Guilt By Association: Of Monsanto, Donald Trump, and Dr. Oz’s Berries
Read Time:3 Minute, 18 Second
The sign, complete with skull and crossbones, proclaims that Monsanto is the “Home of GMO’s and Agent Orange.” and the apparent intent is to taint one product with the other and to demonize Monsanto.
It’s the kind of invalid argument that probably has a Latin name I could look up. It’s also the kind of argument that might cause the cynical observer to turn it around and ask if using a fallacy taints your assertion. It’s never productive, at least in the world of passionate belief, to point out a bad argument, even one so blatantly cheap, how ironically contradictory as this one. It just makes believers mad and more tenacious.
Just look at the people like Trumpelstiltskin, still passionately telling you vaccines cause autism. Facts don’t matter, we live in an age of fraud and flim-flam men. Is it the Internet? Does it matter? Information travels at the speed of light which is constant whether it’s true or false and so much of that information is based on the same bad argument: I don’t understand, I don’t know this, so therefore that. Uncertainty supports certainty and always has.
People who are afraid of cell phones but not police radios or airport radar or their Bluetooth devices or WiFi will remain so, at least for a long time. I suppose someone out there still argues that watching Television without a lamp on top will make you blind and that rust causes Tetanus. In the absence of solid, large scale, double blind and randomized peer reviewed evidence that Genetically Modified corn causes any harm or will “pollute the food chain” because of cross pollination, how long will the War on Monsanto persist? Anyone care to bet?
Look at any long debunked marketing schemes that tell you “studies show” this or that, and odds are there were no credible studies and the odds are someone is still asserting it passionately.. I read one just yesterday citing “theoretical evidence” that Alzheimer’s was “caused” by your toxin-filled diet which of course needs Dr. Bonkers’ magic pills to make it healthy. Theoretical evidence. It’s kind of an IQ test. If you smile, you pass. Is the “evidence” against GMO’s getting acceptance from independent scientists? My opinion is: not so much. . .
But you can guess I’m going to doubt the evidence for Monsanto producing toxic food and hiding it. Much of that assertion is based, like the evidence for the Autism/Vaccine assertion on an unreliable, unrepeatable study purporting to show liver failure in rats which, in my opinion and in the opinion of more credible scientists is hokum. It’s long since been removed from the journal in which it was published. It doesn’t matter, of course. The habitually fearful public will believe and mankind in general will always be terrified of anything new and will go on being afraid without supporting evidence. I still wait for any legitimate studies showing any benefit from eating “organic” foods. It’s been solidly proven that gluten doesn’t cause whatever it’s supposed to cause, that dairy products don’t “cause phlegm” and that Dr. Oz’s berries don’t make you lose weight. It doesn’t matter. Those 7 things you should never eat are probably harmless things you should, but it doesn’t matter.
If you eat corn, you’re already eating hybrid corn, grown from artificially cross-bred stock and not corn grown from the seeds of what you’re eating. That’s been true of many agricultural products for a very long time, from apples to zucchini. That makes the idea hard to swallow, even with a bit of salt and butter, that somehow the added or modified genes are going to be cross pollinated into your Wheaties, but again, belief is not evidence dependent and the remarkable lack of verifiable and repeatable and peer reviewed support only strengthens the fear of pesticides, fertilizers, hormones, preservatives, carcinogens and gluten — and the financial status the people who sell books and pills and fear.
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So much of what we’re being told by the activists is simply untrue or grossly exaggerated. What confuses me is the passion to form protest groups where nobody really makes any money from it – like the ant-vaccine people, but all the shouting about “processed” food, cooked food, irradiated food and “paleo” diets has less science behind it than Star Treck.
If you don’t know how to spell Star Trek, you’re a verbal wrek, not playing with a full dek.
Countries all over the world are banning GMO’s. My question is why is Monsanto continuing this practice? Can they not see the handwriting on the proverbial wall? Are there still so many countries using GMO’ that it is still profitable? The whole damn thing confuses hell out of me.
But even the same countries that ban them are using them regularly! As has been pointed out, most feed is GMO, and it saves enough money in terms of pesticides/herbicide and making the land enough more productive that it is more than worthwhile! I am so tired of people saying “oh, but other countries ban it, so it must be bad!” As soon as “other countries” figure out that it’s not as bad as they thought, and that it definitely does have benefits, those same “other countries” hop off the bandwagon…
Sorry, It should be Star Dreck, of course.
The Latin term you’re looking for is “Rubeum allec”.
The way I see it, people have been genetically modifying crops and animals since the origins of agriculture. What makes Monsanto an exemplar of evil is not what they do to the seeds, but how they sell them. Crops grown from many strains of Monsanto seeds are sterile, meaning that farmers who use them cannot grow self-sustaining crops – every season they must buy new seed. This might not be so much of an issue with factory farming, but in countries where farmers need to be self-sustaining, it is not a good model for doing business.
So many crops are grown from hybrid seed. Corn for instance has been grown from hybrid seeds for over 50 years and it’s been a long time since farmers saved any for seed. Seeds from what you’ve grown will not produce the same crop and you have to buy new seed. That’s been true for ages and of course there are seedless fruits and vegetables that cannot reproduce.
But the idea that seeds from GMO plants are sterile seems to be a myth and it’s easy to find the idea rebutted all over the internet. In fact most of what we read needs to be taken with a grain of salt — and maybe some salad dressing.
Most of the GMO crops available at the moment seem to be for animal feed, like alfalfa or most corn, or for things not directly eaten, but like sugar beets for instance, used to extract sugar.