are vague fears.

Agronomist. Study done by respected senior scientists Arpad and Susan Pustai.The rats brains and testicles shrunk, showed stomach lesions and liver atrophy on 10 days GM potatoes. That was a study that showed harm from GM foods.Every time you say Gm has never been proven harmful, I will have to reply with this. Im going to just paste it in every time.It was detailed at the start of this discussion, there are many more experiments done by independent researchers with little funding.Like the one where 40% of the Monarch butterflies fed GM pollen died unexpectedly.Univeristy in California.Watch the movie "The Future of Food" for the details.And the latest word about GM cotton in QLD is that farmers are finding they are better off planting conventional cotton!Even though your mob has W.A. ag minister Terry Redmond declaring in conversation with my friend that NON GM cotton will not even grow in QLD any more!. He's going to feel pretty silly .