ArcherDanielsMidlandMonsanto NPR is playing a pro-GMO commentary right now

[AP]

that is sick beyond belief.

Don't be too precautionary, or we might sacrifice great benefits.

Gen. modified foods aren't about health, they're about making sure that you can't grow foods without buying a tied, patented chemical as well (like round-up) and they're about making sure that plants don't germinate so you have to buy new seeds every year.

Walter Benjamin was right. History is just a pile of awful, apocalyptic events. Horror piled upon horror.

I'm not afraid on science. I'm afraid of corporations making sure that there is no self-subsistence anywhere in the world, and that, to live, you have to contribute to the profits of a huge corporation.

[el_gato]

1. wait for maple

to come in here and tell you how good franken foods are
and how you should trust the "experts"

[IrateCitizen]

3. I see I'm not the only one who sees clear through Maple!

Good to see you're also fond of pointing out Maple's propaganda techniques. Nice pre-emptive strike. ;-)

[ibegurpard]

6. snarf

only person I have on ignore.

[0007]

41. Maple is a tough cookie

On the corn thingy as I remember she stood tough.

[bpilgrim]

2. i hope they present the OTHER SIDEs of the story as well - n/t

peace

[Cha]

5. Wouldn't That Be Nice!

Peace to you, too! :hi:

[AP]

9. I've NEVER heard the other side of this issue on NPR. Never.

You'll never hear it on American media.

There is just TOO MUCH MONEY at stake for huge corporations.

[bpilgrim]

11. can't say i have...

thank GORE he 'invented' the internet ;->

peace

[DarkPhenyx]

18. I've heard it discussed several times...

...on a few different sources.

Funny that.

[AP]

25. name one time.

I heard one pannel discussion on this issue on TOTN or D.Rehm once, but the panel was stacked in favor of framing the debate in terms of health, and NOBODY on the panel made the economic/business strategy argument, which is shocking.

I've never ever heard one of thes little, un-challenged editorials talk about this issue in either the economic/business strategy paradigm, or, in any respect, negatively from the health angle.

So, let's see some links/rough estimates of dates/anything...

[DarkPhenyx]

27. They have also discussed it on Science Friday.

Even if I provided them I can tell from your attitude you wouldn't listen anyway. So why should I bother? Your mind is made up and you are no better then those who assume they are safe and wonderful becaseu there is no proof to the contrary.

[AP]

33. Give me the link. Maybe that's the one I remember. I'd love to do

a break down of the arguments.

I think you know that I'm right about this and that's why you don't want to bother.

And, hey, I'll concede to you that they're safe and wonderful. My argument has nothing to do with safety. It has to do with the business model. It's the business model that's disgusting and you know it.

[DarkPhenyx]

37. They may not be safe and wonderful.

You'll notice I haven't said anything about them being so. We don't know enough about them yet to make that determination. Which is why we can't be so cautios that we never find out because there is the potential for great benefits.

as to why I won't bother? it isn't worth the effort or my time. You want to learn about it? go do the leg work yourself. Otherwise you are happy to believe what you "know" to be true, as oppose to what you have "learned" to be true. Between those two points is a world of difference. It's very similar to knowing that the US is a Christain nation.

[AP]

42. Why don't you want to talk about the business model for GMO products?

?

[DarkPhenyx]

44. Because the discussion with you...

...would be a wasted effort. It's also assinine stupid to debate that the companies are not doing this to turn a profit. Don't be an idiot.

[AP]

50. So, how do you feel about creating a marketplace for FOOD,

which everyone needs, and which concentrates so much power and profit in the hands of huge corporations, and in a way which could, potentially, bring an end to subsistence?

[DarkPhenyx]

56. You mean like we've already done?

You are about 100 years too late on that argument.

[AP]

60. Subsistence farming is still possible today. It won't be possible tomorrow

if ADM, Monsanto and ConAgra had their way.

[DarkPhenyx]

71. Do you mean world wide...

...or for select individuals? For a few people it is still possible, adn will most likely always be so. However as a world wide possibility, for even 25% of the world to live by subsistance farming, it isn't even remotely possible. Hasn't really been for a long time. THe population to areable land ratio is way too far out of whack.

[AP]

77. ADM, ConAgra, Monsanto have a lot of time, money, and political power

so I'm not going to rule out world domination right now.

I remember reading a few articles about how the US is making it a condition of food aid that the third world (where subsitence farming is critical) accepts GMO crops.

By the way, all over Africa, subsistence maize farming feeds many many people, and it's more producting than industrial farming.

And people don't subsistence farm because buying food is cheap.

I thinik I read that retail food prices have gone up something like 25% in the last ten years, but small farmers are going out of business. All those profits being made are going to huge conglomerates figuring out how to make more money, and the prices will continue to go up, eating up more of people's disposable income. Those businesses are going to squeeze the pips until they squeak.

Cuba (where they now grow more than half their food in and around cities) and Africa has proven that, when the pips squeak, you can always turn to subsistence farming. Well, when the pips start squeaking in the US because of super high retail food prices, we won't be able to turn to subsistence farming because those same companies squeazing you at the supermarket are going to squeeze you in your neighbornood farms, because they'll control the IP rights, the tied chemical sprays, and the seeds as well.

But I'm sure I'm not telling you anything you don't already know.

I you sure you want to keep pushing into stating these truths? This isn't helping you.

[DarkPhenyx]

83. Your facts are skewed...

...and incomplete. Not unusual as a tactic for both sides in the discussion. You do realize that here in the US, where we use GM crops and corporate farming, our food prices are lower than most of the rest of the world?

Africa and subsistance farming. Here we are talking about people who are doing nothing but SF. SF supports the family, and prehaps helps with a few other people. It does not feed large villages let alone cities the size of New York.

Truths and facts help everyone. Why do you feel the need to be an ignorant prick when you present them instead of simply carrying on a civil discourse?

[AP]

85. Retail food prices have gone up 25% in the US in the last ten or so years

We are moving towards more expensive food taking up more and more of American's disposable income.

SF farming in AFrica and Cuba, for that matter, are HUGE SUCCESS stories.

You can use words like ignorant to describe me, but I think most readers here can see what's going down in this argument.

[DarkPhenyx]

88. Yes, prices have gone up. It's called inflation.

Sorry...Africa and Cuba are hardly a huge success, and not an example of how all the world should function.

Let me ask you this question. How much of the world food market was based on "modified" crops back in 1900?

[AP]

94. No it's not. It's called hegemony and poltcal control by big agribusiness

These price increases are NOT being passed down to the family farmer. Foreclosures of small farms are increasing and independant farmers are disappearing.

Those profits have all accumulated to the huge agri-bussinesses and they're being acucmulated and employed in a way to make the agricultural market in America even more skewed through GMO and through buying off Republican legislators, etc.

By the way, who pays your checks? Are you getting some of that back end scratch?

[DarkPhenyx]

96. No, it's inflation.

If we had nothing BUT family farmers we'd still ahve higher food prices. Probably much higher than they currently are.

[AP]

102. Study after study shows that small, non-chemical intensive farming

is the most productive farming there is. Some of the most productive farming in the world right now is maize farming in Botswana, I believe (and, not by chance, Botswanna had the highest increase in GDP last year). Incidentally, Botswana was a country that generally avoided the ravages of colonialism because it served only as source of labor for the gold mines in South Africa. Because there was so much money to made in South Africa, colonizers generally didn't bother taking over the land next door for farming. That means Botswana is farther along in the development of subsistence farming than it's neighbors which had to overcome the disruption of transferring big industrial farms to ownership by the citizens of those contries. (This is all from memory of reading an article in an Foreign Policy journal over a year ago, so I'm open to any refinements of the facts offered by people who KNOW the facts.)

The way the US agriculture has gone has been to increase profit, not to increase productivity. And we're suffering from that right now. GMO crops are just an example of piling on another horror to the shit that has made US agriculture the unproductive, profit concentrating, independant-farmer destroying mess that it is today.

But, D.P., can probably tell you all about that if D.P. were an honest person, as D.P. seems to know enough about it to know how to lie about it.

[IrateCitizen]

86. To counter...

You do realize that here in the US, where we use GM crops and corporate farming, our food prices are lower than most of the rest of the world?

Are you including in those costs the colossal subsidies that are lavished on these same corporate farms? Are you also factoring in how industrial farming methods are heavily dependent on chemicals (which eventually enter the water supply) and ravage the topsoil? Or are you basing this cost solely on what we pay at the grocery checkout?

Your statement is the same as saying that "gasoline is cheap in the US" without taking into account the cost of government subsidy, pollution and military force required to maintain control over resources.

I know, I know -- I'm just being "irrational" again.

Africa and subsistance farming. Here we are talking about people who are doing nothing but SF. SF supports the family, and prehaps helps with a few other people. It does not feed large villages let alone cities the size of New York.

Subsistence farming is an overly romanticized notion. But why must the choice be between subsistence farming and agribusiness? What ever happened to the idea of small-to-medium sized farms where production was increased but the farmer also had a vested interest in ecological conservation?

Nah. Nothing to see here, move along.

Truths and facts help everyone. Why do you feel the need to be an ignorant prick when you present them instead of simply carrying on a civil discourse?

Hello pot, meet kettle. I find this striking coming from you, considering your haste to refer to me as "irrational" below without even bothering to address my arguments, but rather acting as if they were "beneath your intellect".

I think you'd better check out that mote in your own eye before pointing out the speck in someone else's. But hey, that's just my opinion.

[AP]

89. I agree. But I'd like to note that I think there's a misunderstanding of

"subsistence."

I use that term in the sense that consumers would have an option other than the corporate sources (supermarkets & seeds). I don't mean growing it in your backyard. I mean anything from community farms, to becoming a farmer yourself, to growing in your backyard, but I mostly what I mean is what Cuba does right now (community farms in cities which feed neighborhoods).

In terms of Africa, I encourage peopel to google subsistence farming. What's happening in AFrica is that huge commericial colonial farms which grew products for export in South Africa have been turned over to people who grow maize, mostly (I beleive) and they call this subsitence farming because it goes to feending communities and individuals. It has turned out that these farms' productivity is unbeleivable, and these farmers have turned into mini-industries which are creating a lot of wealth and power for their neighborhoods and towns, in part, because they're upsetting the whole colonial and post-colonial economic landscape.

That's what I'm talking about.

[IrateCitizen]

92. Thanks for the clarification.

There have been similar things happening in the US too. One of the issues of the Hightower Lowdown I received was devoted to Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). One piece talked about a couple that bought two adjacent abandoned lots in one of the "less desirable" areas of downtown Austin, and actually turned it into a profitable inner-city organic farm! Now, there are restaurants that advertise the fact that they buy their produce from this farm, and their business is booming as well.

[AP]

98. See, that's what creates the downward pressure on food prices...and that's

what the big agribusinesses want to make impossible (or at least they want to make sure they get their cut of that too, through seed and round-up sales).

Right now, if food prices go up too high, people start their own farms. The price ceiling depends on what the costs of the alternatives are to them. Now, if you can't grow your own food outside of the ADM/ConAgra/Monsanto nexus, then that price ceiling really goes up a lot.

But what really makes that price ceiling go up is that you can't live without eating. So that's the other ceiling big agribusiness is looking for -- how high can they go before people decide to call it a life and starve to death. That ceiling is going to be pretty high.

[DarkPhenyx]

95. We are hardly the only country to subsidise farming.

The choice isn't between those two options. Never has been. The no GM crops are not going to simply disappear. To claim otherwise is flawed and irrational.

So far my post have been quite civil. I havn't acted as if my last post was so great that my opponent was obviously defeated and should admit it. as opposed to saying "are you sure you still want facts they aren't helping you".

Then again my post on this topic aren't popular.

[IrateCitizen]

118. Your primary fallacy is compartmentalization

As proved by this post.

Agricultural subsidies are a HUGE issue in global trade talks right now. In fact, the unwillingness of the US and EU to bend on them caused the developing nations to walk out of the recent Cancun talks.

Now, considering that Monsanto, ADM and ConAgra wield incredible political clout -- do you think that this might have something to do with the unwillingness of the US to back off of agricultural subsidies and open our markets to developing nations' agricultural products?

I mean, these companies only stand to lose billions upon billions of dollars in business. Not just here, but in the developing nations, if they can't get their foot in the door FIRST.

You can try to compartmentalize the "science" from the "market" aspect of this issue, but you're committing a grave error in logic in doing so.

[AP]

120. Compartementalizing the science and market aspects is what NPR/BigAgri

wants to do.

That's because they can't win the market argument, but their chances of winning the technology argument are a little better.

Now, the technology might be a huge problem as well, but we have a history in America of over a hundred hears of convincing America to do realy dumb things on the basis that technology was going to make life better. And I don't mean that technology is bad, but just look at the BBV issue. We probably are losing liberal votes left and right because we convinced people that there are these magic things called 'silicon chips' which cooly and rationally count every vote and spit them out on demand, and can add to the 56th significant figure and do all sorts of amazing thing. Yes, technology will be our salvation. Oh, and totally rigged, uncompetitve markets, those are our salvation too, but we rather not get into the details, right?

[DarkPhenyx]

17. They have done so...

...on previous segments. No worries there.

[AP]

35. You know that isn't true.

Name one time on NPR that they've ever talked about the insanity of the business model.

You know, I bet they've never even discussed the health issues in a rational way.

I'm sure they're very careful to pick people as guests who are going to sound like alarmists.

[DarkPhenyx]

38. Actually I know it to be quite true.

of course, as I have said previously, you are going to continue to believe waht you want. No amount of proof would help. NBD really. There are people like that on both sides of the argument. Always will be.

[Cha]

4. I think it is about "Health" And

"tied, patented chemical as well"

I work in the Natural Food business and we don't sell anything with gmo products..In fact they have a big red slash through them.

And I have many friends who are in the Organic gardening business and they Do Not want these franken seeds messing with their Gardens and Farms!

And as far as "plants don't germinate so you have to buy new seeds every year"...it's too true!

bush and his murdering cronies are for it so I know it's Bad for us and for the environment.

[AP]

10. It's 99% about profit and 1% about health.

These companies know that if anything crazy happened health-wise, it'd be worse than that apgar-thing. So they don't want that. There's too much money at stake.

The fact that the opposition has been so nicely framed by NPR as it being a health issue is, to me, a sign that it's all about profit (via an end to subsistence).

[Cha]

22. Yes, I agree! That "health" could be clouding the issue...

ANd I don't want that to happen. To me it is also about Health in the long run..because ya just don't mess with Mother Nature..

Look what happened when they started making the White Bread and all the denatured food..Why do we have so much Cancer in our World?

[AP]

30. I also agree with you, and I think the cancer/illness industry is also

part of the plan for concentrated wealth and power.

Republicans love markets which aren't really free. They love it when you're compelled to purchase the good/service, because that's when they have you over a barrel.

Food, water, electricity, gas...yes, they want to figure out ways to maximize profits from those things, because you don't really have a choice whether you'll consume those things, and, in some respects, you don't really have a choice about how much you want to consume -- especially, if you're poor and it's below freezing and it's January in Detroit, and you don't have the money to pay the Detroit Edison bill.

Another time when you don't really have a choice about consuming is when you're sick. If you have cancer, it's not like you're going to go around and comparison shop, and then, perhaps forego the purchase for a year while you wait for prices to drop.

Yes, I'm sure the Republicans are drooling over the potential profits in the illness market.

[DarkPhenyx]

20. Do you know why they don't germinate?

Because environmental scientists didn't want the GMO strains escaping and out competing the "wild types". It's actually an environmental safeguard. THere are some very sound reasons for that safeguard being in place. Yes, it also ensures that you have to buy new seeds every year.

[AP]

48. Not really true. Monsanto has produced germinating GMO crops

and have sued farmers whose plants cross-polinated withh neighboring GMO crops for patent infringement, and have won.

There isn't just one business model here.

Monsanta et al are introduced in profit, not in growing more, cheaper food. And they'll get it through patent infringement suits, non-germination, and tied-products.

[DarkPhenyx]

51. Again you are wrong.

The plant itself is not self germinating. Cross polination is a completely different topic, which is why I said that these plants should not have been let out of the lab yet.

From this, and previous posts, I can tell that you are an anti-"evil corporation". So they are doing this in part to turn a profit. Big deal. What is your point here? Corporations do earn money you know.

[AP]

53. "So they are doing this in part to turn a profit. Big deal."

If that's your argument, I think I've won. It is a big deal.

[DarkPhenyx]

57. No, it isn't a big deal.

WHy should it be? Nobody does things w/o some expectation of a return. The few exceptions of true philanthropy do not negate this statement. Nobody works w/o getting paid. Volunteerism does not negate this statement.

[AP]

65. Monopolizing FOOD is extracting super high profits for something

which the competition would be growing it in your backyard, and then GMO'ing it so that you CAN"T grow it in your backyards is the same thing as privatizing the water companies in South America and passing a law that makes it illegal to collect rainwater in a bucket on your roof.

DUHHHHH!!!!!!!!

We are not talking about making a pair of jeans and then trying to make a profit by making your jeans better than everyone else's in a wold in which you can also wear shorts, a skirt, buy something at the used clothing store, or make something for yourself at home.

We're talking about extracting profits from things that people don't have a choice about consuming, and, thanks to GMO, might not be able to grow for themselves.

You really didn't know this was the other side of the argument? Yeah, NPR is doing a great job of presenting both sides of the argument.

Thanks for proving my point.

[DarkPhenyx]

74. Oh, I knew there were some trying to make these arguments.

I also know those arguemnts are not based in any form of reality. sad to say but true.

You ahven't had a point worth making yet. Please keep trying though.

[AP]

78. That reply PROVES to me that I'm right and you have nothing to say.

[DarkPhenyx]

99. *laugh*

Ok, sure...you win. If that was all you wanted to hear. Happy now?

[Cha]

117. That's Right! AP does "Win" on this one! IMO, he is

Right On!

[DrWeird]

87. Hey, know, that sounds like fear-mongering to me.

How do GMO companies prevent people from growing crops they were growing anyway?

[AP]

91. I'm sorry if the truth is scary. The fact that this is your only retort

suggests that you know that this is the truth.

What you just did is no different, rhetorically speaking, than saying "ignore all the obvious economic inequality and the regressivity of the income tax code, because any discussion of it is just class warfare and fear mongering."

I see that fear mongering is fine when it's in the service of fascism/corporate control, but pointing out the facts of fascism and corporate control is inappropriate fear mongering.

I'll make a note of that.

[DrWeird]

97. Are you going to answer the question?

Or just whine?

[AP]

103. Calling me a whiner and fear-mongerer isn't an argument, by the way.

It's evidence of lack of an argument.

And the answer to your question is throughout this thread.

If plants don't seed, if you have to buy a tied product, if Monsanto is suing farmers with cross-polinated crops for infringement of their patent rights, they are raising the costs of farming to the point that it makes it harder to come up with alternative sources of food.

By increasing the costs of alternatives, they can increase the prices they charge for their products. They get more profits, they get more political power, which they use to create even higher costs of entering the market in competition with them.

The Big Three auto makers bought all the rail tracks in Detroit and paved over them to make sure there was no competition to the automobile, and they had friendly politicians supporting them.

I don't doubt that MBAs and lawyers for agri-business are aware of the myriad tools they can use to make sure there's no competition forcing them to keep their prices low, and I'm sure GMO shit is part of the program.

[DrWeird]

109. If plants don't seed...

you have to buy the seeds again.

If you want a second crop of seedless watermelons, you have to go get your Burpee seed catalog, and reorder some more. And that's not GMO. Same thing as terminator genes, which were discontinued anyway, so that whole point is moot.

If someone purposefully cross-pollinates a Monsanto patented gene, in order to get the technology without paying for it, than that is patent infringement and Monsanto has a case.

You still haven't explained how GMO prevent people from growing the crops they're already growing.

[AP]

110. Where's that term paper? I've ansered your question about a dozen times

now.

And repeating that I haven't answered your question isn't and argument. It's revealing that you don't have an argument.

Also, if you think this is about buying seedless watermellons...well, you KNOW it isn't.

This is about controlling the market for staple products.

This is about having to pay a licensing fee, or buying new seeds, or a tied, patented chemical spray every year for something that is so essential to life that it shouldn't be used to concentrate wealth and poltical power in the hands of a few large profit-motivated coprorations.

And that is, again, an answer to your question.

[DrWeird]

115. No, that's an answer to a question I didn't ask.

What I asked was, how do GMOs prevent people from growing the food they've always been growing? I'm not asking how it keeps people from growing the new GMO stuff.

And you know that.

So stop dodging the question.

[AP]

116. I've read that farmers can get about 10% of the seed they need

next year from the current year's crop. They still have to get the other 90% from the marketplace. Big AgriBus is trying to dominate the industry and ensure that what's out there maximizes their profit.

This point is implicit and explicit throughout this thread. Which leaves me to quote you: are you so stupid that you don't even realize how stupid you are?

So where the hell is that term paper? And stop dodging the question.

(I should point out that that 10% rate is the current rate in America, if I remember correctly, and is no doubt do to many commercial factors that have driven that number that low. In African subsidence farms, they also need new seed from other sources, but it's probably less than 90%. Just guessing.)

[qb]

7. I don't know why NPR spews so much right-wing tripe.

They will be forever branded the worst of the Librul Media by the wingers no matter how much they suck up.

[IrateCitizen]

8. Because they have to obey those who control their funding

They're doing this piece on the value of GM foods -- and do you know who some of the biggest "endowment" contributors to NPR are?

ADM, Monsanto, ConAgra, etc.

They also won't do anything on global warming because they take "endowments" from ExxonMobil.

If you're interested in hearing the "other side" to these kinds of issues, the only place to go in community-sponsored radio. Then again, not everyone is lucky enough to have a Pacifica affiliate in their town....

[AP]

12. Encouraging branding them as liberal is part of how they're right wing.

They allow themselves to characterized as liberal, and then they give the most anemic version of liberalism, and THAT becomes the thing to which liberals attach themselves, and it's BS.

If you listened to NPR you'd think CONSUMING things like Seabisuct, Wilco and Louden Wainright III was all you needed to do to be liberal. Yes, buying books in music is what it's all about, right? Oh, and don't worry about GMO food, 'cause science will save us from ourselves.

[DarkPhenyx]

23. Because they also spout...

...a lot of left wing "tripe". If they focused on only one side of the arguement then they would be no better than Fox. Can you see how that works? I for one am happy to have a source that gives both sides, adn expects it's listeners to be smart enough to maek up their own minds.

[AP]

26. They didn't give both sides of the issue today, and they're not very...

...liberal even in a absolute sense, unless you measure liberal by how many Wilco albums you're willing plug.

[DarkPhenyx]

28. They probably didn't give both sides.

They don't always give both side when they are discussion a liberal point of view either.

NPR isn't liberal. Nor is it conservative. It's moderate if anything, and I think of them as more non-affiliated than anything. IMHO this is a good thing. Liberal media is as bad as conservative media. They give you one point of view, all the time, ram it down your throat, and never let you have the other POV so you can think for yourself.

[AP]

66. see post 65

thanks

[DarkPhenyx]

75. Oh, I did see it.

Unfortunately your argument is based upon a false assumption. A few actually.

[AP]

79. False assumptions like in post 77?

Why do I suspect that you have nothing more to say than to just call them false assumption without any form of rebuttal or counterargument?

[DarkPhenyx]

101. No need to form a rebutal.

You wouldn't listen anyway. Your mind is made up. Everything is evil. No need to question what I "know" to be true. You have gaps in understanding that would take way too much time to fill in even if you were willing to listen. You are making assumptions that are nothing more than pure conjecture, or in some cases complete fabrications. The example here would be "no more gardens in your backyard". Fear mongering is a RW tactic isn't it?

[AP]

104. I'm totally engaging with every shred of an argument by Dr Weird. And I'm

engaging every spin you send out. I clearly want to engage on this issue.

Characterizing me as closed minded isn't an argument. It's a cover for not having an argument.

What do you think I've invented?

[MrPrax]

13. Kicked...good topic

All of the innovations made in the 'food' industry over the last 30 years have been not to enhance the taste and quality of food--ALL have been done to enhance profitability at the expense of health.

Whether it be GMO, steroids, growth hormones, irradiation, pesticides, genetic splicing, let alone all the production changes in the various slaughterhouses et. al.

Most are an oxymoron--extend the life of products that are by definition perishable

[IrateCitizen]

14. "DDT is good for me!" -- 1950's jingle

Think of this every time you hear someone say, "Don't be too precautionary, or we might sacrifice great benefits."

If there is one thing that the US has never been about anything involving science, it is too precautionary. But I would rather have us be EXCRUCIATINGLY precautionary on issues like this, rather than see us repeat the mistakes of the past once again.

There is already evidence that the modified genes from GM crops are actually transmitting to insects that use the plants for food. Additionally, there is no way to keep them from contaminating natural strains that are downwind. Finally, they are just a big scam to increase dependence on corporations, as you have correctly pointed out.

[AP]

15. The jingle today is "corporate control & concentration of wealth/political

power is good for me."

[IrateCitizen]

Hey, it was the same in the 1950's too...

... we just weren't becoming aware of it yet.

[DarkPhenyx]

24. That's fairly narrowminded and ill informed.

saying somethign like "Don't be too precautionary, or we might sacrifice great benefits." is not the same as saying "Hey. let's go out and do all these things simply becasue we can hang the consequences."

[IrateCitizen]

32. Based on the past patterns of American industry...

I'll err on the side of caution this time.

History is littered with instances of industry touting innovations as completely safe, even when they knew there was a possibility of public health risk. Then, once the risk was uncovered, they fought like hell to cover it back up again.

Here's a few examples:
- leaded gasoline
- DDT
- asbestos
- PVC

When I hear them say something like the quote above, it's code to me. It's code that implies that those who are questioning the immediate use of GMO's are impeding progress.

I'm surprised that you don't see it the same way. I guess you're still laboring under the mantle of "objectivity. Guess what. NOBODY is objective. There is fanaticism on both sides. The idea is to get COMPLETE airing of both sides, and to make up one's idea from the information available.

But when we're increasingly given one side of the story over the other, that makes it a little more difficult, doesn't it?

[DarkPhenyx]

39. Ahhhh, irrational radicalism.

Sure, that's going to get us somewhere.

*deep sad sigh*

[IrateCitizen]

43. Hmmm... I notice you engaged in smear rather than address my post.

I guess that says something about your willingness to honestly and openly discuss the issues.

*stick your deep sad sigh up your ass*

[DarkPhenyx]

45. Nothing in your post...

...worth addressing. Hence my observation about irrationality.

As I haven't seen anyone will to actually discuss the issue it's kinda difficult to start. Not completely unusual in this debate really.

[IrateCitizen]

55. So you're saying that none of my examples re: US industry are valid?

I've seen all of them documented NUMEROUS times.

You also said above that there is no reason to keep these studies from occuring in the laboratories. I completely agree. However, this quote excerpted is in reference not to continued laboratory study, but in reference to their implementation as a standard business practice. There's a big, big difference there.

And you've also failed to address the overlying business issues, even when repeatedly challenged. This is a HUGE issue, because it dovetails with the efforts of these same companies to gain the rights to patent organisms and genes themselves.

I would hardly consider such concerns to be "irrational". My concerns include:
1. Is it an effort to establish market hegemony free from challenge from below?
2. What are the long-term impacts on the ecosystem with regards to issues like species diversity and impact on other organisms that are exposed to the plants in question?
3. Will these GMO's be contained, or are there methods by which their genes will spread throughout the natural strains?
4. What true advantages do these crops have over existing, natural strains?
5. What is the empirical data used to support the claims on both sides, and by whom was it generated?

Am I still irrational? Are you willing to address my concerns now?

[DarkPhenyx]

59. Yes, you are still irrational.

point #2 has nothing to do with the business end of the argument and has not been addressed at all on her, except by me.

popint #3. No they won't. Next issue? This still ahdn't been addressed up till now.

#4: read the literature. It is was too complex to go into here.

#5: same as #4.

[IrateCitizen]

63. In that case, you can still stick your "sad sigh" sideways up your ass.

:D

[DarkPhenyx]

16. Why is it sick beyond belief?

They have done stories that are anti-GMO before. There is still no scientific "proof" that they are dangerous. I as a scientist beleive we don't know enough about them to judge either way adn that they should not have been let out of teh lab, but that isn't the issue here.

Why do you find it "sick" for a news agency to cover both sides of the story? Isn't it their job to provie us with as much information as possible?

[IrateCitizen]

19. The point, DarkPhenyx, is that they DON'T cover both sides.

NPR is running this piece because they receive endowments from Archer Daniels Midland and Monsanto (and possibly ConAgra). I am almost certain that one of the conditions of that "endowment" is that they do not run any "anti-GMO" pieces. But hey, the pro-GMO pieces are great!

It's very similar to how they stopped making ANY mention of global warming as soon as they began receiving endowments from ExxonMobil.

I as a scientist beleive we don't know enough about them to judge either way adn that they should not have been let out of teh lab, but that isn't the issue here.

It IS an issue when the piece is saying that "too much caution" on this issue could "sacrifice great benefits". They're saying that they ARE completely safe, and trying to help rush them out the door.

[DarkPhenyx]

29. Yes they do.

Please see previous statements.

They are right about "too much caution". If we use so much caution that we stop research all together then we do lose the potential benefits. See how that works? I am also not a fan of "let's run helter-skelter forward adn do it w/o being cautious at all.

[AP]

36. The issue isn't "too much caution", it's "too much corporate control" and

you know it.

[AP]

21. Because they NEVER talk about it in terms of what this is really about

It's about an end to subsistence.

Do you know what they're modifying these plants to do? It's not to grow bigger tomatoes.

They're trying to modify plants so they don't produce seeds and so that you have to buy some chemical spray to make the plants grow. That way, you have to buy the patented SEED and the patented CHEMICAL to grow the plant.

And you know what happen will happen next? Congress will pass a law which doubles the period of patent protection, like they've done with copyright.

And it's really sick because this is a highly political, very serious issue, and they gave this guy today a LONG segement to talk about it, not only UNCHALLENGED but he was able to frame the issue in terms of health, and not in terms of economics and business plans.

Also, I've never heard NPR ever give the otherside of this story, and I've never heard any America media source ever even describe the issue in the way I've just described it above.

[DarkPhenyx]

31. No, that isn't the only thing they are designed for.

also if you aren't hearing it then you aren't listening. Or you aren't wanting to hear it. Take your pick.

[AP]

40. You're not saying anything. You're not making an argument.

What's your point here?

NPR tells both sides?

They don't. It's a fact. Name one time when you've heard a discussion of the business model/economic issue.

You aren't even well-versed in it, so, either YOU'VE never heard it before, or you know that you don't have a rebuttal for it, so you're fastidiously avoiding addressing it and you're avoiding anything other than repeating your (irrelevant) opinion that NPR tells both sides of a story which you're not even inclined to clearly define.

What is the opinion which you think NPR is sharing with America that is the other side of the GMO issue? Do you think allowing the occassional alarmist on to a panel discussion is "presenting both sides", especially when, a month later, they give a Harvard scientist (notice the implications of those two words) 2 minutes, unchallenged, to chaceterize the alarmists as anti-progress?

Why don't they have the left-wing intellectual property lawyer, and the left-wing economist, and the expert on third world subsistence farming on to these pannel discusssions, and why don't they give these people 2 minutes of unchallenged air time? They don't, and they never will.

[DarkPhenyx]

49. As I've said...

...as I listen to NPR all day in my lab becasue it is teh only station that coems in clear, I can say w/o fear of being wrong, that I have indeed heard both dies discussed. Both in seperate groups and on combined panels. You disagree. How often do you actually listen? Or is this based on what you have been told by others?

You aer still posting in a closed minded manner. Thought I'd mention that.

[AP]

52. I'm begging for you to give me an argument or even cite an original source

so I can engage, but you are narrowing your arguemnt to (1) you've heard the other (undefined) side of the issue on NPR and (2) that you can't waste your time engaging me in a debate.

If this argument seems "closed" to my side of the argument it's because you aren't bothering to present the other side. Opening it up is in your hands, but you don't want to engage.

However, I note that you didn't try to hide the fact you work in a lab, so I'm just going to note that a guy who works in a lab is probably going to harbor so conscious or unconscious bias in favor of "science" and the corporations which want to use it to make profits.

[0007]

64. DarkPhenyx is just like Maple

in fact it's highly suspect.

[NashVegas]

76. "There is still no scientific "proof" that they are dangerous."

And where is the proof that says they aren't?

[DrWeird]

34. What does Round-up have to do with it?

Sure, Monsanto has developed Round-up resistant crops. But that doesn't mean you have to buy Round-up. In fact, it gives farmers quite an advantage, since now they can kill weeds without killing the crop.

And the terminator gene? That was discontinued years ago.

I have no problem with people arguing against the dangers of GM foods. But the majority of the people doing it are using the same hollow ignorant arguments that people like the creationist Jeremy "Ludd" Rifkin use.

GM is a complicated issue, and people need to get their facts straight.

[AP]

46. Tying products is dangerous for consumers.

Round-up ready wheat is just the first stage, and it shows were they want to go.

Why do this? Well, it's similar to the way IBM sold computers and then made you buy punch cards, back in the days of punch card computers. They want to tie as many products together as possible, and make sure you have to buy them all.

[DrWeird]

54. They were developed seperately.

Round-up was developed in the early seventies, and was not purposefully defective. Round-up ready crops solved a thirty year old problem. The analogy to IBM doesn't fit.

[AP]

67. see post 65

Do you think they're going to stop with round-up?

That IBM example is the model for tied products. Every MBA student and intellectual property lawyer knows about it.

[cosmicdot]

47. kick

:dem:

[IrateCitizen]

61. It's all fine if you're all in favor of chemicals and pesticides

I guess I would say that one of the big problems is that there have been instances of chemicals and pesticides actually causing mutations in the organisms they were supposed to kill -- producing an even MORE resistant strain of that organism.

So, the response is naturally to make a more virulent version of the pesticide. However, all of these chemicals eventually have to go somewhere. They don't just disappear. The leach into the soil, surface water, and groundwater. They go up the food chain -- in some cases, like DDT, having a cumulative effect. They go into our bodies -- unnatural chemicals for which, in many times, we are entirely uncertain of the effects on US.

The question to ask with this is, at what point are we causing serious harm on the ecosystem through our reliance on chemicals? How do we know when we reach that point? Have we already passed it?

I realize that some people consider such concerns to be "irrational". I just can't help but think about the long-term considerations of such implications, especially when the primary motivation for initiating the use of these substances is often rushed in the name of unadulterated profit.

I'm not saying that profit is bad. I'm saying that the earth is a little bit more important than profit, because the earth is the source of life for us. We ARE the earth, not separate from it -- and whatever harm we do to it, we do to ourselves.

[DrWeird]

69. Now that's a whole different debate than GM.

Although the herbicide glyphosate (Round-up) does nothing of what you describe. It doesn't cause mutations in plant or animals. It does disappear. And it doesn't get into the food chain. Which is why it is often called a "miracle" herbicide. It revolutionized agriculture and made a fortune for Monsanto, and good for them. And this allowed them to afford research into GM food, which got them another killer app, Round-up ready crops. And good for them again.

So yes, I'd call it irrational to mix up GM foods with herbicides, with pesticides, with mutations, with DDT, and back again to suspect business practices. Because again, it's a complicated issue, with important consequences, and it needs to all be argued rationally, clearly, and with all the facts straight. Starving kids in Africa are depending on it.

[IrateCitizen]

72. I'd call it more of an "integrated debate" with GMO's

Especially when it comes to the business practice angle.

As for the RoundUp argument, you may well be correct. But I was speaking more in terms of pesticides in general. And considering that it has only been in use for 25 years, I don't think it's possible to say with certainty that we ARE completely aware that there are no side effects. Additionally, are the studies you're relying on for that info sponsored by industry, or are they completely independent?

Starving kids in Africa are depending on it.

What starving kids in Africa are depending on is not GM crops. What starving kids in Africa are depending on is the opening of industrialized markets to third world agriculture, the affirmment of sustainable agricultural practices (of local farmers) as opposed to agribusiness getting their foot in the door, and the subsequent sustainable development of their economies as a result. The whole idea that they are dependent on GMO's is a myth spread by the GM industry.

[AP]

84. Exactly. MORE kids will starve in Africa if they can't afford round-up...

...patent licences, the next season's non-germinating seeds, etc.

GMO is about making foods MORE expensive, and increasing the profit (and, therefore, political power) of large corporations. When food is more expensive, more people starve when they can't afford it.

And, there's probably also an inverse relationship to the amount of political power ADM/Monsanto/ConAgra has relative to the power of starving Africans, and there's probably a direct relationhip between lack of political power and lack of money, and therefore starvation.

Also, subsisetence farming is the most productive form of farming there is in africa, and the point of GMO is to make subsistence farming more expensive and harder (if not outright IMPOSSIBLE).

[DrWeird]

90. Noooo. That's not what it would mean.

If they can't afford the Round--up Ready crops than they keep growing what they've always grown.

It's like medicine. If someone develops a new treatment for malaria, does that mean more people die from malaria? Nope. It means that the people who can't afford it are still up the creek. That's capitalism for you. Now, there's plenty of stuff getting around that helps poor people get the medicine they need, on humanitarian reasons. Same thing with GM. Monsanto's bending backwards to make sure that the people who need what they've got get it. Golden rice for example.

How does GM food make subsistence farming harder?

[IrateCitizen]

100. Golden rice is a canard

Here's just one article I found, but if you do an internet search for "golden rice", you'll find dozens.
http://www.enn.com/news/enn-stories/2001/04/04042001/rice_42868.asp?site=email

And in this statement you're pretty well contradicting yourself:
It's like medicine. If someone develops a new treatment for malaria, does that mean more people die from malaria? Nope. It means that the people who can't afford it are still up the creek. That's capitalism for you. Now, there's plenty of stuff getting around that helps poor people get the medicine they need, on humanitarian reasons. Same thing with GM. Monsanto's bending backwards to make sure that the people who need what they've got get it.

On one hand, you say that poor people not having access to medicines is a sad by-product of capitalism. On the other hand, you present a corporation, Monsanto, as being interested in philanthropy in the third world.

Monsanto is a corporation, the perfect embodiment of modern capitalism. It is a single-minded machine whose sites are set on maximizing profits and opening up markets. Monsanto is not in Europe out of the goodness of their heart. They are there to open up markets and extract profit from those markets.

What do subsistence farmers have to fear? Ever hear of a thing called the TRIPS agreement? It stands for "Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights". One of the things that the biotech industry has been fighting for is the right to patent life forms. What that could mean is that they could hold the patent to the seeds being used by subsistence farmers. The subsistence farmers could not save seeds, because that would be patent infringement. They would have to buy new seeds each and every year.

That hardly seems a boon to subsistence farmers, does it?

[AP]

106. It makes it harder because it increases costs (for the 20th time)

GMO is primarily about tying products, requiring license fees, and pushing out the alternatives whether by making sure the plants don't germinate or through other business practices which are the equivalent of the big three paving over Detroit commuter rail lines.

Do you have any articles that address these issues?

Is there any argument out there that says that this stuff shouldn't be a concern?

[AP]

73. I just googled round-up and GMO (which I encourage others to do)

and I came up with enough comments to suggest that your first paragraph above doesn't tell the whole story.

One thing I found, which was just an opinion (and not verified), was a comment by someone who was trying to find out which gov't body was going to study round-up resistant wheat. The person called the FDA who said that, becuase the modification relates to chemicals, the FDA wasn't going to study it, and the EPA would study it. The person called the EPA, but the EPA wasn't testing it either...

So, I'm not sure what studies you're citing to come to the conclusion you do.

http://www.vegsource.com/talk/ivu/messages/850.html

[DrWeird]

93. You can start with these.

1. Franz, John E.; Mao, Michael K.; Sikorski, James A.; “Glyphosate: A Unique Global Herbicide,” A.C.S., 1997
2. For example, see: Morrissey, S.R.; Yarrell, A., Chemical and Engineering News, 89,51, 2002, p. 28
3. Duke, S.O.; in Weed Physiology, Volume 2, Herbicide Physiology, Duke, S.O.; Ed; CRC Press; Boca Raton, Fl, 1985
4. For reviews on glyphosate mode of action, see: a) Corbett, J.R.; Wright, K.; Baillie, A.C., The Biochemical Mode of Action of Pesticides, 2nd Ed.; Academic Press; New York, 1984; p. 276-280 b) Cole, O.J., in The Herbicide Glyphosate; Grossbard, E.; Atkinson, D. Eds; Buttersworths: London, 1985, p. 48-74 c) Sikorski, J.A.; Logusch, E.W. in Handbook of Organophosphorus Chemistry; Engel, R., Ed: Marcel Ockker: New York, 1991; p. 29-56
5. Coggins, J.R., in Herbicide and Plant Metabolism, Dodge, A. D. Ed.; Cambridge University Press: New York, 1989; p. 97-112
6. Newton, M.; Howard, K.M.; Kelpsas, B.R.; Danhaus, R.; Lottman, C.M.; Oubelman, S, .J. Agri. Food Chem., 1984, 32, p. 114-1151
7. Hollander, H.; Amrhein, N., Plant Physiol. 1980,66, p. 823-829
8. Jaworski, E.G., J. Agr. Food Chem., 1972,20, p. 1195-1198
9. Duke, S.O. in Weed Physiology, Volume 2, Herbicide Physiology; Duke, S.O., Ed; CRC Press, Boca Raton, Fl, 1985
10. Amrhein, N.; Deus, B.; Gehrke, P.; Steinrucken, H.C., Plant Physio., 1980, 66, p. 830-834
11. Berlin, J.; Witte, L.Z., Naturforsch, C., Bio. Sci., 1981, 36, 310-314
12. Steinrucken, H.C.; Amrhein, N., Biochem Biophys. Res. Commun., 1980, 94, 1207-1212
13. Amrhein, N.; Schab, J.; Steinrucken, H.C.; Naturweissenschaften, 1980, 67, 356-357
14. Amrhein, N.; Deus, B.; Gehrke, P.; Hollander, H.; Schab, J.; Schulz, A.; Steinrucker, H.C.; Proc. Plant Growth Regul. Soc. Am., 1981,8, 99-106
15. Rogers, S.G.; Brand, L.A.; Holden, S.B.; Sharps, E.S.; Brackin, M.; J. Appl. Environ. Microbiol., 1983, 46, 37-43
16. Natziger, E.D.; Widholm, J.M.; Steinrucken, H.C. Killmer, J.K., Plant Physiol., 1984, 76, 571-574
17, Smart, C.C.; Johanning, d.; Smart, C.C. in Primary and Scondary Metabolism of Plant Cell Cultures, Neuman, Ed.; Springer-Verlag: Berlin, 1985; p. 356-361
18. Comai, L.; Facciott, D.; Hiatt, W.R.; Thompson, G.; Rose, R.E.; Stalker, D.M, Nature, 1985, 317, 741-745
19. Padgette, S.R.; Re, D.B.; Gassner, G.S.; Eichholtz, D.A.; Frazier, R.G.; Hironaka, C.M.; Levine, E.B.; Shah, D.M.; Frakey, R.T.; Kishore, G.M.J., Biol. Chem., 1991, 266, 22364-22369
20. Cassidy, P.J.; Kahan, M., Biochemistry, 1973, 12, 1364-1374
21. Anderson, K.S.; Johnson, K.A., Chem. Rev., 1990, 90, 1131-1149
22. Sikorski, J.A.; Anderson, K.S.; Cleary, D.G.; Miller, M.J.; Pansegrau, P.D.; Ream, J.E.; Sammons, R.D.; Johnson, KA., in Chemical Aspects of Enzyme Biotechnology: Fundametals, Proc. 8th Annual Industrial Univ. Coop. Chem. Progs. Symp., Baldwin, T.O.; Ramschel, F.M.; Scott, A.I., Eds.; Plenum Press: New York, 1990, 90, 1131-1149
23. Bondinell, W.E.; Vnek, J.; Knowles, P.F.; Sprecher, M.; Sprinson, D.B., J. Bio. Chem, 1971, 246, 6191-6196
24. Anderson, K.S.; Sikorski, J.A.; Johnson, K.A., Biochemistry, 1988, 27, 7395-7402
25. Leo, G.C.; Sikorski, J.A.; Sammons, R.D. J. Am. Chem. Soc., 1990, 112, 1653-1654
26. Lewendon, A.; Coggins, J.R., Biochem, 1983, 213, 187-191
27. Steinrucken, H.C.; Amrhein, N., Eur. J. Biochem, 1984, 143, 341-349
28. Rubin, J.L.; Gaines, G.G.; Jenson, R.A., Plant Physiol., 1984, 75, 835-845
29. Ream, J.E. Steinrucken, H.C.; Porter, C.A.; Sikorski, J.A., Plant Phyiol. 1988, 87, 232-238
30. Padgette, S.R.; Huynh, O.K.; Biochem. Biophys., 1987, 258, 564-573
31. Stallings, E.C.; Abdel-Meguid, S.S.; Lin, L.W.; Shich, H.S.; Dayringer, H.E.; Leimgruber, N.K.; Stegeman, R.A.T.; Anderson, K.S.; Sikorski, J.A.; Padgett, S.R.; Kiskore, G.M., Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci., U.S.A., 1991, 88, 5046-5050
32. Schonbrunn, E.; Eschenburg, S.; Shuttleworth, W.A.; Schloss, J.V.; Amrhein, N., Evans, J.; Kabsch, W., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci, U.S.A., 2001, 98, 1376-1380
33. Alinhai, M.F.; Stallings, W.C., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci, U.S.A., 98, 2944-2946
34. Sammons, R.D.; Gruys, K.J.; Anderson, K.S.; Johnson, K.A., Sikorski, J.A.; Biochemistry, 1995, 34, 6433-6440
35. Boocock, M.; Coggins, J., FEBS Lett., 1983, 154, 127-132
36. Anderson, K.S.; Sikorski, J.A.; Johnson, K.A.; Biochemistry, 1988, 27, 1604-1610
37. Cromartie, T.H., J. Chem. Ed., 1986, 63, 765-768
38. Amrhein, N.: Deus, B.; Gehrke, P.; Steinrucken, H.C., Plant Physiol., 1980, 66, 830
39. Ream, J.E.; Yuen, H.K.; Frazier, R.B.; Sikorski, J.A., Biochemistry, 1992, 31, 5528-5534
40. Anderson, K.S., Sikorski, J.A., Johnson, K.A., Biochemistry, (1988), 27, 1604-1610
41. Christensen, A.M., Schafer, J., Biochemistry, 1993, 32, 2868-2873
42. Merabet, E.K., Walker, M.C., Yuen, H.K., Sikorski, J.A., Biochim. Biophys. Acta, 1993, 1161, 272-278
43. Schonbrunn, E.; Sack, S.; Eschenburg, S.; Perrakis, A.; Krekel, F., Amrhein, N., Mandelkow, E., Structure, 1996, 4, 1065-1075
44. Krekel, F.; Oecking, C.; Amrhein, N.; Macheroux, P., Biochemistry, (1999), 39, 8864-8879
45. Foster, P.; Leathers, H.D., in The World Food Problem, Lynne Riener Publishers Inc., Boulder, Colorado; 1999
46. Roberts, F.; Roberts, C.W.; Johnson, J.J.; Kyle, D.E.; Krell, T.; Coggins, J.R.; Coombs, G.H., Milhous, W.K.; Tzipori, S.; Ferguson, D.J.P., et. al., Nature, (1998), 393, 801-805.

Get back to me when you're done.

[AP]

105. You're revealing a professional interst in this subject matter which might

suggest a bias.

I don't doubt there are lots of studies touting the safety of round-up. I just heard a "harvard scientist' tell me fears about chemicals are misplaced on ADM/Monsanto-funded NPR.

I don't have a professional interest in this issue, but I've been living and breathing for long enough to know that there's good reason to be concerned about the safety of these products (especially, if its true, if the FDA and EPA are passing the buck on this stuff) and I know enough about the world to know that the real issue here is corporate profits and destroying the competition for agri-business.

[DrWeird]

107. No, that's from a term paper.

For a science class.

I suggest you do some reading. Just because your a layman, that isn't an excuse for not knowing your subject material.

[AP]

108. Since you have the cites, let's see your whole term paper.

I'd love to read it. Don't just hide behind your footnotes.

[DrWeird]

113. It's on enzyme mechanics.

And not relevent to the discussion topic.

[AP]

114. I'd still like to see it. If the footnotes were relevant, I bet the text..

..is too.

I answered your quesitons. So you show your term paper.

[DrWeird]

119. No, you didn't answer shit.

You just dodged the question. The references are for your enlightenment, since judging from your previous posts, you don't know a thing about glyphosate/


Even though it got an A, I'm quite self-conscious about my own work, so I'm reluctant to post it. But since I'm not dodgy, like you, here's the paper. You'll see, like I said, it's irrelevant to the discussion, assuming you're able to follow it. And that might be too much to assume. So, if you could, please, go and answer my question? Although that too is apparently too much to ask.

The Herbicide Glyphosate and Structural Studies of its Inhibition of the EPSP Synthase in the Shikimic Acid Pathway



Glyphosate is a broad-spectrum, nonselective, post-emergence herbicide. Since it was first developed in 1970 glyphosate-based herbicides have been marketed in 119 countries under 150 trademarks1, notably Roundup™. The mode of action for glyphosate is the inhibition of EPSP synthase and the shikimic acid pathway, which is essential in the biosynthesis of a wide variety of aromatic plant metabolites. Recent crystallographic and spectroscopic studies suggest that glyphosate acts as an allosteric inhibitor for EPSP synthase by stabilizing it in a “closed” form, a ternary complex of EPSP synthas, shikimate-3-phospate, and glyphosate.


GLYPHOSATE

Before the advent of chemical herbicides, weeds were of enormous concern to farmers since the beginning of agricultural societies and could only be controlled by laborious techniques such as tilling, hoeing, and burning1. When herbicides were first marketed to farmers in the mid twentieth century, a “green revolution” occurred and crop yields blossomed. The early herbicides were far from perfect. Dalapon, for example, required 20-40 lbs per acre, and was still not terribly effective. Many of the crop-endangering weeds, economically damaging such as johnsongrass and quackgrass are perennial, and propagate rapidly from widespread underground rhizomes, and before the marketing of glyphosate in the early seventies were difficult to eradicate with either traditional pesticides or tilling. Indeed, it is estimated that in the 1980s weeds caused the loss in excess of ten billion dollars in the United States alone1. Thus there was an obvious demand for a more effective herbicide that could eradicate these noxious weeds without being toxic to, or bioaccumulate in humans or other mammals, birds, fish, or insects.
This demand for a more effective herbicide led the Monsanto Agricultural Products company to begin screening some 51,000 compounds for herbicidal activity1. In 1970, Dr. John E. Franz discovered the remarkable herbicidal properties of the compound glyphosate (Figure 1). In 1993, glyphosate, under its most recognized trademark Roundup, was sold in at least 119 countries and sales were estimated at 1 billion dollars worldwide. The herbicide became a house hold name when Monstano developed one of the first genetically-modified crops; the Roundup-Ready crops used a single gene transfer of a glyphosate resistant EPSP synthase as to allow farmers to spray the herbicide on the whole field without killing the crop.
Glyphosate is an effective herbicide that destroys most any annual perennial plant, weed and crop alike. It is non-toxic to mammals, insects, birds, fish, and most bacteria. Nevertheless, glyphosate has fostered some concern among the public, some no doubt due to the public’s distrust of chemical herbicides in general, and because of Monsanto’s development of genetically-modified food crops that are resistant to glyphosate, which led to quite a bit of controversy2. Thus, detailed understanding of how and why glyphosates destroy plants is important for the development of new and improved herbicides, new herbicide resistant crops, a possible new way to fight certain human parasites, as well as the furthering of scientific knowledge.


SHIKIMIC ACID PATHWAY

Glyphosate was one of the first commercial herbicides to be charactized as having a single, specific enzyme target as its mode of action3. This specific interaction with the target enzyme accounts for its nontoxicity in animals, which do not have the enzyme or the pathway of which it is a part, as well as its remarkable herbicidal activity.1
It is known that the primary target for glyphosate is the enzyme 5-enolpyruvoylshikimate 3-phospate (EPSP) synthase. This enzyme catalyzes the formation of EPSP from phospoenolpyruvate (PEP) and shikimate 3-phosphate (S3P) (Scheme 1), which is the sixth reaction in the shikimic acid pathway4.
The shikimic acid pathway begins with erthyrose 4-phosphate and it seven steps produces chorismate, an important intermediate in plant metabolism that is required for the biosynthesis of a wide variety of aromatic metabolites, including para-aminobenzoic acid, coenzyme Q, histidine, tetrahydrofolate, tryptophan, ubiquinones, vitamin E, tyrosine, phenylalanine, and vitamin K (Scheme 2). These secondary metabolites are, of course, vital to protein synthesis, production of lignins, flavanoids, melanins, histamine, anthocyanins, growth promoters, growth inhibitors, etc. Some plant hormones, such as indole-3-acetic acid, are derived from tryptophan, and are needed for cell expansion and other regulatory processes. Indeed, it has been estimated that up to 35% of dry weight plant mass is made of aromatic molecules derived from the shikimic acid pathway5. This pathway is found only in plants, some fungi and some bacteria. Animals do not have the shikimic acid pathway for they acquire these compounds through the ingestion of plants, and thus it is obvious why glyphosate is essentially nontoxic to humans and other animals. Indeed, in one study6, gylphosate was sprayed from plane over a swath of forest in the Oregon Coast Range and it was concluded that glyphosate showed no toxicological risk to wildlife.
There is a great deal of experimental evidence that the mode of action of glyphosate is the inhibition of the shikimate acid pathway. In 1980, Hollander and coworkers discovered that radiolabelled shikimic acid was not incorporated into phenylalanine, tyrosine, or tryptophan in the presence of glyphosate7. Hollander also noted that the inhibitition of light enhanced accumulation of phenylpropanoid product, e.g. anthocyanin, could be reversed by the addition of phenylalanine. Jaworski discovered that the deleterious effects of glyphosate could be reversed in the aquatic weed, Lemna Gibba, by adding a combination of aromatic aminoacids8.
Several studies discovered that plants or cultured cells treated with glyphosate accumulated a significant amount of S3P9,10,11, suggesting the specific enzyme being inhibited was EPSP synthase. Furthermore, all of the plant and fungal EPSP synthases that have been isolated and characterized to date have been shown to by inhibited by glyphosate12,13. Notably shikimate kinase and chorismate synthase, the fifth and seventh enzymes in the shikimic acid pathway respectively, have been shown to be unaffected by glyphosate14.
Furthermore, several organisms that show resistance to glyphosate indicate that glyphosate inhibits EPSP synthase. Bacteria that overproduce EPSP synthase can survive in glyphosate concentrations that should be lethal to the wild-type organism15. Similarly, plant cells that have been exposed to non-lethal concentrations of glyphosate begin the overexpression of EPSP synthase, and can then increase their tolerance for glyphosate16,17. Perhaps most interestingly, single gene transfers of glyphosate resistant EPSP synthase from E. Coli and Hebsellia pneumoniae to tobacco18 and petunia19 plants have led to glyphosate resistance in those plants.


EPSP SYNTHASE

EPSP synthase catalyzes the formation of EPSP from phosphoenol pyruvate (PEP) and shikimate-3-phospate (S3P) as shown in Scheme 1. It does so using an unusual chemical reaction, the transfer of an enolpyruvoyl group from PEP to the hydroxyl at the 5- position of S3P1. There is only one other enzyme known to carboxyl vinyl transfer from PEP, UDP-N- acetylglucosamine enolpyruvyl transferase (MurA)20, which is involved in the biosynthesis of murein, an essential peptidogylcan for the cell walls of bacteria.
The mechanism of this reaction has been the subject of much debate21,22. A number of studies, including deuterium exchange studies23, pre-steady state kinetic analysis24, ------1H, 13C, and 31P NMR studies25, and others. Most evidence suggests that EPSP sythase goes through the addition-elimination tetrahedral intermediate 2, shown in Scheme 3, a mechanism originally proposed by Sprinson in 1971.
EPSP synthases have been isolated from many sources, including several bacteria, fungi, and plants, e.g. E. Coli26, Klebsiella pneumoniae27, Nicotiana silvestris28, Sorghum bicolor29, and Petunia hybrida30. In plants and bacteria, EPSP synthase as a monofunctionl monomer, with a mass of some 46 to 51 kD. In lower eukaryotes, EPSP synthase exists as part of a pentafunctional complex which carries out the first six steps of the shikimic acid pathway ending with EPSP synthase.
The first 3-D X-ray crystal structure of native E. Coli was reported in 1991 by Stallings and coworkers31 with a resolution of 3 angstroms. More recently, Schonbrunn and coworkers imaged a crystal structure of a ternary EPSP synthase-S3P-glyphosate complex (Figure 2) with an exceptional resolution of 1.5 angstroms32. The structure of EPSP synthase bears a remarkable resemblance the the aforementioned MurA.
The structure of all EPSP synthases consists of two roughly hemispherical globular domains, each with an approximate radius of 25 angstroms and connected by a double stranded “hinge.” Both the C-terminus and the N-terminus lie in the lower of the two globular domains31. Both of the globular domains consist of six parallel alpha helices, three of which have solvent accessible faces, the other three helices are buried within the domain, and three pleated sheets, also at the surface of each globular domain. These alpha helices are aligned in such a way as to create macrodipoles, which results in an electropositive area in the cross-over region. Each of the six alpha helices on the top hemisphere, and four of the helices on the bottom hemisphere are capped with basic amino acids (arginine, histidine, and lysine), while remaining two helices of the bottom domain are capped with neutral serines1. This results in the enzyme creating a large, electropositive field, but minimizes charge-charge repulsion near the double stranded hinge crossover. The active site of the molecule, which binds to S3P and PEP is believed to be located near the interdomain crossover segments. It is thought that the purpose of the macrodipoles is to direct the negatively charged substrate, be it S3P or PEP, to this active site33. Stallings and coworkers struggled to classify these globular domains taxonomics, and finally described them as a “mushroom button,” where they suggest to think of the buried helices as a mushroom’s stem and the surface helices and sheets as the cap31.
It has been shown that the inhibition of EPSP synthase by glyphosate proceeds through a EPSP synthase-S3P-glyphosate ternary complex34. In 1983, Boocock and Coggins reported steady-state kinetic studies of Neurospora EPSP synthase35. Their findings indicated an ordered, sequential mechanism. The S3P must bind first to EPSP synthase, followed by the binding of PEP. Furthermore, they found through inhibition kinetics that the interaction between glyphosate and the EPSP synthase-S3P binary complex is reversible, that glyphosate is competitive versus PEP and uncompetitive versus S3P.
It seems likely that the EPSP synthase-S3P-glyphosate ternary complex is a good target for studying the mode of action of glyphosate, and indeed many studies have been performed to study the formation of this complex, including methodologies such as microcalorimetry39, fluorescence spectroscopy40, and NMR41. The resulting evidence of these studies is that the EPSP synthase-S3P-glyphosate complex is indeed the relevant in vivo species for herbicidal activity.34
In 1988, Anderson and Johnson studied inhibitor binding of EPSP synthase using stopped-flow and equilibrium fluorescence measurements and ascertained the rate constants of the binding and dissociation of glyphosate from the EPSP synthase-S3P complex (Equation 1)36. They noted that the binding of glyphosate to the EPSP syntase-S3P complex was not as tight as would be expected given the potency of the herbicide, but they argued that this could be explained that since glyphosate binds to the enzyme in the presence of S3P, a resulting accumulation of S3P due to inhibition would increase the rate of further inhibition by glyphosate instead of decreasing it.
It was suggested by Cromartie in 198637 and by Steinrucken & Amrhein in 198038 that glyphosate is a transition-state analogue inhibitor for PEP in its reaction with S3P. Steinrucken and Amrhein noted that if glyphosate were a ground state analogue of PEP, it should also inhibit MurA and other PEP-utilizing enzymes, which it does not. Furthermore, glyphosate has little structural resemblance to ground state PEP, and dead-end inhibitors for EPSP synthase that mimic ground state PEP show mixed inhibition, not uncompetitive inhibition. However, this idea that glyphosate acts as a transition state analogue of PEP has been disputed to some degree, notably by Gruys and coworkers in 199534. They reasoned that if glyphosate were a transition state analogue of EPSP, than glyphosate would occupy the same space in the active site as PEP, and through turnover so would the carboxyvinyl group of EPSP. Therefore, the reverse reaction should show little interaction between glyphosate and EPSP synthase, or glyphosate with the EPSP synthase-S3P complex. Gruys and coworkers used rapid gel filtration experiments to measure the strength of the binding between glyphosate and the EPSP synthase-S3P complex and found it to be fairly strong (Kd = 56 ±1 mM). In fact, they noticed that glyphosate does not prevent binding of Pi to the binary complex of EPSP synthase and the product EPSP, and they suggested the formation of a quartnery EPSP synthase-EPSP-glyphosate Pi complex. From this result Gruys and coworkers concluded that glyphosate could not truly be considered as a transition state analogue for the PEP ion and that glyphosate must bond near but not in the enzymatic active site.
Figure 2 displays EPSP synthase in two forms, an open state (A) and a closed state (B). It is believed that the free enzyme is in the open state while the closed state is formed when the enzyme binds to the substrates, and the hydrophobic domains fold over the active site, thus expelling water. This makes sense, since water must not be present in the mechanism, otherwise the hydrolysis of PEP or EPSP to pyruvate would occur.
In order to study glyphosate inhibition, many have looked to MurA as a similar system. Binding of the substrate and inhibitor, N-acetylglucosamine and the antibiotic fosfomycin respectively, to MurA produces a dramatic conformational change, from the open unbound state to the closed form where the globular domains have rearranged in a tightly bound state43. In 1999, Krekel and coworkers used limited tryptic digestion and matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-time-of-flight (MALDI-TOF) mass spectroscopy, and discovered that glyphosate similarly stabilized the EPSP synthase-SP3 complex44. The authors claimed that MurA and EPSP synthase are more susceptible to proteolytic cleavage in their open state than the closed state, since the catalytic loop is more accessible to the proteolytic enymes. They treated both MurA and EPSP synthase with trypsin and noticed that both of the open, unligated enzymes cleaved into several fragments which were characterized on the mass spectrometer. On binding of S3P, the EPSP synthase was much more protected from tryptic digestion and was found to be even more stable upon binding of glyphosate, indicating the glyphosate-S3P ternary complex was the most stable, “closed” form of the molecule.
Schonbrunn and coworkers, in their recent high-resolution crystal strucuture of EPSP synthase in its free and ligated forms, noted that the major conformation changes of EPSP synthase occurs first when S3P binds to the free enzyme32. The step when glyphosate binds to the enzyme must occur after S3P has already been bound. When S3P binds, the two hemispheric domains approach each other in a “screw-like” manner. This has the result of creating an active site for glyphosate where the negative charges on the molecule can be stabilized through hydrogen bonding with the 5-hydroxyl of SP3, a cationic residue in the enzyme (Lys-22), and a water molecule. The authors also noticed that the glyphosate binding produced no significant conformational change in the enzyme; the initial binding of the SP3 is what results with the transition form the open form to the closed form. In short, the binding of SP3 to EPSP synthase results in an induced-fit mechanism for the binding of the glyphosate molecule.


Conclusion

Glyphosate is a safe, effective herbicide that has wide spread use across the world since it was first synthesized thirty-three years ago. It acts on plants, fungus, and some bacteria by inhibiting EPSP synthase, the penultimate reaction in the shikimate acid pathway, which is utilized by plants in the biosynthesis of aromatic amino acids and other important metabolites. The glyphosate molecule binds to the EPSP synthase-S3P binary complex, which is the closed form of the enzyme where its two globular domains have closed to form the active site for the anionic glyphosate molecule. The understanding of glyphosates mode of action is important. It is estimated that during the nineties some 100,000 to 200,000 people died annually from famine and malnutrition. A proportion of this is do to regional conflicts, but undoubtedly many lives could be saved with improved agricultural practices. Quantitative structure-activity relationships and other studies with glyphosate and EPSP synthase could lead to new and improved herbicides, as well as leading to new glyphosate resistant crops, which could further increase yields. Recently it has been discovered that apicomplexan parasites46, pathogens which can lead to death in humans and animals, notably malaria, and are responsible for substantial economic losses and mortality, use the shikimic acid pathway. The authors found that glyphosate inhibited the growth of these organisms, and this could lead to new targets for drug design. Understanding of the fascinating dynamics of glyphosate could possibly lead to new drugs in the fight against this problem as well as increasing crop yields.

I know I didn't include the figures. Sorry I don't have time to post them. Maybe the pretty pictures would have helped?

[AP]

121. Why are you so angry? Now that we have that out in the open

I hope someone who knows about this stuff comments on this.

Why were you writing a term paper on round-up?

Do you work for Monsanto?

You know it's totally hypocritical and quite assinine of you to make nasty comments about my ability to comprehend this term paper and chemistry, yet you can't decipher my very clear statment about why I think the ECONOMICS and the BUSINESS MODELS for GMOs are dangerous, not for people's health, but for the ablility of people to grow food outside of the big AgriBusiness profit nexus.

I could be nasty and say that, clearly, your field of interest is in Round-Up boosterism. And maybe an MBA, JD, or PhD in economics is the missing piece of the puzzle explaining your inability to graps the issues.

And, judging form your footnotes, looks like you were out there on the cutting edge of research, eh? Nice choice of topics -- something that's been puffed up by lots of other reasearch, no doubt funded by Monsanto). What's your original research on Dr Weird?

And who owns your lab?

And don't avoid the question, 'cause I don' t want to have to post later "you didn't answer shit."

I've been trying to figure out what you're all about here. You never post anything more than a sentence, unless it's al long piece on your "cuminosphere" being interrupted by people who don't have the class you have. But you seem really intent on spending a lot of time on this topic avoiding the issue and generally being a pushy asshole ("answer the quesiton, Claire!"). It's way too obvious that you have a bias here, and it's more than your term paper, I'm guessing. You have a direct fiduciary interest in this topic, don't you. Don't avoid the question.

[Selwynn]

58. I like NPR - a LOT

And have never even come close to thinking it should be accused of being "Right Wing?"

[DarkPhenyx]

62. welcome aboard.

there are days when we are in the minority on here.

[IrateCitizen]

68. People often confuse "right wing" with "under corporate influence"

On many issues, I will readily admit that NPR is a great source for hearing both sides of the story. However, due to the policy of "corporate underwriting" resulting from cutbacks in government funding, they are sometimes compelled to play the tune of those who pay the bills.

They shouldn't be tossed overboard, because they still are excellent in many ways. It's just a reality that is important to acknowledge and keep in perspective.

[AP]

70. NPR did relatively well in that study about the ignorance of the American

public viz their primary source of news.

Nonetheless, 16-23 percent of NPR viewers still believed things which weren't true were facts. And I don't think it's from a lack of effort by NPR to propagandize.

[hiphopnation]

80. Great Debate.

I am admittedly ill-informed on this topic. I do know that I was a fan of NPR's up until the 2000 selection and 9/11 drove the nail into the coffin of my listenership. Under the guise of providing both sides of the argument it seemed to me that they often practiced what AP outlined earlier by allowing 30 sec to a minute of the opposing argument, "hanging up" on that "expert", and then letting the rebuttal proceed to pick-apart and attack that argument as ludicrous and ill-informed with no chance for a response. (All very vague, broad accusations for which I have no supporting evidence.) I remember the tone of NPR changed dramatically around the 2000 selection, though.

Totally off the subject: AP who is that picture of?

Thanks.

EDIT: Let's not forget former TOTN host Juan Williams and what stand-up respectable news organization he is employed by now. As well as Maura Liason. Sheesh.

[AP]

82. Future First Lady and North Carolina Senator, Elizabeth Edwards.

[DarkPhenyx]

81. It's probably in spite of their attempts

to tell the story. Too many people, on all sides of the argument, will eblieve what they want to believe. No matter how much fact adn trth you put in front of them.

[reachout]

111. Various

I'm addressing a variety of issues brought up here.

The main active herbicide in Roundup is glyphosate. Glyphosate kills all green plants by blocking the pathway for nutrients. The gene inserted in Roundup Ready crops re-opens the pathway, enabling the altered plant to resist the herbicide. Farmers will be able to spray their crops with Roundup, killing the weeds but leaving the crop unaffected.

Monsanto claims that the generalized use of Roundup will ultimately be beneficial over the use a broader range of specific chemicals for various weeds (many herbicides are pre-emergent, whereas Roundup is post-emergent). Glyphosate does indeed have a more environmentally-acceptable profile than some other herbicides.

However, the claim the herbicide resistant crops (HRCs) will reduce application rates for herbicides has not been substantiated by Monsanto or any other company, and the claim that glyphosate is more environmentally friendly is contradicted by the evidence of toxic effects on humans and the environment as well as evidence of environmental damage and resistance in target weed species (please see the glyphosate fact sheet here for further information http://217.154.68.186/pestnews/actives/glyphosa.htm ). The weed resistance is a serious issue. In the U.S., Canada and Australia (particularly in places where Roundup has been applied for a decade or more) there is growing evidence of weed populations, some as high as 70% that are fully glyphosate resistant. What will have to be applied to secure crop production when Roundup stops working?



As to the general safety of GMOs I absolutely agree that we DO NOT know whether they are safe or not. It should however be noted that a recent study in England turned up evidence of genes from genetically modified organisms in human intestinal tracts. So basically we are doing one great big, giant biological experiment with little control and no plan to deal with the outcome should we find them to be dangerous.

I am actually more concerned about the problem of biodiversity in crops. GMOs are agressively infecting crops in even the most remote regions. Recent studies show cross-pollination in places no one expected them to be. Are you ready to trust the world food supply to a crop monoculture? I'm certainly not. Genetic diversity is essential to world food supplies.



As for NPR, over my years of listening to it, I've noticed a general trend toward airing the voice of big business over that of concerned citizens and organiztions. Is it a product of their funding or reflective of the rightward drift of American media? I really can't say. I just know I don't send them any money (opting instead to support my local true community radio and the Pacifica Network).

[AP]

112. Notice that once the Round-Up no longer works to kill the round-up resist-

ant weeds (or at least a significant percentage of them), if I'm reading this correctly, YOU'LL STILL NEED TO BUY ROUND-UP TO GROW YOUR WHEAT.

So, for a little while (until you can replace all your wheat with some new kind of wheat) there might be a year or more when you're buying your wheat, round-up and some other chemical which, no doubt, monsanto sells, to kill the increasing percentage of round-up resistance wheat.

Now there's a business model! (At least if you're a monsanto share holder, but probably not if you're a farmer or a consumer). They have you tied to the seed and two-chemicals, with little choice.

Oh, and no doubt, Monsanto has a plan to push out all competing pesticide producers, and all alternatives to producing pesticide as well, so the farmer will have few places to turn if in any year it suddenly seems the money you're giving Monsanto isn't worth it.

[hiphopnation]

122. This is late coming

but I happened upon this article today and wanted to inject it into this conversation. Thoughts?

http://www.salon.com/tech/wire/2003/10/10/organic/index.html

[indigo32]

123. In defense of NPR AP

I have to say I HAVE heard them talk about the other side of these issues. I remember vividly just being pissed beyond belief after listening to a story about suits of small corn farmers in South America by monsanto.
It would have been All Things Considered. I'll see if I can find it.

BTW I agree with your last paragraph completely