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nor do I agree with a conglomerate being able to patent genetic material

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Why not ?They put up all the resourses to develop it .Patents have a shelf life that expire . But why shouldn't the reap the benefits of what they sow ?
Besides you are ignoring a very good reason for seeds that produce sterile plants.. Have you considered that eliminates the concerns people have about cross pollination ?

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I very much doubt that eradicating world hunger is Monsanto's chief priority regarldelss of what it's PR machine spews out.

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If that is what is accomplished then why shouldn't they profit from it. I am amazed at how often I encounter this notion that profits=evil .
They are developing seeds that grow where others don't . They are being developed to be pest resistant ,herbacide resistant,disease resistant ,cold tolerant ,and in the case of rice ,modified to provide a better nutritional value for the peoples of the world where rice is the staple.Blindness due to vitamin A deficiency can be eradicated with the use of 'golden rice 'that is high in beta carotine .

by the way... golden rice was developed by a non-profit organization that would like to provide the seeds free. However ludditism from Europe scared off investors so the grants for the research were not renewed.

Europe where resistance is perhaps highest in the world has had major food scares with mad cow disease ,and dioxin and pcb tainted crops from Belgium . None of these were the results of genetic tinkering by Dr Frankenstein.

More abundant yields will mean fewer acres needed for agriculture ,and the other modifications will mean more food can be grown locally reducing the need to transport .
There are other uses for GM too besides food production .
GM Poplar trees have been developed to clean up heavy metal pollution from contaminated soil.

GM has the potential to eliminate hunger and malnutrition ,and help preserve the environment compared to traditional farming that requires more acreage herbacides and insecticides .
By all means proceed with caution and do everything possible to ensure safety . But the potential benefits far outweigh the risks .

How does me commenting on the fact that eradicating world hunger is not Monsanto's prime motive equate to profit = evil? There are plenty of drug barons raking in a healthy profit. Have I no right to comment on their methods and motives? And no, I'm not equating Monsanta to a drug baron, I'm pointing out that profit motivation is rarely altuistic, so lets not paint the GM companies as being saviours of the world. Profit is made at the expense of others. When that expense is the money in their wallets freely given, in return for a product or service they want, which will not come with unacceptable and often undisclosed risks, it is absolutely fine. The question here is what is the true cost of Monsanto's profits?

Did you bother to read my link on the thousands of Indian farmers being pushed into extreme debt and poverty because of reliance on seeds that 'deliver benefits ordinary seeds don't?' I think they might disagree with your list of benefits.

Are GM seeds really delivering what was promised?

AMERICAN FARMERS COPE WITH ROUNDUP-RESISTANT WEEDS (GM CROPS AND SUPERWEEDS) The PPJ Gazette

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/GMcropsfailed.php

Just how good are the benefits of golden rice?

The Golden Rice - An Exercise in How Not to Do Science

Weeds that are Roundup resistant has nothing to do with GM . That's just natural genetics doing what it does. Lucky for them they now have Round up resistant corn as an option . Or are you saying that farmers should no longer use pesticides ? I don't in my garden ,but I spend a lot of manual hours keeping my small veggie garden weed free. My small plot of land feeds my family with some food seasonally .However ,I still depend on commercially grown produce for most of my consumption.

What I'm going to write next will sound heartless. But this is just a fact. Once upon a time there was a thriving business for blacksmiths who forged shoes for horses . Then technology advanced human travel and the need for their work pretty much vanished. They were 'displaced' and needed to find something else to do for a living . Luddism as I recall originated in England . Unfortunately thus ever was. Old makes way for the new.
My father in law learned CAD drafting only to see it become obsolete before he could even make much productive use of the knowledge.

Now I can feel for the Indian farmer and I can understand the American farmer complaining an end to their way of life . But that does nothing to stem the advance of technology.Higher yield on less acreage and is the challenge the world faces with a growing population . GM biofortification is part of the solution .Yes some people get displaced . But humans overall are better off.

I'm saying what is the point in investing in crops engineered to withdstand roundup if roundup isn't working anyway.

'Soybeans, corn and cotton that are engineered to survive spraying with Roundup have become standard in American fields. However, if Roundup doesn’t kill the weeds, farmers have little incentive to spend the extra money for the special seeds.'

I doubt the Indian farmer or the American farmer would be complaining about their loss of livelihood if the products were delivering what has been promised.

So regardless of whether the benefits are materialising, and regardless of what problems are emerging, it's progress?

Could you show me how humans overall are better off?

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Originally Posted by tomder55

Weeds that are Roundup resistant has nothing to do with GM . That's just natural genetics doing what it does. Lucky for them they now have Round up resistant corn as an option . Or are you saying that farmers should no longer use pesticides ? I don't in my garden ,but I spend alot of manual hours keeping my small veggie garden weed free. My small plot of land feeds my family with some food seasonally .However ,I still depend on commercially grown produce for most of my consumption.

What I'm going to write next will sound heartless. But this is just a fact. Once upon a time there was a thriving business for blacksmiths who forged shoes for horses . Then technology advanced human travel and the need for their work pretty much vanished. They were 'displaced' and needed to find something else to do for a living . Luddism as I recall originated in England . Unfortunately thus ever was. Old makes way for the new.
My father in law learned CAD drafting only to see it become obsolete before he could even make much productive use of the knowlege.

Now I can feel for the Indian farmer and I can understand the American farmer complaining an end to their way of life . But that does nothing to stem the advance of technology.Higher yield on less acreage and is the challenge the world faces with a growing population . GM biofortification is part of the solution .Yes some people get displaced . But humans overall are better off.

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Tom let us deal with a couple of these firstly roundup. This product is fine for its intended purpose knocking down grass and weeds in order to prepare the soil, saves on tillage but to have to modify crops so they are not affected by it, suggests inappropriate use and the attempt to monopolise markets to me.

Objection to GM crops is not the same as objection to technology. GM crops are provided by the same people who gave us DDT, Agent Orange and Bophal. They have, in my opinion, shown too little responsibility to be allowed to stuff about with plant genetics. The problem in India demonstates that lack of responsibility, they have set up a system which enslaves by way of debt and for what, to feed the Indian people, no, to enrich the multinational (read american) chemical companies.

What I say is this, if americans want to stuff with their own food supply, go ahead, but I would like to wait a generation or two to see the results in their population before adopting it here. This does not make me a laddite. I drive a car, not ride a horse, but a generation ago my father drove a horse and sulky, never owned a car. Was he worse off, no. Not all change is progress. Not all technology is good, sixty years on we are still trying to rid ourselves of thermonuclear devices.

Consider this; we have now embraced digital technology and all it will take to wipe out our civilisation is one well aimed large solar mass ejection.

The silly ban on DDT has caused the deaths of perhaps 20,000,000 people in the 3rd world. Oh wait.. that's right.. we need that population control.

DDT was not Monsanto (Swiss scientist Paul Hermann Müller, who won the 1948 Nobel Prize for discovering the insecticide properties of DDT)... neither was Bopal(Union Carbide) or Agent Orange(Dow).. Zero for 3 . Your blanket indictment of an industry proves my point about luddism. What other chemical and biological applications would you ban ? There is no going back to the 18th century no matter how much you'd like to.

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Not all technology is good, sixty years on we are still trying to rid ourselves of thermonuclear devices.

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How much of the world population was killed in the decade of the 1940s before the introduction of the nuke? Don't you think that the nuke factor actually prevented a similar conflagration ?

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Consider this; we have now embraced digital technology and all it will take to wipe out our civilisation is one well aimed large solar mass ejection

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Yes that's possible ;and an Earth killer asteroid could be a weapon of mass extinction . We would not be exchanging ideas on this forum without our embrace of the technology.

What you and I both are in favor of is the responsible use of the technology . What I see in genetic manipulation of produce (which again has been going on since Gregor Mendel ) is great potention being realized. You see it as a great threat. We agree that adequate controls need to be in place. I think many of them are in place despite the handful of examples where unintended consequences have developed (something common with the advance of techology. You say you drive a car. That means that you accept all the inherent risks involved ).
It is not unusual for products once deemed safe to be recalled . That happens often in the pharmaceutical industry. Does that mean you would wait a generation to see if a drug really is effective ?

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Originally Posted by tomder55

the silly ban on DDT has caused the deaths of perhaps 20,000,000 people in the 3rd world. Oh wait ..that's right ..we need that population control.

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Critics claim that restricting DDT in vector control have caused unnecessary deaths due to malaria. Estimates range from hundreds of thousands,to millions. Robert Gwadz of the National Institutes of Health said in 2007, "The ban on DDT may have killed 20 million children." (Wiki)

I presume this is what you refer to?

Criticisms of a DDT "ban" often specifically reference the 1972 US ban (with the erroneous implication that this prohibited use of DDT in vector control).

In 1955, the World Health Organization commenced a program to eradicate malaria worldwide, relying largely on DDT. The program was initially highly successful, eliminating the disease in "Taiwan, much of the Caribbean, the Balkans, parts of northern Africa, the northern region of Australia, and a large swath of the South Pacific" and dramatically reducing mortality in Sri Lanka and India. However widespread agricultural use led to resistant insect populations. In many areas, early victories partially or completely reversed, and in some cases rates of transmission even increased. The program was successful in eliminating malaria only in areas with "high socio-economic status, well-organized healthcare systems, and relatively less intensive or seasonal malaria transmission".

In the 1970s and 1980s, agricultural use was banned in most developed countries, beginning with Hungary in 1968 then in Norway and Sweden in 1970, Germany and the United States in 1972, but not in the United Kingdom until 1984. Vector control use has not been banned, but it has been largely replaced by less persistent alternative insecticides.

Many of the political leaders and aid agencies took on the mantle that DDT is bad and refused to fund programs for its use in tackling malaria not because it had been banned for this use but because it was a political hot potato.

So we come back to the old chestnut of responsible use. As usual the baby got thrown out with the bathwater.

Then of course WHO did a political U turn on the use of DDT to combat malaria.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | WHO backs DDT for malaria control

With DDT no longer used as an agricultural pesticide the problems with resistance are likely to be greatly reduced.

However, I wonder about the safety of spraying this in someone's home:

http://msds.chem.ox.ac.uk/DD/DDT.html

Have WHO got the balance right yet? Time will tell.

Nope I don't use Wiki as a single source.

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Soon after the program collapsed, mosquito control lost access to its crucial tool, DDT. The problem was overuse—not by malaria fighters but by farmers, especially cotton growers, trying to protect their crops. The spray was so cheap that many times the necessary doses were sometimes applied. The insecticide accumulated in the soil and tainted watercourses. Though nontoxic to humans, DDT harmed peregrine falcons, sea lions, and salmon. In 1962 Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, documenting this abuse and painting so damning a picture that the chemical was eventually outlawed by most of the world for agricultural use. Exceptions were made for malaria control, but DDT became nearly impossible to procure. "The ban on DDT," says Gwadz of the National Institutes of Health, "may have killed 20 million children."

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Source :National Geographic
Malaria - National Geographic Magazine

Dr. Robert Gwadz, Researcher, Malaria Molecular Biology, Laboratory of Parasitic Disease, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, National Institutes of Health, USA

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Banned from use in the United States 27 years ago, DDT remains the most effective pesticide in preventing the spread of malaria, which every year kills nearly 3 million people, most of whom live in poor, undeveloped countries. According to the World Health Organization, which last year launched a Rollback Malaria campaign, 300 million to 500 million new malaria cases are identified every year.

Malaria has made a dramatic comeback in certain countries in part because many nations, pressured by environmentalists, no longer use DDT for agricultural purposes.

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Medical scientists call proposed DDT ban unethical - by Dave Gorak - Environment & Climate News

You call it a'political u-turn' .I call it a reaction to the best evidence.

I don't see what point you're actually trying to make here.

I agree with the ban on DDT for agriculture.
There was no ban on DDT against malaria, as your quote says.

Both Wiki and your source, the national geographic, cite the orignial quote about 20 million deaths by Robert Gwatz. This has been largely discredited since it took no account of the fact that without the ban on agricultural use the growing resistance to DDT was making it increasingly less effective against malaria. According to one study that attempted to quantify the lives saved by banning agricultural use and thereby slowing the spread of resistance, "it can be estimated that at current rates each kilo of insecticide added to the environment will generate 105 new cases of malaria."

And why was DDT hard to procure for malaria? Partly because of politicians simply branding it a dirty word - as I said they threw the baby out with the bathwater.

I'm not knocking WHO's decision to start promoting DDT as a means to combat malaria again, if it is the best means of fighting malaria we currently have. However, WHO have made it a priority to replace DDT in the fight against malaria by other, safer, means in the medium term.

My point was directed primarily to Clete who grouped a bunch of isolated issues into a general condemnation of the chemical industry and then used that as a reason for an overall ban on the use of GM .

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Originally Posted by tomder55

My point was directed primarily to Clete who grouped a bunch of isolated issues into a general condemnation of the chemical industry and then used that as a reason for an overall ban on the use of GM .

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Tom I grouped because it demonstated the irresponsibility of the industry. You want to argue DDT was effective but overused, so was Agent Orange, etc.
These substances are too potent to allow a profit motive to drive their use and the user cannot be solely blamed since the chemical company promoted and sold the item for the purpose it was used whilst filling their bank accounts in the process.

GM crops are in the same category a great rush to profit at the expense this time of the user and the environment with no thought of consequence. We are what we eat.

Not true. DDT is a chemical demonstrably effective in the eradication of malaria.. Agent orange was used in warfare. The Bohpal incident was an event that had nothing to do with the effectiveness of the methyl isocyanate gas ,but instead of poor industrial practices.

GM crops are reseached and go through similar scrutiny as prescription drugs... meaning millions of research dollars are spent before at least 3 government agencies approve their use.To say that this has bypassed the regulatory process is nonsense. The USDA ,the FDA ,and the EPA all had to approve.

Holding the trials for prescription drugs up as a gold standard doesn't quite cut it with me.

Is the conflict of interest unacceptable when drug companies conduct trials on their own drugs? Yes -- Goldacre 339 -- bmj.com

And as for rigorous testing of GM:

Genetically Modified Foods: Are They a Risk to Human/Animal Health? (ActionBioscience)

Not to mention the almost complete lack of long term safety assesments in either, but particularly in GM. Remember the 1950's when doctors promoted tobacco as a health product?

This is a clear bias against the technology and nothing I write will convince otherwise. Let's stop new drug production because the regulatory system doesn't guarantee 100% safety. Let's wait a generation to see if a new product can be introduced . Progress stalled because of a complete aversion to risk. Good luck with that .

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Originally Posted by tomder55

This is a clear bias against the technology and nothing I write will convince otherwise. Let's stop new drug production because the regulatory system doesn't guarantee 100% safety. Let's wait a generation to see if a new product can be introduced . Progress stalled because of a complete aversion to risk. Good luck with that .

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Same tired old argument. It's safe because we say so, because it has no intended side affects, but you avoid the argument entirely it is the rush to profit from the technology that has caused problems, how many so called wonder drugs have been withdrawn because of unintended side effects including death. I don't trust your FDA to say something is safe and yes a wait and see policy is not a bad policy because defects are revealed with time and further research. In each case I have cited it is the wholesale indiscriminate use of the product that has caused problems. Look at the old films of DDT use and tell me that that would be permitted today pure ignorance and it goes on, it does not stop, Look at the film of agent Orange sprayed over a nation with no thought of the effects on the human underneath. Look at the shattered lives of generations at Bophal and tell me that behaviour is justifed by the excuse bad practices.

Spoken by a person that has plenty to eat... spoken like a person who doesn't have to be too concerned about a malaria outbreak killing his kin.
Farmers all over the world have embraced GM farming.Most of them small family farmers . 14million of them in 25 countries have joined the 21st century. Must be a matter of pure greed .

But it's OK if you live in the 19th century. Make sure you hitch up your oxen and plow that field . You live in a land of plenty . The rest of the world has a bigger aversion to starvation.
You still avoid the obvious .Every crop evergrown commercially by humans has been modified by humans to adapt to the growing conditions it is planted in... Ever hear of hybrid seeds ? Every domesticated animal ever consumed was the result of human manipulations.

I'm still waiting for the evidence that non-GM foods grown with the applications of herbacides and pestacides is a safer option.

I'm not arguing against technology but for better and more independent testing and appropriate regulation. At the moment too much power lies in the hands of those making the profit. That balance has to change.

I'm arguing that politicians need to get better informed on the decisions they make, currently more due to lobbying etc than knowledge. Aren't we all tired off knee-jerk reactions such as that which led to DDT becoming unavailable for vector control because the homework was never adequately done on the problems caused by agricultural use to start with? With a little more forethought and more thorough testing we could make sensible decisions on when to embrace technology and when to reject it.

Technology happens embraced or not . There is good and bad in all . Nukes led to weapons and to a clean abundant energy source not yet fully exploited .

I disagree with the premise that there has been a mad dash to implement and incorporate GM . I don't know when humans became so risk-adverse. No doubt with the same can do spirit ;our ancestors would never've left their caves.

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Originally Posted by tomder55

I'm still waiting for the evidence that non-GM foods grown with the applications of herbacides and pestacides is a safer option.

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And you will be waiting a long time. Again the spirious argument, the false choice. Non GM crops can be grown without herbacides and pestacides and inappropriate agricultural practices, it is the profit motive, the striving to get that extra return. Farmers are not immune to the subtle pull of greed. It is what drives the use of GM crops in those countries you speak of. It is the big selling point bigger yields, bigger profits, but the important point is non GM crops can be grown without the intervention of big american chemical companies and the politics. So Tom cut the rhetoric and realise that your opinion is just one opinion, there are others here who disagree

You'd have the world starving while you stay doctrinare to growing methods that do not produce sufficient yield ,needs too much acreage ,and is prone to infestation from disease and plague . What do you do ? Ride in a chariot ? Here I was accusing you of living in the 19th century . Little did I know it was BC .