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Ask HN: Why isn't supporting GMOs more taboo?

1 points by gardenthoughts ↗ HN
Companies like Monsanto have taken enormous steps in destroying our environment and the lives of many farmers around the world. The promises offered by GMO crops seem to almost always fizzle out a few years later, when the dependence on pesticides, herbicides, and GMO seeds increases and output decreases.

Yet, it seems that when I talk to science-oriented friends of mine, they seem to uniformly believe that GMOs work and should continue to be pursued and put into the world.

Where are the good examples of GMOs that: - Continuously increase yields. - Lower dependence on further artificial inputs. - Don't contaminate nearby crops. (In historical cases, Monsanto has been given ownership of crops that their GMO crops have essentially raped through pollination).

In a world where not believing climate change will get you crucified in almost any public setting, why do intelligent people continue to let GMOs run rampant?

(While my views may be obvious, I am genuinely curious to see what others think about this -- and whether their beliefs are driven by evidence or a general ethos of "belief in science".)

7 comments

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ev1
I see absolutely no problem with GMOs and the fact that they increase yields tremendously is great for feeding people.

The problem I see is the reliance on abusive monopolies like Monsanto, and the fact that they are not being regulated out of existence. This is not a GMO problem, it is a Monsanto et al problem with abusive one-sided contracts, forcing farmers into poverty, suing farmers, overcharging for pesticides.

gardenthoughts
I view this argument similarly to people who say socialism works in theory -- but can't produce a working historical example.

GMO has always equalled abusive monopoly (at least at any scale that matters) -- so why the impulse to defend the underlying technology when the historical examples only show its abuse?

I largely agree with the point you are making, but personally can't take the step to believe that somehow the technology can better the world without the enormously negative baggage.

ev1
From an objective POV you've come in here with a loaded question and a lot of emotionally charged complaints and no citations, and people in the comments have also proven you wrong on some points with citations.

I have inherent trust of websockets and webrtc because I see the usefulness of it and it's great when you need it, I have inherent distrust of 90% of the people that use it because it's heavily used for abuse, port scanning, attacks on clients, fingerprinting and privacy violations (used to expose your LAN subnet, and then port scan it from your browser behind your firewall), adblock bypassing (streaming ads as blob data through a websocket has become commonplace). They do not need to be connected.

Finnucane
The anti-gmo folks have done themselves no favors by often pushing scare stories about food safety that aren't backed up by actual facts. More complicated issues--like control of the food supply by large-scale ag and chemical companies--take effort to understand. Even seemingly straightforward issues like seed-saving aren't so much in the real world of today's farmers. Even the projections of how much food we really need to produce when we're throwing away so much now are debatable.
polka_haunts_us
It reminds me a lot of talking about meat reduction. Intellectually I understand there are a lot of fairly non-controversial reasons to have a less meat heavy diet related to health or the environment or w/e, just as I intellectually understand there are plenty of reasons to not like Monsanto. But whenever these conversations come up, there is a very loud contingent who is sometimes the loudest in the room screaming about "GMO Warning Labels" or "Cows deserve the same rights as humans" which I don't agree with at all and, in my mind, poisons the whole conversation.
gardenthoughts
I'd reverse the argument here quite entirely. I think it is very obvious that few people benefit from the food supply being controlled by large-scale ag and chemical companies -- yet many of the same people who would bemoan that reality seem to be champions/at least passive defenders of the very technology that these companies abuse most: which, to me, is GMO.

Issues like over-usage of Roundup and the contamination of world water supply with glyphosate are inextricable from the fact that companies like Monsanto use GMO technology to ensure crops only grow/express certain traits after being exposed to these chemicals. So why the inherent trust of this technology?

evgen
> The promises offered by GMO crops seem to almost always fizzle out a few years later, when the dependence on pesticides, herbicides, and GMO seeds increases and output decreases.

Demonstrably false.

> Where are the good examples of GMOs that:

> - Continuously increase yields.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-21284-2

> - Lower dependence on further artificial inputs.

Herbicide resistant crops have led to significant growth of no-till agriculture, which lowers fuel usage and decreases the CO2 and NOX footprint for farming. Crops engineered to be resistant to insects have led to less pesticide usage and an increase in insect biodiversity.

> - Don't contaminate nearby crops.

> (In historical cases, Monsanto has been given ownership of crops that their GMO crops have essentially raped through pollination).

Falsehood that is easily disproven using the simple facts of the cases in question. They don't "contaminate" nearby crops. Their pollen may be carried elsewhere, but this has always been the case with plants and so far the anti-GMO factions have been unable to demonstrate an actual harm beyond their own paranoia.

> In a world where not believing climate change will get you crucified in almost any public setting, why do intelligent people continue to let GMOs run rampant?

Perhaps because they actually know how to evaluate scientific data while you seem to be getting your news and information from Greenpeace and other peddlers of bullshit.

While some would like to claim scientists are being reckless in GMO usage and experimentation, they have actually be rather conservative and only focused on a few features and metabolic pathways. We are just starting to see products that move beyond the simple, low-hanging fruit of drought, disease, and insect resistance. Adding salinity resistance, tweaking photosynthesis pathways to be more efficient, and improving nutritional composition are starting to enter more widespread testing and experimentation. With the increased control that CRISPR offers there is going to be a lot more options available for improvement.