Genetically modified foods at the Food Coop

doctorj wrote: [quote=greg]
Jeff's book has extensive footnotes. Every quote, every study, every citation is footnoted and sourced. If you'd bother to actually read the book and really wanted to know something on this topic, you'd quickly discover this to be true. IN the case of the soy study, it was reported by Mark Townsend "Why soy is a hidden destroyer" Daily Express, March 1999.

You've got to be kidding. Since when is a British tabloid newspaper a reliable source of scientific information? Follow those footnotes and those sources, and I bet none of them end in peer review and hard data. Like in this case: the trail ends nowhere. No numbers or details from the people who did the work.

greg wrote:
And as usual, you ignore my question: why didn't the US media cover this story? I certainly find it shocking and would definitely have read it if I found it in the NY Times.

For the same reason the rest of the British press and the rest of the press in the rest of the world (including countries who were undecided back then about GMOs) didn't cover it: it wasn't newsworthy. There was no hard data about GM vs. non-GM soy (even the Express made that clear). No facts to verify and report. It was a moment of publicity-seeking by someone in a nutrition lab in England, picked up by a tabloid to scare people to sell newspapers. And the science of GM soy allergies has been carefullly checked many times over since then by different people in different places, and therefore politicians and scientists have since reached consensus on the subject. Everyone but you, who'd rather listen to a beat up of a single old newspaper article than check the facts.

If ever Nature or J.Toxicol. or any one of dozens of peer-reviewed scientific publications publish a quality controlled study demonstrating a GMO to be dangerous to eat, I'm sure the NY times and other quality papers around the world will cover it.

greg wrote:
As for all of those citations you spout, I personally am more interested in who paid for the research than what it says. To quote Deep Throat "follow the money".

Every single one of those is a public institution in different countries, funded by departmental and grant money that ultimately comes from their respective governments, generally via quasi-autonomous agencies (e.g. equivalent of NIH). You have been fed lies that there isn't non-industry research money available to study the science. Several of those countries do not have any interest in American biotech firms and don't grow soy. I'm personally familiar with the funding arrangements in one of those countries. It consistently ranks among the lowest in the world in corruption, highest in transparency, highest in standards of food safety, and last in allowing additives or changes of any kind to food. They spend a huge amount on their equivalent of the FDA checking every last detail before allowing anything across their borders. If the scientists there can't find a difference between the allergenic properties of GM and non-GM soy, no one can. There is no way Monsanto can influence every scientist in every lab around the world.

What's more, when publishing, they're usually required by the journal to state where they got their funds and reveal any conflict of interest, and then their work is checked anonymously by other scientists. Not a perfect system but the best we've got. Who checked Jeffrey M Smith? Who checked Mark Townsend at the Daily Expresss?

Would you mind if I called you a fanatic? "A person marked or motivated by an extreme, unreasoning enthusiasm, as for a cause." Because when it comes to GM soy allergies, the verifyable evidence, the scientific consensus, and the political consensus are all on the same side for once, with yourself on the other. You're ignoring the facts because they don't fit your beliefs, which means you've left rationality way behind.

And I'm still very curious to hear your real reasons for being an anti-GM campaigner, and discuss ideas for how to make the world a better place that don't contradict scientific evidence.

Did it ever occur to you that the public sector has become completely under the thumb of the pricate sector. The FDA is just a rubber stamp. Federal agencies in the 60's used to have some teeth now they are just toadies, populated by sycophants just waiting their turn to go back into the private sector.