大象传媒

I don't have all the facts, but I don't trust the manufacturers to give me the unbiased facts, because they stand to make so much money on this. I certainly don't trust the drug companies to give an unbiased view, they stand to make billions.

I think we are in danger of playing God again, look what happened with mad cow disease and that came back and bit us in the a*s.

I think we should leave well alone, the consequences don't bear thinking about.

I've recently been reading about *bees* dying off in Germany, and even more so in the United States, and the possibility that GM crops might be to blame. The repercussions for our food supply are enormous.

See here:

Albert Einstein quote: "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man."

they always say 'its going to help the poor' etc. It never does.

look how all that research effort on viagra was wasted when it was discovered an infusion of winter heather leaves had the same effect? Garden centres say they are sold out!

i read in canada the GM firms sued organic farmers after their saved seed was found to have cross pollinated with gm and demanded a royalty from the organic farmers for using their 'technology'. Its about owning the seed base. They want it to cross pollinate with everything so they can charge royalties?

Messing with such fundamental issues, as genetic make-up, when humans do not know enough to predict possible consequences (aka "side-effects")is reckless, potentially dangerous and irresponsible. Irresponsible, because all of human race is being unwittingly drawn, without prior consent, into experimentation by profit-driven and recognition-seeking scientists.

The real reason that people in the Third World don't get the drugs they need is the way the pharma industry and the world economy works - let's spend our time and energy finding solutions to that rather than trying out a risky technology that could leave all of us, in the developed and non-developed world, without safe food to eat.

Aside from the dangers of cross-contamination (and the stupud politicians who believe that seeds & pollen will stay in their own fields), is there anyone on the planet who really thinks Monsanto and the other GM-Giants are doing this out of the goodness of their hearts; with no intention of monopolising food & drug aid supplies for enormous profits?

I hate to use a book/film as a factual source, but this situation seems to be 'The Constant Gardener' writ large. Do ANY potential benefits, no matter how great, outweigh the possibly of environmental disaster? Perhaps I don't have enough empathy for the people suffering today, but I believe the problems in the 'developing world' lie in poor aid distribution, education and repression; with the blame on Western bureacracy and native political/tribal conflicts.

NEW and IMPROVED

isnt this just sales hype !
who pays these researchers ? monsanto or government ?
if it is funded by taxpayers it will then be open to public scrunity.
if it is funded by the corporate it will be "top secret".
These mad scientists will try to sell their research to justify their existance/survival as a respected body of do gooders.......when in actual fact they realy dont have the answers to the long term effect of thier marvel food. Why they even claim it will help to feed the starving world. This bull .... is bigger than the spanish TORO and I wouldnt trust scientists any further than I can throw them. What worries me most is their motive (money motivated) or (corporate loyality)
both remind me of only recent events in "hitlers" germany.It was the german people who created that monster and frankenstein foods is a corporate fed monster.

GM1 GM2 soon GM3
what next !

peace and love
cynical citizen of planet earth.

should all give "GM 2.0" a chance?

-why not? If specific gene sequences could benefit humankind, then why not do the studies? If GM 2.0 variants are potentially useful then make sure that rules and systems are put in place to make sure that they dont escape into the wider environment....

...perhaps it might be useful to do a report on the development/feasibility of such safeguards?

I think that they should be given a chance to prove their effectiveness. If the new drugs can, like for instance, reduce ones dependancy on insulin, can reduce the risks for heart attacks, or, even, find a drug that reverses the effects of alheizemers, then, by all means, let the manufacturers produce them.
I know that there may be risks involved in this. However, isn't life a risk? Don't we take risks every day when we wake up and go into work? We could be run over by a motorcar or be hit by a lorry and pass into the "great beyond". I say, let them try to make our lives better.

They never give up, do they? Of course it is the same GM wolf in different clothing. When did any multi-national company do something for humanity out of intrinsic goodness? Its aim is to make enormous profits and see off its rivals. The trouble with any GM procedure is that it is irreversible, as are the global patents pre-obtained.

It would be illuminating to see a true register of the shareholders who stand to gain, not just in a level capitalist marketplace, but one where all humanity is hidebound forever.

Not worth the risk!

The govenment is even now proposing to reduce buffer zones between GM and non-GM crops with all that means for many organic growers who will lose their status due to cross-contamination, and for consumers who will lose that much-vaunted "choice".

It's a naked ploy by multinationals to foist expensive patentable crops onto an unwilling public by sexing up the description to include supposed humanitarian benefits.

We would be mad to allow this but as usual will get no choice because govenment is for business not for the people that elect it.

I agree with Tracy M. Taylor we should leave this alone, Mind nothing will be done to stop it by this Government until the press start kicking up a fuss about it. This Government only govens by headlines and spin and has no ideas about anything unless told by the media advisers.

They never give up, do they? Of course it is the same GM wolf dressed in different clothing. When did any multi-national company do something to benefit humanity out the kindness of its heart? Its aim is to make enormous profits and see off its rivals.
The trouble with any GM procedure is that it is irreversible, as are any pre-obtained global patents.

The problem with GM last time was not the purposes for which the crop was intended (cheaper, longer-lasting, higher-quality food) but the unknown effects of manipulating small components of the vast field of the crop's genetic make-up.

This problem has not disappeared; no matter how great the potential gains are from such modification, I can't see how they can ever be justified against the potential for causing unpredicted, long-lasting and immeasurable harm to our entire living environment.

it is a living experiment which would be played out in the 'real world'.

if a GM crop might be used to produce insulin - then it should be considered dispassionately. everything is open to abuse; which does not mean we should dismiss out of hand.
Money is and always will be the driving factor in any research.

The history of the biotech industry does not fill one with confidence - whether it is the previous incarnation of Monsanto as the provider of dioxin contaminated Agent Orange (deformed babies are still being born in Vietnam) or their delightful addition of PCBs to the fatty tissues of creatures across the globe.

The first generation of GM crops repeatedly 'escaped' from containment and entered the food chain. It would be interesting to see how confident the biotech industry was this time.

A solution is that the biotech industry announces now that it will take FULL responsibility for any unforeseen impacts of their actions; something they have refused to do in the past.

if a GM crop might be used to produce insulin - then it should be considered dispassionately. everything is open to abuse; which does not mean we should dismiss out of hand.
Money is and always will be the driving factor in any research.

Of course the development of GM crops must go on,there is always some risk in pusuing new sciences but little progress towards our present lifestyle, medicine and all the other technological advantages that we all enjoy would have been made without being sufficiently confident to take the necessary unprecidented steps forward.
The doubters and timorus amongst us should be reminded that It is not so long ago that a man carrying a red flag had to precede a car on the open road.

Okay, yeah, there are potential dangers here. Of course there are. But we need to explore these subjects because the potential benefits are enormous. With knowledge, we can do much. Now, how about planting these batches of GM crops on remote islands that can calm the nay sayers fears. Heck, the falkland islands (yeah, I too have been reading all about them recently), are remote and I'm sure would welcome additional income. Their wool exports are hardly going to be affected.

NO WAY do we need GM stuff badly enough to risk the environment--and that is exactly what we will be doing. And this risk is simply to satisfy the greed of organizations that are amking plenty of money now.

I do not trust anything the proposers of G.M.2 say. they are interested only in making money.

Medicines require extensive testing in laboratory conditions, even then some prove to be very harmful, but they can be withdrawn. and the harm stops.

With crops that option would not be available

I do not trust anything the proposers of G.M.2 say. they are interested only in making money.

Medicines require extensive testing in laboratory conditions, even then some prove to be very harmful, but they can be withdrawn. and the harm stops.

With crops that option would not be available

I really think G M food it a waste of time and resources that could have or be spent on increasing the Agric products

We humans depend on Mother Earth for our livelihood. Abnormal change in the Mother will affect the child. That we can perceive through climatic threats. The scar by the age of pesticides has not yet cured. Do you know how many Indians are made victims to the GM crops?

Lack of knowledge among poor farmers is the cause.

Preparing vaccines from GM Chick is the topic now. GM mosquitos to control malaria.

Good to hear the positive effects. Negative aspects are never cared about. It is the forbidden fruit.

Heredity is used to determine a lot in biological works. Genetic modification will have a definite effect on future. Linnaues works need to be buried for this.

GM crops/plants are rarely, if ever, tested by independent scientists, but are tested, rather, by scientists sponsored by the Biotech industries. One reason why scientists are no longer trusted!

Recently, and alarmingly, America and Germany have been reporting increasing cases of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) in their Bee colonies. I'm not sure that people realise the importance of Bees in food production? No bees = no food!

This GM plant produces Insulin. I have read that insulin plays an important role in caste determination in honey bees!

I would like to think that scientists tested the effect of this GM plant on bees before they released it into the open. Somehow, though, I doubt it.

Oh what are we waiting for! Forget the GM Luddites and let's start taking advantage of this wonderful technology.

Some time ago I remember writing to my MP on behalf of a campaign saying that no GM crops should be planted until we had proper laws for preventing contamination, and making the Biotech Companies liable for any damage they caused.

To the best of my knowledge we still don't have those laws, and yet now we have proposals for crops that could have even more dangerous effects should something go wrong.

It is very hard to have confidence in an industry who vigorously oppose laws that would make them pay for any problems there products cause.

Yet again big busines is looking for a way into the fast buck by the lure of a steady supply of drugs. No way on God's Earth should we open Pandora's Box. Remember, the Devil takes the hindmost in their ethos.

I find it very depressing that most of the anti-GM arguments here are complaining about "big business" - scientists work on this because of excitement at the promise of the technology.

If we're able to create medication from engineered crops, there's potential for significant energy saving in the manufacture of pharmaceuticals.

THEY can't patent the medicines naturally occurring in nature. they wont even try to locate and use them.Sour cherries juice is better than any of the over the counter anelgesics on the market with no side effects BUT--who spends anytime informing the public of that----no money in it.

THA PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANIES HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THE FURTHERING THE HEALTH OF THE GENERAL PUBLIC AND EVERYTHING TO DO WITH ENHANCING THEIR PROFITS AND STAYING IN BUSINESS COME HELL OR HIGH WATER.

GM: Gregarious Mingling how liberal...???

We all feel a certain amount of Gen-i-us Of Destiny - a prospect of joining in ... a belief in the possibilities of Acts Of GOD...

But prospects are often prevented by predator prey interactions of survival...

So every genetically modified crop should have a rampant taste sensitive Predator Animal...

... to eat stray crops off eg a genetically modified cow herd or taste obsessive rabbit warren round the edge of the field...

...that way if the cows or rabbits die we know there is a problem... and if not their milk or meat may be useful...

In the end it is all Dia-Bet-tics..a bet of a gamble between fighting economic parties..

So we Pan Creationist islets ought to be prepared with in sue lines in advance..

Society needs tested cases with precedents and compensation awards preproven and preordained...

So that every case that may occur by what ever Act of GOD is prepaid and argued...

Getting compensation should be as quick a getting a loan through banks... and banks should argue for their customers...to ensure economic powers are on our side!

Benedict Genius... GOD actor

Ban the buggers before bodies and brains get anymore battered!

Hi

G.M.=GOD MANUFACTURED !???

Are we or are we not playing at being God Like ? Or are we just vegetables ....or sheep ?

if gm will help make cheap drugs for poorer countries well fine but find another country that wants gm crops and you will still get the cheap drugs we dont need or want them in this country we have plenty of food and drugs.

Once you have opened Pandora's box there is no going back.If these GM crops are found to be dangerous at some time in the future, it will be impossible to put things right again.I too am concerned about reports of bee colonies dying out, not only in America and Germany ,but I have heard that it is also beginning to happen here in the UK.Ban all GM crops while we still can.

Is it possible that they will control the food supply.

Please, lets not overreact!

As a student studying Genetics at university, I assure you we geneticists are all taught of the dangers of GM crops.

Plenty of research has been done into how far pollen can effectively spread to new plants, and the distances required to prevent this.

The impacts of escape of proteins into are also explored thoroughly. The few cases of failure that the media do report are a small proportion of the entire research going on at one time.

Of course, Newsnight chose to say this is GM 2.0. Which IS wrong, this is pretty much the same as normal GM, with the same risks, but it alarms me, the extent to which the media has scaremongered GM. Without our current genetics technology we would not have a safe form of insulin AT ALL for our diabetics. Whatsmore we would still be farming it from pigs.

Lastly, (and I'm speaking as a theist here!) what is so wrong with "playing God"? It should be a matter of international pride that we now have the means to protect ourselves, better ourselves in a way that we could never before achieve.

I am concerned that the response to GM (and the messages here do support this) has become very knee-jerk. The companies and technology have been so vilified by the media - see, for example, the last sentence of the 大象传媒's lead-in to the programme, above, complete with pantomime-villain reference to Monsanto - that intelligent people put forward (and support) arguments that would never be accepted in any other situation.

Would any other new form of drug production be so swiftly dismissed out of hand? Would anyone argue that eg iPods should be banned, because the manufacturers "stand to make millions", or that the internet should be banned because Microsoft could "dominate the means of communication" (as Monsanto is always accused of trying to take over the food supply - isn't the answer to enforce competition laws, as has been done against Microsoft in the US, rather than banning the technology itself)?

Tracey "doesn't trust the manufacturers to give [her] the unbiased facts" - do you distrust the makers of your car, your clothes, the train you take to work? No, because without clear evidence of misrepresentation, that would simply be paranoia. Yet why should they be any less biased in their product promotion?

There is a "damned if they do, damned if they don't" approach to GM from many people. There were criticisms that the technology was only geared to helping farmers, not consumers; now it's benefitting consumers, other complaints are made. Re less well-off countries - to add to Tony Monsanto above, ask anyone from Argentina how their (basically broke in 2001) country has managed to rebound, largely off the back of GM soy (major export).

Re multinationals dominating the industry - in fact, a lot of the basic research is done in small institutions and universities, then licensed on to bigger companies to develop and sell the final product, because of the cost of the work to make the product, the testing and regulation. (Tony makes a very pertinent point on this aspect.) A bit like why only NASA/Russian equivalent send rockets into space. Like everything, however, as the technology gets better and more mainstream, key patents expire, more entities will be able to move into the market - I imagine universities will be making designer GM plants in the near future, as they currently do with new non-GM varieties.

Final point: I have never met anyone who refers to Frankenstein in relation to GM who has actually read the book - for the simple reason it does not support the non-GM view! (If sufficiently interested, read it and consider in particular the creature's interaction with the family of Fergus, and their reaction; and the author's underlying fear of that frightening new technology, electricity)

Actual final point - I've followed the internet discussion on the bees, and there seems to have been a move from a tenuous suggestion of an association with GM (among other possibilities!) to the "we'll believe what we want to believe, regardless of the evidence" hysteria of GM-Watch etc. I imagine in time this story will go the way of the Monarch butterfly beat-up.

I fail to see how GM 2.0 addresses the concerns that led to the banning of GM 1.0. Certainly, the promise of cheap medecines is alluring, but before we decide to go for GM on the basis of helping the poor, we should take a look at where the pharmaceutical industry's focus has been thus far: on viagra, hair-loss prevention drugs, and antidepressants. Conspicuously absent are cures for diseases like malaria - they just don't make money, because even if production methods are cheap, research is not.

Questions surrounding the likelyhood of cross-pollination leading to the transfer of GM genes to previously non-GM crops remain unsatisfactorily answered. Until we understand better how GM crops will affect the wider ecosystem, it would be stupid to just go ahead with them.

it is good in a way. gm crops with human gene to make drugs cheaper for poorer classes not only in developing countries but also in so-called developed countries like the us is a good idea. but it should ensured that these gm crops do not fall into the hands of greedy industrialists who want to make money by hook or crook

The problem with GM crops is that they cannot be contained. Once you introduce these new strains tay cannot be controlled. I am all for progress but this is not the way forward.

I would all urge you all to put away your assumptions and your biases and read the piece above by the Monsanto guy - Tony. It鈥檚 well articulated and referenced. So much in today鈥檚 media and public opinion is just a regurgitation of a set of emotive arguments, to the point that you begin to lose touch with the facts upon which these arguments were originally based and you stop listening to the other side of the story. It definitely appears as if Monsanto is trying to be open with the public. Shouldn鈥檛 we at least welcome this, and enjoy a calm and rational debate? Part of living in a democracy and forming our own opinions is not just repeating whatever everyone else is saying, but listening to both sides of the story and giving a chance to both sides. I鈥檓 not necessarily in favour of Monsanto, but I am certainly aware that it鈥檚 only too tempting to jump on the anti-GM bandwagon.

We need a lot less hysteria and a lot more science. GM has huge potential for good and eventually will enable us to save the human race from extinction. By all means keep a close watch on the venal twerps who might misuse this or any other development, but unless you want to give up on medical advances, painless dentistry, electricity, mobile telephones, Internet communication and all the other benefits of technology ... don't let self-appointed witch-finders stop you from enjoying all the good stuff.

Two formulations of human insulin synthesized in bacteria were first approved in October 1982 after exhaustive animal and (human) clinical testing by the manufacturer, Eli Lilly. I was the medical officer at the U.S. Food & Drug Administration who reviewed the data and recommended application.

For 25 years, these preparations and subsequent ones have been widely used in the United States and elsewhere. They are superior to the previously used preparations of beef and pork insulin (which were themselves excellent).

As to "biopharming" to produce high-value-added substances in plants, see and

Why were tulips so popular...maybe for lipstick and as an edible plant that made people happy...as well as a favourite flower... rumour has it they scrubbed tulip plantations because people were becoming ridiculous ...bred out they were...

Similarly...

Some wines associated with war have suffered arrow-charge... land conquested has been ripped up and passed back to defeated families!

Also...

Rumour has it that the mafia forced Heinz to buy tomatoes from fields around napoli and palmera that had been fought over during the war using shells Heinz had made!

Sensibly Evolution can be seen to happen within the lifetime of plants... due to different calls on gene expression as the Adaptive Request Systems take advantage of nutrients...

What further nutrient politics are there

We hear of new fertilizer to create Active Zest vegetables...and varieties of carrot previously only available to royalty...and how the church and medical advisors put modifiers into soil to make vegetables more boring and eaters more bored by chemistries suitable for repression into lower middle classness!

Re Posting 40 Tony Coombes of Monsanto. Says -
'No biotech has sued an organic farmer....'

Wrong. See -

The big biotechs have also come the heavy with peasant farmers in South America

'GM crops are no more risky than other crops ....' -
Wrong. The world's insurers and re-insurers have all written specific exclusions for farm policies refusing to cover any claim arising from damage caused by gm planting.
This was done on the clear realisation that the risks are too colossal, regardless of premium.

'No occasion when eating gm crop has harmed any animal...'
Very wrong - Extensive cattle goat and sheep deaths in India in places growing gm cotton. Customary foraging on the residues results in poisoning.

Many laboratory animal gm feeding tests performed by the producer show adverse health effects in spite of their brevity.

The so called 'regulatory processes' make no proper analysis of this data and gm creations have been inappropriately approved. The test data is not normally allowed into the public domain.

There is no reason to place any trust in any of the agrichemical companies, since they have from their earliest time operated on evasion and deceit. Law and rules are written to suit their objectives.
The relationship between Monsanto and government in the US is described as 'M's roots run deep' and 'the revolving door'. Truly sad.

GM food its just not cricket we managed perfectley well with out it for thousands of years.
modified into what any way whats the benefit will i be able to grow wings and fly like the dude on Xmen 3? no,thought not.will i grow a third nipple like james bond? i will.well you can keep it.
no one knows how eating GMfood will affect the human race in generations to come.
sureley all the money that was spent on this could have gone to another cause like i dont know,off the top of my head povertey,aids,cancer research.

When GM genes escape into the environment and get into native and nonnative species they will evolve and cause havoc economically and may even cause extinctions of rare native species.

I agree with Arthur Jarrett (post 51). Monsanto is a despicable corporation with a long history of corrupt practices and the distortion of science. It uses whatever techniques (legal, political, economic, scientific) it can get away with in the pursuit of its corporate interests. Tony Combes (post 40) is, as usual, in the business of spreading complacency, and using lies whenever it suits him and his employer.

Quote: "There have been NO scientifically proven occasions where animal or human health has been adversely affected by eating GM grain or food." Tony Combes trots this line out over and again, knowing full well that it is total nonsense. He no doubt hopes that if he repeats it often enough, people will come to believe it. The literature is full of instances of animal health being adversely affected by the consumption of GM components. Some of these studies have been done under the auspices of Monsanto itself, upon which the corporation's normal response is to keep them out of the public domain by hook or by crook. Look at the cover-ups associated with MON863 maize and the Russian GM-RB potatoes fed to rodents.

The regulatory process is itself corrupt, since it is based on "advocacy science" in which experiments are designed and conducted by the GM approval applicant and are then reported in an application dossier. God knows how much evidence of actual harm to man and beast has been hidden away over the years -- or hidden away beneath layers of statistical manipulation. We only ever get to see the studies which purport to demonstrate "no harm". These "advocacy" studies should be rejected out of hand by the regulators since they are non-replicable -- Monsanto and the other corporations will simply not allow them to be repeated by independent researchers since they will not allow them access to their carefully protected GM materials. Those scientists who do manage (in very difficult circumstances) to do independent work, and who come up with "inconvenient" findings, are pressurized, patronized, threatened and vilified by the GM corporations and by their friends in the scientific establishment. In the fine words of Tony Combes, their findings are said to be "not scientifically proven." That's a very handy little phrase, isn't it?

Have a look at this:

and this:

When we get rid of the corruption which is endemic in GM science and in the GM regulatory system we might start to think seriously about whether GM crops and foods are acceptable -- but until then, prudence demands that we remain profoundly sceptical. Right now, Monsanto's BT cotton plants are killing sheep, goats and cattle in India. The GM corporations have a lot to hide, and they routinely work very hard at keeping everything uncomfortable hidden away from public scrutiny.

Brian John, I will leave it to Tony from Monsanto to respond to your more specific allegations against the company, but it seems to me your claims could not logically stand up.

Monsanto is a successful company, and most likely wishes to remain so and prosper into the future. You suggest it is hiding adverse findings about its products. However, that would be commercial madness. It is far better to withdraw a product before launch (ie at testing stage), even though this will write off years of R&D effort and investment, than face a liability claim from the public if a dangerous product is released. Such a claim could easily cost billions, and destroy a company. Monsanto in particular, given the high-profile campaign against it, cannot afford any (substantiated) claim of damage from one of its products. With many more products in the pipeline, it is far better to drop any showing even a hint of adverse effect on people or animals, than risk a claim or further bad publicity that would jeopardise the later products.

You state that the regulatory process is "corrupt". This theory relies on the regulators being either too ignorant to check results, too frightened of Monsanto, or easily corrupted in other ways by them. Again, is that a realistic scenario? If the process is corrupt, are the regulators similarly failing in respect of other products? Why has no-one but you identified this earlier? And if it is true, don't we have a regulatory problem here that far dwarfs the GM crops issue (what about the safety of everything else we eat)? If not, why do only Monsanto and other biotechs - far from the largest companies (and industries) involved in food production - have this power over the regulators?

A similar argument applies to those who still maintain Percy Schmeiser's innocence - how is Monsanto able to bend the Canadian judiciary, all the way to the highest court, to its wishes? And if it can, wouldn't this suggest a far broader problem - that the court system there is rotten? Again, there is no evidence of that, nor concern from other quarters.

Re "proven" harm to animals - like for the bees scare, I understand that the link between the GM cotton and deaths of goats etc (the sheep and cattle are new to me - have they been added for effect?) is yet to be proven, as there are other possible factors that could as easily be involved (and putting aside the fact that GM cotton plants were not developed as stock feed)

I do not understand when you say that Monsanto prevents studies being repeated, by refusing access to their GM materials - once a product (eg GM corn, soy, etc) is cleared for sale by the regulators, surely it is easy to get hold of? You also state that "independent" scientists are pressurised, patronised, and vilified by Monsanto - yet your post attacks Monsanto personnel and researchers, and by implication regulators, in just these ways.

Still, I must say that your conspiracy theories would make a good storyline for a James Bond film!

It seems to me that there is more emotional comment than any evidence based on facts. If the GM product is safe for humans and animals, why are we unable to review the research and results of the testing conducted? While I do not advocate the use of GM crops in any shape or form, I still want to know how the producers know for sure that "it will not harm humans or animals". I am also all for developing products that seriously benefit mankind. It would be extremely foolish to dismiss a new thing simply because we are "Scared" of it. Mother nature is a wonderful provider for ALL of humankind. If we were meant to "improve" what she has given us, I am sure it would have happened by now. If you look at the bees crisis in the US, it seems to me to be very "coincidental" that this is also one of the premier countries in the use and development of GM crops. WHY? What about cross contamination? I have seen no evidence that this can be controlled. What about potential harmful mutations? Nothing I have read so far has shown that this could not happen.
Before it is too late, we need to get the scientific community of the world to agree as to what the ramifications of GM materials are. We have a beautiful planet but if we continue modifying, adding, pouring out our carbon emissions, etc. it will not remain so.

Would it be commercial madness to bribe officials in Indonesia so that your crops could by pass the controls of screening GM cotton crops? or to suppress studies proving your GM Potatoes are "unfit for human consumption" how about trying to suppress journalists free speech on hazards of genetically engineered bovine growth hormone or what about dumping toxic waste in the UK poisoning the water for people and animals in Wales? sadly Tierra, this is the kind of thing that large, greedy multinational companies do. And they would not be the first companies to put the public health at risk and then deny that they were causing health problems to their consumers. (Tobacco industry?)

It seems to me, we still know so little about the genetic code and how its subtle combinations balance out in the ecosystem. The posts above by members of the bio tech community clearly show the money driven pressures, which always leads to time to market demands which should not be apart of this dangerous yet powerful form of science. Corporate structures are designed to only be accountable to the share holders and the laws of the country that govern it, in fact, it is unlawful for the company officers to act otherwise (were I have done business anyway). This structure does have its uses but can be dangerously irresponsible to the community at large as there is no internal incentive past customer satisfaction.

The problem with GM's is that in order to pursue this potential revolutionary line of science, we have to risk the biosphere... but we only have one. It seems foolish considering how many setbacks any major discovery runs into along the way. We discover more through our mistakes than we do our successes, but when the mistakes in GMs have proven to not remain isolated, how can we go back if they really foul it up, they are only human after all.

So its not the same wolf - its not Monsanto first of all. Next its not already killing bees. je--- so many people have their facts wrong about this issue it is one of the biggest con jobs ever "Monsanto's BT cotton plants are killing sheep, goats and cattle in India" where are teh facts on this slaunder? Gm genes don't escape - they are there already - you eat them now - you eat corn genes - you eat cauliflower mosiac virus DNA now! Is their so little science education in the UK? has everything gone to pot - or maybe the pub? How come bees are dying off in teh UK where there are no GM crops to speak of? maybe its impossible to be caused by GM crops -- but lets not let logic get in the way ! Afterall organic is the new religion - its a belief - remember Hilter wanted purity - he was a vegetarian - we want our food to be pure bred - pure bred is clean! Its very sad for the EU that you will be denied the benefits of technology that will reduce pesticide use, reduce fertlizer use, incrase yields (reducing the need to cultivate more land) already there are demands to remove set aside land and bring it back into cultivation becuase you can't produce enough food - you have to buy food from Africa - from the poor and starving - you need teh new slave labor of developing countries to produce your organic food

So its not the same wolf - its not Monsanto first of all. Next its not already killing bees. je--- so many people have their facts wrong about this issue it is one of the biggest con jobs ever "Monsanto's BT cotton plants are killing sheep, goats and cattle in India" where are teh facts on this slaunder? Gm genes don't escape - they are there already - you eat them now - you eat corn genes - you eat cauliflower mosiac virus DNA now! Is their so little science education in the UK? Has everything gone to pot - or maybe the pub? How come bees are dying off in the UK where there are no GM crops to speak of? Maybe its impossible to be caused by GM crops -- but lets not let logic get in the way ! After all organic is the new religion - its a belief - remember Hitler wanted purity - he was a vegetarian - we want our food to be pure bred - pure bred is clean! Its very sad for the EU that you will be denied the benefits of technology that will reduce pesticide use, reduce fertilizer use and increase yields (reducing the need to cultivate more land). Already there are demands to remove set-aside land and bring it back into cultivation because you can't produce enough food - you have to buy food from Africa - from the poor and starving - you need the new slave labor of developing countries to produce your organic food -- its very, very sad. Meanwhile the rest of the world is moving on and millions of farmers mainly in developing countries and using GM crops.