Bad science about GMOs: It reminds me of the antivaccine movement. On the Respectful Insolence blog.

A reprise of the recent report of just how horrible GMOs are. The blogger doesn't care at all for the way the study was done. Apparently the people doing the study did an amazingly poor job of designing the experiment. That includes using an extremely small population for each option they did the experiment on (that's just 20 rats half male and half female). That is far too few to get a good statistical analysis.

And this blogger isn't the only one. There are a large number of people who have looked at the study and come away completely disgusted with it, since it was so poorly done.

Bill Gill

and how many rats are required to do a study of rats?

what would be the correct number of rats that should be used to
do a study?

according to the video on the page all previous studies were
under 90 day's , this study was aimed at long term
or life extent of a rat ( 2 years ).

and just after the 90 days was completed the rats began to show sign's of disease and illness.

could it be that there was previous testing to determine the length of testing that should be used to avoid public disapproval , thus the short studies of 90 day's and less
that have been performed in the past.

I wouldn't bet against it...
I wouldn't put it past them...



the video above is all words and pictures , but near the end we find the guilty parties...

here is a video that talks about the experiment , it say's that 200 rats were used.

and it also say's that the illnesses or diseases occur at 4 month's , how convenient...for monsanto.



Mon 91.04 last check

http://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NYSE:MON

I used to eat breakfast cereal several years ago , then I just
lost my appetite for it , just like I lost my appetite for corn and corn products...

thank goodness for the upcoming GM foods labeling.

You want to know how many? Well, I just showed that if you flip a coin it will come up heads 8 out of 10 times. I just did that study right here on my desk. So now we know what everybody has been wondering about for a long time. Heads is the natural state for a coin flip.

Obviously my study was flawed. It takes a lot more than 10 flips to determine how a coin will fall if you flip it. It takes a lot more than 10 rats to determine whether a given diet will affect their health.

By the way did you read the link? I didn't mention it but the rats they used are a breed that has a 72 percent tumor rate. That kind of rat is useful if you are studying tumors and want to find out how they are caused and how to prevent them. But the study was of rats where 7 out of 10 would get tumors. Figuring out how much that was affected by diet would be pretty hard.

In other words the study was badly flawed from the day it was conceived.

Bill Gill

That doesn't answer my question's Bill.

What I would like to know is what would be the number of rats
involved in the study so that when any future studies are made
there wont be people claiming that they used the wrong number of rats.

also , currently 1 out of 4 humans get some type of cancer in their lifetime.

so should we use rats that have a 25% rate of developing cancer
during their lifetime?

or should we use rats that never develop cancer during their lifetime?

which would be the better choice's to use when doing a study
to determine if rat's will develop cancer as a result of ingesting monsanto roundup chemicals?

that is all I'm asking , you disagree with the results
so tell me how should the scientist at the university have
performed the 2 year study on the 200 rats?

should they have used 5000 or a million to represent the human population of incidence via the chemical's in roundup?

how many would you accept?

which breed would you accept?

would you only accept results if performed by monsanto
scientist?

Gentle Readers: Once again Paul has decided the truth and doesn't pay any attention to the facts of the case. In this particular case the study was seriously flawed, but he has already decided that it proves his ideas about the horrors of GMO foods.

In my case I don't really have a good idea whether there is a problem with GMOs. There may be, but I have to go with what serious research suggests. So far there have been no well designed studies that have displayed any serious concerns.

Bill Gill

gentle readers

theres the gentle readers again , ask a fair question of bill
and then he starts with the gentle readers.

why cant you simply state how many rats should have been used?

it was you that wrote this wasn't it?



so how many should have been used?



here's your chance , enlighten me on the non-horrors of
GMO foods, Bill.

I guess you found some info on the 90 day studies and they used even fewer rats , LOL.

and that's why you wont answer the question.

mon 90.45

http://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NYSE:MON



what are the standard's of a well designed study?

or are there any standards that are pre-set standards for studies?

it sure look's as if there are plenty of people interested
in the 2 year studies recently completed on the rat's that
were fed monsanto chemical's.

maybe you should call them and complain about their study.

I have not read this article yet, and may not for a few days, so I'm posting the link in case it might add to the discussion.

http://www.nature.com/news/rat-study-sparks-gm-furore-1.11471

I havent read the article yet either , you make it sound like its a long one , so I will wait myself.

It's not as much a matter of a long article as a shortage of time. Prioritisation becomes a must.

I suppose its just the number of rats , because the monsanto
sponsored 90 day study used the same breed of rats.



so now that the breed of rat has been cleared by monsanto and
its puppet government agencies , the only real issue is the number of rats used in the study...

meanwhile , heres a little refresher course on the scandalous
monsanto activties and the shady characters associated.

The article is short, maybe a 5 minute read. It's worth the 5 minutes.

Perhaps Monsanto personnel should be used in place of rats. There might be less dispute about the results; as long as enough healthy ones were used.

Monsanto employees should have to eat what they cause to be grown so that they can truly say they have tested it. GMO corn has been linked strongly to infertility in pigs, horses, and cows.

http://www.greenenergyinvestors.com/index.php?showtopic=15840

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/12/10/dr-don-huber-interview-part-1.aspx

These two people make a good case for labeling GMOs.

I agree , they should be forced to eat it , but they can all afford
to eat organic foods and they already know the dangers of eating
GMO's , I'd just bet that they dont allow their children to eat
any GMO foods.

Could someone define the meaning of GMO foods for me please? I had someone say to me that modifying crops has been done for all time, and indeed I have an apple tree that is a Golden Delicious tree to which my lovely old Scottish neighbour ( he's dead now, and much missed) grafted a Granny Smith apple and a Jonathan apple about 25 years ago. Both grafts still bearing some fruit each year. This is surely modification, as was pointed out to me by a scientific type person in my family as I was commenting on the horror of the current rat tumour story.

I must admit that to me GMO means something like adding fish DNA to tomatoes to make them (the tomatoes) glow in the dark. Obviously the truth is somewhere in the middle I hope.

Perhaps this will help clear up the confusion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_organism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_food

http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/gmfood/overview.php

http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/gmfood.shtml

Hope that helps. :-)