We must not have the same notion of
the authority argument and the subject is "GMOs good for health"
Decryption is needed
The danger of GMOs is not where you believe... the more you dig, the more you come across a lot of fraud in the anti-GMO argument. This indictment is full of errors, sophisms, distorted facts, falsifications and lies. People who tell you that Monsanto is hiding the truth hide themselves the evidence of the falseness of their own claims about GMOs. They hope to drown you under a flood of science and so overwhelmed you preferred to trust your guts and gobble their incitement to distrust.
the central argument of the anti-GMO movement - the precaution to avoid genetically modified foods - is an imposture. Activists who tell you to pay attention to GMOs are far from being meticulous in evaluating alternative options. They denounce the toxicity of certain proteins of GM crops, while being the heralds of substances, pesticides and other non-GM crops packed with the same proteins. They describe genetic engineering as a chaotic and unpredictable process, although studies have found that other methods of agricultural improvement, including those endorsed by these same activists, are far more disruptive to plant genomes.
... If you're concerned about pesticides and transparency, then you need to know what toxins some of your food, and not others, have been exposed to. It's not a label that will tell you. On the other hand, it may push you to buy a non-GMO product, even though the GMO selection is comparatively the safest.
The story of Hawaii's papaya
Twenty years ago, Hawaiian papaya producers were not in great shape. The papaya ringspot virus, transmitted by insects, destroyed the crops. The farmers had tried everything to stop the epidemic: plant breeding, crop rotation, quarantines. Nothing had worked. A scientist had another idea. And if it was possible to transfer a gene from a harmless element of the virus, the envelope protein, into the DNA of the papaya? Would genetically modified papaya be immune to phytovirus?
This scientist, Dennis Gonsalves, of Cornell University, had this idea in part thanks to Monsanto. But Monsanto did not care about papaya. While papaya is an essential commodity in the developing world, it is not as profitable as soybean or cotton. As a result, Monsanto and two other companies would patent the technology for a Hawaiian farmers' association. Licenses were free but limited to Hawaii. The association distributed the seeds to the farmers for free at first, before selling them to them.
Today, the GM papaya is a triumph. She saved the area. But his story is also most edifying. Because the papaya, once the virus is defeated, almost did not survive a campaign to purge Hawaii of GM crops. The story of this campaign teaches us a difficult lesson: no matter that a GMO is consumed for years without harming anyone, no matter how many studies prove its safety, there will always be skeptics for warn you of unknown risks.
In 1996 and 1997, three federal agencies give their approval to the papaya GM. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) does not report "no deleterious effects on plantations, non-target organisms or the environment" in field trials. EPA, the US environmental agency, points out that people have consumed the virus for years in infected papayas. "Whole infectious particles of the papaya ring-spot virus, including its envelope protein, are present in the fruits, leaves and roots of most plantations," says the EPA. The agency mentions the long mammalian food history and indicates that for a very long time the entire virus has been consumed without causing any deleterious health effects on humans. Plantations infected with the virus have been, for centuries, an integral part of the diet of humans and domestic animals, and no study suggests that this plant may be toxic to humans, as it is to other vertebrates. In addition, phytoviruses are unable to replicate in mammalian organisms as in other vertebrates, which precludes the possibility of human infection.
Arguments that were not going to satisfy everyone. In 1999, one year after the arrival of the new papaya seeds in Hawaiian farmers, their opponents claim that the viral gene can interact with the DNA of other viruses and create pathogens all the more dangerous. In 2000, vandals destroy plantations of papaya and other plants grown in the University of Hawaii's research laboratory, calling them "genetic pollution". In 2001, the Public Interest Research Group (US PIRG) considers Hawaii as the US state where open-label GM experiments are the most numerous and calls for a national moratorium on such tests. The US PIRG states that "the science of genetic engineering is radical and new" and that, with respect to GM crops, "their effects on human health and their impact on the environment have not been properly assessed".
As with the activists "voluntary reapers"
in France, it is often dogmatism that triumphs, surely that the "original sin" sticks to our skin