|
Slanderer posted:However, I'm not sure if I'd lump them in with traditional conspiracy theorists, if only because they don't seem to run with the same circles, or propogate the same memes. I don't here these people talking about government coverups, false flags, or murder-drones slaughtering those who know The Truth. Instead, they seem to worry more about Big Pharma, "superfoods" that they don't want you to know about, and the secret wisdom of the ancients/the noble savage/the mysterious chinaman. The people I know who are the most into anti-GMO advocacy are also pushing anti-fluoridation, chemtrails and 9/11 truther stuff, to the point I don't even bother talking to them when they start in on these topics. The sad thing is I watch it start to spread throughout most of the other general left leaning, environmentalist set. People in my personal life that I see exercise judgement and rationality on many other topics are starting to go with the green crowd on this which is tending anti-GMO. I tried arguing it once or twice, but inevitably the argument relaxes to "Well why don't we just label everything, and then we can decide for ourselves" which is a way to punt out of the argument and avoid discussing it with anyone so they can preserve their own opinions. I imagine long term the trend is going to be similar to irradiated food, where theres was no harm and actually health benefit in using radiation to sterilize food and produce, but due to sensationalism and outcry major grocery chains all stopped using it. I imagine eventually we'll see label initiatives passed and then it'll move to people agitating certain chains for carrying gmo products, and eventually they just won't because its too much hassle. Its the same with creationists in the sense that if someone didn't reason themselves into an opinion, they will not be reasoned out of it. The emotional pitch of anti-GMO sentiment leaves me with little confidence that it will ever be dialed back.
|
#
¿
Jun 27, 2013 05:20
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 11:45 |
|
|
It also doesn't help that wrt to this particular topic, there have been a rash of dubious studies that get published, walked back, but then continue to be cited and used in issue advocacy despite the science behind them having been poked through with holes. A famous one was over a decade ago with the Pujtai study on gmo potatoes in the Lancet. The issue was a large political one in the UK in that time (and really still up to today throughout Europe) and so the Lancet published, but because there were so many holes in it they also felt it necessary to publish the criticism in the same issue, when truthfully the GMO study which had a lot of problems shouldn't have gotten any ink. Another example was just last year with the French anti GMO study, where these awful pictures of spraque dawly rats with giant tumors were leaked to the press promoting a documentary before the actual study was even released. At which point it gets roundly destroyed by the scientific community. One of the best parts was that the incidence of tumors they found in their sprague dawley rats was pretty similar to what scientists had already known about this tumor susceptive strain of rat commonly used in biology research. It was pure sensationalism. But its sort of like how the headline gets front page coverage and the correction is buried on page A29. The people not following the science end of the story and callibrating their views with what other researchers are saying, don't remember anything else but the headline and the scary picture of rats, which they then spread among their social groups.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 27, 2013 05:33
|
|
|
Adventure Pigeon posted:
Someone on this forum who I can't remember once put it very aptly, that worrying about a GMO variety of a domesticated plant escaping into the wild and out competing is like worrying about a chihuahua doing the same. Wild weeds will choke it out and a taller hardier shrub or tree will beat it out for sunlight.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 27, 2013 20:22
|
|
|
FRINGE posted:So have you been able to parse the advice given to you as to where the communication problems you seem to have with people might be yet? There is a certain richness in you coming into threads like these and lecturing others about their communication skills given your long rap sheet for tone and communication problems when strutting into threads just like this one in order to shout and snark other people down about the virtues of natural foods and herbal medicines. To go back to Vitiator's plea for trying to understand the base motivations and misgivings on the other side of debates like these I can't help but wonder what the point is. What is the virtue in trying to engage the Ken Hams wrt to evolution, the Arkanes of this world wrt to climate science, the FRINGE elements with regards to GM and natural foods. At some point I think we have to look at the OPs question about how to debate people like this and wonder if we should bother debating them at all. Despite plenty of people trying to engage in discussion and getting nothing but bile in return in past threads like these, no one budges from behind their entrenched positions, in part because the topic has become laden with a lot of fears and emotions. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
|
|
#
¿
Jun 30, 2013 23:45
|
|
|
Tight Booty Shorts posted:Dude, holy poo poo, I read all your posts in this thread and you come off as completely insufferable. I wish I had plat so I could see where you got that nice red title from. He called you on something you're wrong on and all you can do is spew bile and bluster. And given his post history, I think he knows that everything is not fine and dandy the way it is now (words that you put in his mouth). If you could stop acting so aggrieved over being called out, you could continue the dialogue and maybe get out of him that he thinks a part of the solution is in fact nuclear energy, which would cover both the heating element and the Hydrogen element in the haber process, not to mention providing the power needed for whatever fractional distillation you need to perform to obtain the Nitrogen.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 13, 2014 07:49
|
|
|
Tight Booty Shorts posted:Really? karthun likes to throw insults at the people who he disagrees with and I'm the one that's "spewing bile" (lol)? I looked over all his posts in this thread and didn't see him throw a single insult. You're reaching, and projecting quite a bit to avoid any sort of criticism or discussion. You aren't seriously engaging with anyone, and it'll be no surprise when shortly people stop responding to your posts. You also keep trying to dance around anyone's points with an appeal to sustainable agriculture, but no serious discussion of what that means. This kind of wreaks of western privilege though, since these organic, sustainable practices which don't involve fertilizers at all will not scale to feed humanity. Yiggy fucked around with this message at 17:17 on Jan 13, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Jan 13, 2014 17:07
|
|
|
After some quick googling I turned up a paper discussion mass vitamin A supplementation efforts in Tanzania through UNICEF. It was generally successful and administered alongside vaccinations (if I'm understanding this correctly, I gave it a cursory read so check for yourself and all that). Issues they identified with coverage seemed to do with being able to keep good records on who did or did not receive supplementation, and this hinged on widespread good record keeping practices and health records infrastructure. I also found a study showing successful efforts in Chandigarh, so there is some of this going on in India. As for whether a widespread program of Vitamin A supplementation in India would be cheaper and meet less resistance than implementing golden rice, I think that depends on what your assumptions are. In India there is a general antipathy towards Western, "allopathic" forms of medicine & treatment that is fairly widespread among Indians. Sure, they have hospitals and doctors and all of that, but more often than not Western medicine is supplementing Ayurvedic and Unani medicine which seems to be the bulk of what is practiced. Their medical and social services infrastructure are generally lax at that. For me at least it really seems like a no brainer that circulating golden rice into a culture where rice is very much a staple food is going to be a bit easier than overturning a lot of ingrained attitudes resistant to western ideas of medicine and supplementation in general. Nutrients from the food would be an easier pill for them to swallow, no pun intended, than an actual pill.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 8, 2014 23:47
|
|
|
I really don't think you can make any assumptions about how anything will go in India based on a program in Tanzania.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 9, 2014 00:17
|
|
|
Well first off I think you're leaning pretty heavily on a study I mentioned offhand but didn't link (and thats my fault, certainly not pointing fingers here) just to say "Maybe it could work" so lets dig a little deeper, because now that I'm looking at it more closely I didn't really report all of the details correctly (again, all my fault). So first, here is a link to the study concerning Chandigarh. Looking at it more closely, this was not assessing the efficacy of coverage of the administration of supplementation but rather looking at an area where two rounds of supplementation were given, and then seeing if this lowered the incidence of diarrhea in children. I'm only able to read the abstract so I have no idea what the actual program was like, if its ongoing, if it was ultimately efficacious or not. I kept digging and found this, which is more recent and speaks directly to the issue. quote:Results: Only 25% of the children in India received vitamin A supplementation, indicating a poor coverage, and the differences between the States were wide (<10% to >45%). Rural children (OR: 1.20; 95% CI: 1.10-1.30; P < 0.0001) and children of educated mothers (OR: 2.40; 95% CI: 2.04-2.83; P < 0.0001) were more likely to receive vitamin A supplementation than others. Children born in a higher birth order (6+) (OR: 0.54; 95% CI: 0.46-0.63; P < 0.0001) and those residing in states with low levels of social and economic development (OR: 0.51; 95% CI: 0.46-0.57; P < 0.0001) were only about half as likely to receive vitamin A supplementation as their counterparts. Conclusion: The national vitamin A supplementation program in India did not reach a majority of preschool children in 2005. Greater maternal formal education, higher household wealth status and high social development status of their State of residence appears to be an important determinant for receipt of a vitamin A supplementation by preschool children in India. So it would appear that supplementation efforts are proving to be problematic with huge disparities in coverage in India. The differences in scale, governance and the dynamics of massive Indian cities all cast serious doubt on supplementation as any sort of panacea to vitamin a deficiency in India. Getting the vitamin A into the food supply is going to be way easier than trying to deal with any sort of administrative program in India. Yiggy fucked around with this message at 00:42 on Jul 9, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Jul 9, 2014 00:37
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 11:45 |
|
|
illrepute posted:Maybe it could work in major cities as a way to cut down on deficiency. From what I could tell the cities are actually the problem. At first this seemed a little counterintuitive to me but the more I lingered on it, it makes sense. The rural villages and areas are numerous but tiny, and its much less of an issue to get in, supplement everyone, document adequate records and move on to the next. The cities though are such a huge, sprawling mess, teeming with tarp slums and massive, multigenerational low caste homes that keeping track of things there is a much more daunting task. Those are the areas you really want the golden rice, in all of the outlying paddies surrounding and supplying cities like Kolkata and Mumbai. There are so many poor Indians there eating rice and only rice, for whom upper caste Indians in civil services and administration aren't going to give a poo poo about, I think golden rice would be the way to go (and would be worth the effort of convincing those cultivators). For rural areas with more isolated economies, supplementation might be easier than convincing them to change a crop.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 9, 2014 00:59
|
|