Sunday, November 16, 2014

GMO? OMG! STFU.

I was either going to title this post, “Everything You Wanted To Know About The Safety Of GMOs But Didn’t Care To Ask Because You Are Stuck In A Misinformed Ideological Belief As Opposed To Arriving At An Informed Opinion Based On Empirical Scientific Data” or “GMO? OMG! STFU.” I went for the shorter one. Catchier.



This is a good quote for summing up the anti-GMO movement. The anti-vaccine movement. The global warming deniers. The anti-gluten people (the 99% of Earthlings who don’t have Celiac disease). The evolution deniers. The alternative medicine people. Homeopathy. Chiropractic. Acupuncture. Etc.

The following is a collection of GMO debates I’ve had with one liberal independent & very anti-GMO friend. I like these debate posts because you get both sides of the argument: the conspiracy and the truth. (Liberals are just as anti-science as Republicans when it interferes with their ideological beliefs.)

You will see a plethora of links supporting each side of the debate. One side has researched, peer-reviewed, reproducible scientific studies that refute the anecdotal cherry-picked ideology presented by the other side. I’ll let you figure out which is which.

If you don’t want to read a fairly lengthy post, here it is in a genetically modified nutshell:

“This study I found on “HealthyMercolaNaturalNoGMOsNoChemicalsMonsantoIsEvilBabeFoodOrganicFreedomBuyThis AlternativeFromUs dot com" shows how evil GMOs are.”
“This peer-reviewed scientific study takes apart that anecdotal study point-by-point, exposing the logical fallacies and cherry-picked statistics it used. And here is the complete scientific study presenting comprehensive analysis of the topic.”
“Yeah, well, there are no studies that show GMOs are safe.”
“Except for these couple thousand?”
“Yeah, well, ha ha ha! You just keep thinking that, shill!”
“I’d rather rely on the science than my ideological wishes."

"Well, to change the subject, it's about the one corporation that owns all the food in the world."
"Here's a list of several hundred food corporations only from the USA. Which is the one that owns all the food in the world? …Hello?”

I’m no scientist, but I tend to rely more on easily accessible scientific evidence as opposed to a sales pitch behind a pay wall.

This post could have gone on forever, but I think I've tackled all the anti-GMO talking points. Several are repeated because fact retention seems to be elusive to the "anti" crowd. I tried to cut out the repetitions as best I could when they weren't entwined within other talking points.

This post is extensive, so brace yourself.


Enjoy...