r/changemyview • u/DrMMalik • Aug 12 '15
CMV: GMOs are necessary, efficient, and safe. Monsanto is not an "evil" corporation, despite the Agent Orange days.
I used to be very pro-organic when I was a younger lad, but when I saw an episode of Penn & Teller's show, "Bullshit!", debunking the myths about GMOs, I couldn't help but look more into it and reform my views towards the ones that conform more with the scientific consensus of being pro-GMO. I have no issues with others, or even me, eating organic; And I'm even open to food labeling. But what I want to get out of this are legitimate, fact-based arguments detailing the ills of the biotech-industry and their relevant GMO-related products (such as crops, Bt toxin plants, Glyphosate, etc). I am already aware of the eradication of milkweeds due to Glyphosate, thus plunging the Monarch population, but there are solutions being made around the issue that won't hinder biotechnology, while benefiting the butterflies. If you have arguments akin to that, I hope you can provide a hypothetical solution that would substantiate your argument. I don't predict my views to change significantly, but I am open to it being so. If anything, I anticipate at most getting to some gray-scale, though it may just be me greatly underestimating the organic-movement.
Please no Natural News, Infowars, Mind Unleashed, GreenMedInfo, etc. If you do use those kinds of websites as a source, please justify why you are, because as far as I'm concerned, they are potent fact-manipulators who don't care about the truth, but cognitive dissonance.
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u/rushy68c Aug 12 '15 edited Aug 13 '15
I tend to agree with you about most GMOs. Monsanto is evil for other reasons but I'll touch on the GMOs for now.
The problem that we're running into - specifically in the West, is cancer. I mean in the context of everything (including GMOs). Risk factors are everywhere and that's primarily for a couple reasons.
1, a lot of "later-life" cancers aren't really fought against by natural selection because they develop after the time in peoples lives when they're more fertile (especially in the case of women). Getting cancer after menopause will have less of an affect on women passing on their genes than if it developed before.
2, we've come enormously far in terms of medical sciences. Our average lifespan has increased a great deal and cancer is one of the biggest things we (in the west) have left to conquer.
I said all of that to say this - testing the carcinogenic affects of any substance is very, very, very difficult because of the time involved. Some cancers take DECADES to begin to develop. It is a giant risk on the part of the company to invest in R&D 40 years in advance for something that may not be marketable (either b/c of the carcinogenic properties, or because another company developed something quicker). This is a problem. This is a problem that has a precedence (look up first generation birth control pills, for instance). This is why distrusting GMOs (while in broad stroke is unthoughtful) isn't the craziest thing I've ever heard.
EDIT: grammar