condemning Monsanto with bad science is dumb

[shava]

29. for more discussion on this on my G+

https://plus.google.com/101371184407256956306/posts/hHB4qJnYF3S

Not to draw people away to there necessarily, we can discuss it here.

I am a little concerned, though -- if there is a chance that these kids are right at all, it should be investigated. As I say there, when a friend said that he made sure to wash up after using and before eating when handling RoundUp:

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Use in your driveway and on your sidewalk is the very least of your worries.

Roundup is mostly likely to come at you as a systemic in food that is resistant to it, where it's been broadcast in a field to kill weeds around the resistant crop.

http://web.mit.edu/demoscience/Monsanto/about.html

It's in the grains we eat, particularly, and there's no label requirement to divide GMO and non GMO cereals as they go into the food supply, although some suppliers at "health food" outlets voluntarily label that they don't accept GMO grains that are more likely to be "RoundUp Ready" GMO crops.

(This said, this is not an area I worry about, largely because I can't afford to at this point. Not only are these non-GMO grains expensive, but I'd have to give up every meat product and non-organic dairy product in my diet, as well as every non-organic sweetener, pretty much, too).

Can you say endemic, if this is a risk? DDT was the same. And DDT was created by people who were trying to solve world hunger. (And make money...) They weren't trying to kill all the birds and poison the water supply. They weren't trying to destroy the steppes in Asia and kill the Aral Sea forever. But that's what the Green Revolution did (that took nitrogen fertilizer and DDT and over-irrigation together).

They were just trying to save the world and make some pocket change...

RoundUp is just another artifact of the "green revolution" monoculture agriculture that keeps the current density of human life going on the planet. We are more talented than ants at keeping our hives/nests going.

Could it be a disaster? If it is, we might be afraid to find out. Because without it, we might be a billion or so over population cap. Wouldn't that be a drag?

It's freaking amazing how specialized we've gotten, and how we project that specialization into nature as we touch it as engineers and scientists.

If Heinlein said "Specialization is for insects," he really underestimated human technology, I think. We are so specialized that very very few modern people could survive a reasonable electrical downtime with a good camping kit, far less a Zombie (or any other) apocalypse of a season or more.

"Today, Roundup Ready crops account for about 90 percent of the soybeans and 70 percent of the corn and cotton grown in the United States."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/business/energy-environment/04weed.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0