Talk:Genetically modified organism/Archive 1

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Definition

"A genetically modified organism (GMO) or genetically engineered organism (GEO) is an organism whose genetic material has been altered using genetic engineering techniques."

So what do you call an organism that has been genetically modified through selective breeding?

216.164.63.182 (talk) 00:36, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

unlabeled gmo food must cause allergies. morgellons, lyme, agent orange, e-coli... Can we start a discussion about food we eat? 98.194.123.23 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 06:12, 11 September 2009 (UTC).

Controversies over genetic modification

Humans have had many population booms and according to the Malthusian trap; in which population growth outpaces agricultural production, these booms should have been accompanied by famine and mass death. We have sustained our growing populations consumptive needs with inorganic foods and fertilizers, these methods are proving to be unsustainable; threatening the health of our environment and consequently the human species. This is a recurring theme in the tale of the human experience. Although we are able to manipulate our environment for immediate enhancements, we lack in foresight and fail to understand balance. The lasting effects of these impulses are proving to be devastating to our long-term survival. If our process of making food is unsustainable, does that mean we are unsustainable?

GMO’s do provide attractive options for feeding the world’s poor, slow ripening tomatoes may not be so attractive in Europe, but in Africa and Asia as much as forty percent of vegetables rot in the field, or are eaten by pests. Researchers are currently investigating the possibility of incorporating vaccines for hepatitis B and diarrhea in bananas, “it will soon be possible to grow enough bananas on a single four-acre plot to protect a mid-size African country…from hepatitis B.” - The Pharmageddon Riddle, Michael Specter. In a warming climate, they give us a higher level of adaptability, they can be modified to require less water and sustain more heat.

However, one of the many problems with GMO’s is that they are engineered to be the same; they don’t have the genetic diversity that “natural” plants have. This leads to monocultures in the crop community. A single new disease can wipe out much larger numbers of crops. Furthermore the adoption of hybrid seeds worldwide is causing traditional varieties to become extinct. The nation’s agricultural diversity is vanishing from the fields.

I do think there is a place for GMO’s, third world countries in particular could truly benefit from this technology, and the vaccine banana is a great example of this. They also could be useful in regions that are prone to drought or have little access to water. I do not think that they are a wise and sustainable solution in more advanced societies; the health and environmental risks outweigh the benefits.

Technology itself is neither good or bad, it is the profit motive behind the technology that determines how it is developed. A small percentage of corporations control our agricultural technology. In the case of these Frankenstein foods the modern mad scientist is the corporate executive, profit driven with no regard to future consequences. But at what point does the creation take on a life of its own in the form of irreversible environmental damage? The irony is that even though technology is future based, it lacks foresight. Our challenge is to develop profit driven incentives that engage all stakeholders to promote sustainability. Yet an infrastructure for sustainability will only come after there is a deep personal and community understanding as to why it is necessary.

Trina b2k (talk) 22:11, 3 May 2009 (UTC)Trina B

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Link 5 in this section appears broken. I don't what the original link was to, but this: http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/gmfood/overview.php#n1 seems the probable article. Garble 11:14, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Who would like to investigate the background of the following news and to incorporate it into the article? http://www.guardian.co.uk/gmdebate/Story/0,2763,1535428,00.html mms 20:22, July 28, 2005 (UTC)

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Just a note of interest: Mendocino County, California has recently banned the production of all GMOs within it's borders. The measure passed with a 57% majority. Thought you would be interested. DryGrain 18:40, 19 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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There's also the bit about Monsanto's "terminator seed" (so named it because it was intended to be self-terminating), which turned out to be lethal to Monarch butterflies and caused quite a controversy because of it. I didn't add this bit as it would just get moved here anyway by some Divine Wikipedian since I would have failed to mention the x million cases of animals and insects not dying as a result of ingesting a GMO product. — Preceding unsigned comment added by KoyaanisQatsi (talk • contribs) 22:19, 15 July 2001 (UTC)

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You are confused: these are two entirely separate issues, and the latter was a complete fraud anyway. Monsanto's "terminator" seeds were merely seeds engineered to produce seedless plants so that farmers would have to keep buying seed from Monsanto. Farmers figured out pretty quick that this was a bad idea and the business model failed, as it should have, in the free market. The Monarch story was about corn engineered to be worm-resitant, so it wouldn't need to be grown with pesticides. A study showed that its pollen was also toxic to monarch caterpillars, who feed exclusively on milkweed. Milkweed often grows near corn fields, but the study failed to show that any significant amount of pollen actually gets onto milkweed leaves where any caterpillars might be harmed, and of course it entirely ignored the fact that without the gene mod, the fields would have been sprayed with pesticide that kills them all without question, so the gene can only be the benefit of the butterflies. --LDC

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Hm. Well it would seem I saved someone some work by not including the aforementioned text on the main page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by KoyaanisQatsi (talk • contribs) 18:46, 16 July 2001 (UTC)

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Recent evidence shows that genetically-modified plants may "escape" from fields in which they were planted and out-compete unmodified plants in surrounding fields. (Provide references)

This is very unclear what "escape" mean here. This would gain between explained. Is the plant escaping by moving itself (:-)), is it the pollen that is "escaping" and could maybe fertilize plants of the same family, or is it that new modified seeds are produced, and could be left, and colonize surroundings ?

In the second case, it does not matter maybe that the pollen escape if they are no plants of same family around (for exemple, there is no "native" corn in europe).

The "escaping" that was observed was that genetically-modified plants were found in fields (in which they had not been planted) surrounding the test fields. "Escape" is a standard term in the field of biotechnology. Various means of emigration may be posited, including pollen capable of fertilizing unmodified plants and the broadcast of the seeds of modified plants. Whatever the mechanism, the findings are important because it was not previously thought that these particular modified plants could escape. The findings are therefore worthy of mention in the article. As time allows, I plan to look up the references. David 17:13 Dec 2, 2002 (UTC)

ah, the "escape" word is the standard one !
Well, that's a pb such a word is not more precise.
I think a link to the mexican corn contamination would be nice
More on the terminator gene would be nice too, for use of sterile pollen is a way to avoid contamination through pollen dissemination.
I also think that article is not balanced at all. Far too much cons compared to pros. As time allows, I could plan to give it a more proper aspect :-)

I moved the link below, for it appears to be broken

• Allison Snow, an Ohio State University professor who received Scientific American1s first annual Research Leader in Agriculture award, has reported (http://www.osu.edu/researchnews/archive/sungene.htm) on several studies showing the strengthening of weeds due to genetic escape of the Bt variant.

I looked at the discussion page, and I see nothing. I suppose the reader is expected to look by himself in the search box for the Allison Snow; if so, that could be notified, rather than leading to a page where it is written in big large letters " The page you are looking for has moved or is outdated."

Second, I put back the "possible" word. You can change it into any other word you like, but reading the article slowly again and again, I must insist it is only a "possible" that is discussed here. I don't consider a BBC article with a caption stating "Pollen from GM rapeseed crops has certainly escaped" to be proof enough that pollen escaped. I think that here the "certainly" expresses a personal conviction of the writer, not a fact. When reading the text, I see

• But before that happens, some pollen will escape from the crop and be carried into nearby fields by the wind, or by bees.
• But in any case, the chances of the GM pollen establishing a foothold in British plants seem vanishingly small.
• The GM pollen will certainly escape into the surrounding countryside.
• It may land on the stigmas of native plants like wild mustard or wild radish, and it may pollinate them.
• there could be a problem with "volunteer" rapeseed growing the following year, plants originating from seed which went astray at the time of sowing.
• So they could perpetuate the gene flow
• etc...

could, would, may...
All I see here is fair evidence that it is likely to happen, not fact it did.

There is "certainly" (personnal conviction) somewhere an article with facts. This is not fact. And this is not clearly discussing the fact it happened.

Or...it is that the word "escape" is definitly not the good one. I look again at your above comment and my question is

• does "escape" means pollen go away from the perimeter we could expect it to limit itself (ie, on the other surrounding fields) or
• does "escape" means the above + success in contamination of the surroundings crops

In the first case, escape is a evidence, in the second, it is not (at least in this article).

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There are now three articles with closely related content:

genetically modified organism which is a laundry list of current concerns. As an article, this one is weakest, partially because it has no point of view (not the same as having a neutral point of view).

genetic modification which is about the process and potentials, long-term, of gene manipulation. It is not restricted to current technologies, nor to current industries, and is not afraid to go off into science fiction territory with the Raelians. Nor should it be, as at least one article has to talk about the long term potentials without getting bogged down in Monsanto and the left-right arguments.

genetic engineering which is about the field the way the gene hackers themselves see it - with some limited lip service paid to the objections of those who deny it's engineering. Presently genetic manipulation links here, which might be appropriate if that term is explained as a more neutral replacement for 'genetic engineering' - presently in the 'modification' article.

All three articles contain content worth saving, and one article could probably not do what the three do. Probably it's important to confine speculation to a couple of lines and a link to one article that is mostly about those potentials and ethical dilemmas and politics, that presently being genetic modification.

Is it really correct to have two separate articles for genetic engineering and genetically modified organism, however? The issue seems to be that an 'engineering' process that outputs an 'organism' is totally new ground for the professions, and so it may be appropriate to discuss these in one article, but leave the speculations (as they are) off in another article.

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"For instance, a bell pepper may have DNA from a fish added to it to make it more drought-tolerant." - Was this meant to be a joke or something? -Jedi Dan 16:55 Apr 23, 2003 (UTC)

I can't tell from the history where this statement came from, but it appears to either be an error, a joke, or reference to something very obscure. -º¡º

sigh...yes...a tiny gene copy for frost tolerance from a fish, the Arctic flounder, has been transferred to plants (strawberries initially, other perhaps, I havenot checked).

It is neither a joke, nor an error, nor anything obscure. This said, it is certainly not the best example that could be given...the majority of the initial generations are more about resistance to herbicides, salinity/drought/cold/frost (but from one plant resistant to another non resistant usually), disease or pest resistance, enhanced developement or final quality. user:anthere

Read the above carefully and you will see where the error in the text is. The text says the DNA is to make the plant more drought-tolerant, which could be seen as a joke (a drought-tolerant fish?). The fact was the gene was to make the plant more frost-tolerant, which is a completely different thing. As I said, it was either a joke, an error, or an obscure reference. You have simply provided evidence towards the error scenario. -º¡º

Depends on the fish. Mudskippers do have a number of unusual genetic adaptations that allow them to survive extended periods of dehydration (although most of these adaptations are more likely to be useful to animals than plants). The major genetic modification that might make plants more drought-tolerant would probably be the addition of genes (say, from a fungus) for the enhanced production of the sugar trehalose, which seems to offer some protection to the internal structure of dehydrating cells. Trehalose is already supposed to be produced by some plants. But one can imagine that if someone isolated a gene that boosted tehalose production in response to early dehydration, that that gene might be a candidate for transfer. I don't know if trehalose production is part of the mudskipper's armory of tricks or not. ErkDemon (talk) 00:23, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

PS: Trehalose happens to give improved protection against cell damage from dehydration (perhaps by forming a protective supporting gel around cell organelles), and also from freezing (it seems to suppress ice crystal formation). Both features may relate to "glassification" -- a dehydrated solution of the sugar may form a protective glassy gel over internal cell structures, and the sugar may also encourage supercooled water to say in a noncrystalline "glassy" state, preventing the disruption and destruction of of cell organelles by ice crystals. So the idea that a single substance might protect from both drought and freezing isn't necessarily dumb. ErkDemon (talk) 00:46, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

bah. Frost is certainly much much more correct. But, when a cell suffers from frost, one of the impact of frost is lack of water, for the water in the cell is in a non-available form (since frozen, he ?). Hence, the usage of "drought". Similarly, in tundra, the soil is very humid, but the climate is dry for most of the water is unavailable. I agree this might sound like a bad joke though. This example is not very good anyway, as it was used as a "pinpoint" (is that word correct?) by anti-gmos people, to insist on how un-natural gmo were. Hence, it is an example with "very heavy" history. Using this example in the introduction is imho pov. It certainly might be inside the text though. Besides, it sound so incredible that many would believe we are joking.

I changed it. I couldn't find verification either. Koyaanis Qatsi 04:37 Apr 24, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks kq (hi btw :-)). Just type words like fish gmo strawberry tomato and should find it, all over the place. Hard to find scientific ref though. ant

about the fish/frost example: If you know of an example with less cultural baggage, maybe you could put that in instead. I'm certainly not an expert on GMOs. Koyaanis Qatsi

well, will see. We should perhaps give an example on cotton in China. It will have less cultural baggage than citing a Monsanto example :-)

What "cultural baggage" does the current example have? Why would we replace it? -º¡º

Oh Anthere, saying that the frost causes internal drought is really stretching things. Maybe this is something that comes from a difference between French and English, but we don't use the word "drought" in that way. Perhaps "dehydration" is a better fit, but drought, no that had to be an error. -º¡º

ah, possibly. Well...that was a fun error anyway :) Imagination allow geneticians to stretch reality pretty far away. I will always dream of my blue roses...

Hopefully you won't have to wait very long. Florigene has already patented the blue gene and is working on splicing it into roses. Maybe next year? -º¡º

some years ago, I tried to breed blue roses. And hoped to see new colors and new features appear with some biotech techniques. Not with foreign gene insertion though. Some experiments worked. But, not the blue roses :-(

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that article is totally messy PomPom 19:47, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)

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Though 'totally messy' is a bit obscure, I would certainly say this article has problems. The radiation-treatment of wheat strikes me (as a layman) as entirely different from the deliberate modification of a DNA strain to give a specific, designed capability; yet the 'wheat point' is brought up several times thrugh the text as a counter-argument. As I said, I'm no biologist, but I think someone more qualified should take a good hard look at this article (and fix it). Radagast 23:14, Feb 27, 2004 (UTC)

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From the article:

Losses of Biodiversity

...Local governments and industry since have been pushing hybridization with such zeal that several of the wild and indigenous breeds evolved locally over thousands of years having high resistance to local extremes in climate and immunity to diseases etc. have already become extinct or are in grave danger of becoming so in the near future.

Is this a fact or an oppinion? Why isn't it refferenced by some scientific article? I would realy like to see a partial list of specieses extinct "thanks" to that practice. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.68.176.114 (talk) 11:44, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Moved POV paragraphs

Moved from the page:

Opponents often falsely present research conducted by scientists at the Imperial College London and the Universidad Simon Rodriguez in Caracas, Venezuela as revealing that the diamondback moth grew 56% faster when fed cabbage genetically modified to contain Bt than it did when fed cabbage without the Bt. This is not very honest, as the moths were fed on leaf discs treated with Bt, not transgenic plants. Therefore, the research has just as much potential relevance to organic farming, in which Bt is a commonly used pesticide, as it does to transgenic plants. The 56% figure is disingenuously picked because it is the largest number that can be derived from the data; the differences in pupal weight, development time, and pupal weight/developmental time are much, much smaller.

And:

Compare a news article falsely claiming that diamondback moths grow faster on cabbage engineered to contain Bt than they do on cabbage without it, [1] with the actual published scientific manuscript, [2] , in which it is clearly stated that the moths were fed cabbage treated with several doses of Bt.

While the issue is certainly relevant, discussing it in such POV language is entirely unacceptable ("falsely present .. not very honest .. disingenuously picked .."). Furthermore, this smells like a straw man unless there are citations for the claims that are rebutted -- who says this? Reputable anti-GMO organizations, or some personal website? Furthermore, it neglects that the whole point of the paper is to present a hypothesis, not to test it (that's why the title ends with a question mark).

This whole article is an example of what NPOV shouldn't be, but these two paragraphs were especially egregious.--Eloquence* 22:06, Apr 19, 2004 (UTC)

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I removed several paragraphs of material which were inherently biased; those issues are already covered better elsewhere. This article should focus simply on what a GMO is and what it isn't. As it is, it remains heavily focused on transgenic plants. While this is an application of genetics which is highly visible to the public, it is by no means the extent of applications of gene technology.

Some of the material I eliminated should be considered for integration into the other articles on genetics. Also, I think we should add some more paragraphs on the lesser-known uses of GMOs in the research community, e.g. oncology, immunology. Jeeves 23:07, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

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It is possible to distinguish between the two because classical genetic techniques involve looking into the family history of the life form you are studying, and modern genetic techniques involve gene knockout or gene replacement

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—Preceding unsigned comment added by Yankeesguy45 (talk • contribs) 02:59, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I think that the "Genetic modification of bacteria" part is all wrong.
I. The discussion is not about how the "genetic composition of bacteria can be altered...", but how the genetic composition of bacteria can be artificially altered. Or how the genetic composition is altered in practice. The only method used in the laboratories is transformation. The other two are the ways for the exchange of genetic material in nature.

transformation, conjugation and transduction.

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People who are opposed to GMOs remind me of the following line of thought:

THE EARTH IS FLAT!!!

There is no proof that GMOs are bad, just rumors spread by people opposed to scientific advancement.

Its not "bad", but there are problems... 209.148.144.171 06:28, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The earth is flat was a fact that got disproved. GMO being harmless is not a fact, and never was. It is simply something that the very large companies try to make the public believe. It reminds me of sentence such as "Smoking tobacco does not cause lung cancer" and "Climate change has never been proven". For smoking and cancer, millions of dollars have been funneled in disinforming the population for quite a long time, until disinformation becomes impossible due to overwhelming evidence.--Patrick.N.L (talk) 08:40, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

I would question the neutrality of the final portion (controversies) of this article. Some parts in this section need editing for a less biased, more scientifically sound source of information. For example, the pollen spread concern is widely discredited in the case of the two largest transgenic crops, corn and soybean. For soybean, it is obvious reasons (does not cross-pollinate). For corn, while pollen grains may travel great distances, the viability of corn pollen grains is very short (around 10 minutes), therefore it is not a major concern. Many studies have taken place to address this, and farmers do plant "buffer zones" to prevent cross-contamination of adjacent fields following the findings of these scientific studies. For more information, check the list of references at the end.

Also, on the previous paragraph, there is no correlation between increased Bt resistance in insects with the opening sentence (being harmful to humans)

References:

http://www.aphis.usda.gov/brs/corn.html http://www.umaine.edu/waterquality/Agriculture/GE_Corn.htm

Burris JS (2001) Adventitious pollen intrusion into hybrid maize seed production fields. Proc. 56th Annual Corn and Sorghum Research Conference 2001. American Seed Trade Association, Inc. Washington, D.C.

Westgate ME, Lizaso J & Batchelor W (2003) Quantitative relationship between pollen-shed density and grain yield in maize. Crop Sci. 43, 934-942

Ma BL, Subedi KD & Reid LM (2004) Extent of cross-fertilization in maize by pollens from neighboring transgenic hybrid. Crop Sci. 44, 1273-1282

Stewart DW, Ma BL & Dwyer LM (2001) A mathematical model of pollen dispersion in a maize canopy. 2001 Annual Meeting Abstracts, The ASA-CSSA-SSSA Headquarters, Madison, WI.

Here is one evidence of transgene flow, from a canola field to another: Pollen flow between herbicide-resistant Brassica napus is the cause of multiple-resistant B. napus volunteers Hall etal. 2000

Merge

I think genetic engineering should be merged with genetically modified organism for the following reasons:

1. Genetic engineering is a term that isn't used within science anymore.
2. The mix of terminology is confusing for people outside the field, especially when they are basically describing the same thing.
3. The concept of genetic modification would be better explained if these pages were merged.
4. I think ethics/safely discussions need to be specified in terms of organism and either page is a bad place for extended discussion on the topic.

Opinions? I would like to merge sooner rather than later.--nixie 01:43, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

• Maybe they should both be merged into Genetic modification? I have no real opinion either way. --brian0918™ 01:58, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
  • I considered that too, its probably the best option.--nixie 02:16, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
  • I think it'd be best if the articles were merged to Genetic modification as well. On a slightly related note, would the merged article also cover breeding, should breeding be covered as a type of genetic modification? Thunderbolt16 02:17, July 14, 2005 (UTC)
    • I was going to add a discussion of non-recombinant methods of genetic modification, including mating and the various chemical ways to induce genetic modifications, but I'd leave the page breeding where it is.--nixie 02:19, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
      • That sounds perfect to me. Thunderbolt16 01:32, July 15, 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure about this proposed merger for a number of reasons. Whilst the two articles are undoubtedly similar in content I'm not sure that they are seeking to describe the same thing. Genetic engineering should ideally refer to the process and genetically modified organism should ideally refer to the product, both of which are slightly different things. I agree that both of the articles require some attention and co-ordination but I'm not sure that merger is the answer.--Nicholas 10:38, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Has this matter been resolved? Maybe we should remove the merger tag?--Nicholas 10:52, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree with the comments (above) from Nicholas. Even a casual look at the scientific literature shows that the term "genetic engineering" continues to be used by scientists. I suggest that when coverage of a topic exists in a distributed fashion spread over many wikipedia articles, what can be done is to carefully link the related articles by means of a navigation box that contains links to all of the relevant pages. There could even be a summary article that serves as a guide to the topic and describes which aspects of the topic are found on the various wikipedia pages that touch on the topic. We have to learn to use hypertext to manage distributed information. Wikipedia is not paper and we have to learn to avoid the temptation to behave as if we are still restricted to the options that govern print. --JWSchmidt 16:09, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Nicholas and have a little more to add. Genetic engineering is a broad term applied to any process that utilizes genes to engineer something. The something can be an entire organism, as in the case of a genetically modified organism, but it is much more common in genetic enginering that what is altered are individual cells from an organism that reproduce in a bioreactor. These are genetically modified cells (as in the Chinese Hamster Ovary cell). Not only is genetic engineering a process and GMOs a product, but GMOs are a subset of the products made by the process. I am removing the merger tag Flying Jazz 05:08, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

The definition of GMO is not correct.

At the basis of any regulation, there are concepts, needs, purposes, requirements, and words. A regulation has a scope hopefully applying to a specific object. Such an object is usually defined. The very accurate meaning and the whole ontology of a regulation, their connection to other regulations rely upon such definition. Alike the stones of a building, the definition used by a regulation are the basis of their robustness and architectural or aesthetic coherence. Would the definition then not correctly reflect the object(s) it is supposed to describe and the purposes (ethical, economical, environmental) of the regulation, then the whole regulation, at the time of its application, will raise "problems". If not leading the market and the regulators to non sense, surrealistic, non scientific, non consistent, and, of course, to opportunistic consequences.

The definition of "genetically modified organism" is an historical example of inappropriate and inaccurate definition. Such a definition does not result from scientific or technological contexts but factually from regulators of the European Union (see further). These words were historically invented by lawyers. For this reason documented further, the merge of the GMO problematic and genetic engineering does not appear very useful. Even if it is true that biosafety issues related to genetic engineering were historically motivating the creation of both American and European regulation of "Biotech" products.

The first publication of an official document mentioning "genetically modified organism" is neither a scientific paper nor quoted from the jargon of genetic engineers. It appeared in 1990 in the very Official Journal of the European Union publishing the Directive 90/220/EEC "on the deliberate release into the environment of genetically modified organisms" (Official Journal of the European Communities - 8.5.90 - Page No L 117/15). In its article 2, a GMO is meant as "an organism in which the genetic material has been altered in a way that does not occur naturally by mating and/or natural recombination".

Compared to the definition of the Article, the important thing is not that "the genetic material has been altered" but that 1) it has been altered by a way that does not occur naturally" (One of the above comment mentions "artificial genetic alteration") and 2) that the only processes deemed to be "natural" are mating and natural recombination.

The regulation sinks deeper in the genetical mat while precising further in the same article which genetic modification is covered by the regulation and which one is not. This happens in April 1990 when the European Union involved 9 Member States. Eleven years later, with an enlarged Union of 25 members, the definition has been maintained word by word in Directive 2001/18 abrogating the previously quoted one. This directive is considered as the "Reference directive" for all kind of sectors: medicinal, food/feed, additives and very soon seeds. This a detail that better explain the weight of the mentioned definition.

All those familiar with the debates around GMO and GM food and feed could feed their understanding about the source of the "problems".

For those biologists and geneticist familiar of genome plasticity and the urge variety of mutagenic processes and gene fluxes found in nature and in experimental transformation, the legal definition of GMO documented here has very weak -if any- biological or genetical basis and could consequently well be non sense.

While the words "natural" and "naturally" are quite dificult to define, "GMO" as one of the most sensitive definition of biotechnology refers to an hypothetical common understanding of "nature" and to a very limited and specific technologies.

(Cclone 00:00, 19 August 2005 (UTC))

WTO about GM food

The article mentions: " This issue has been brought before the World Trade Organization, which determined that not allowing modified food into the country creates an unnecessary obstacle to international trade."

Thw WTO has not yet settled the dispute about GM food/feed between the EU, Argentina, USA and Canada. In August 2005, the WTO has consequently not yet determined anything.

(Cclone 00:01, 19 August 2005 (UTC))

Copyvio

The almost-cut-and-paste (see the recent page history) came from the second paragraph at this url. It's been altered very slightly but not enough, IMO, not to be considered a direct lift, so I suggest it be removed again. --Whouk (talk) 22:50, 17 December 2005 (UTC)~

Mutualism

I know mutualism has nothing to do with cross-breeding, but i've heard somewhere that mutualism could also involve, in some particular (rare) cases, some kind of genes transfer. Could anybody verify this? The mutualism article, being a biological concept that was used in a very interesting way by Gilles Deleuze, is a perfect example of what a rhizomatic encyclopedia like Wikipedia can do... (it just has to changes it's arborescent way of categorizing things though :) Lapaz 01:09, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Revert from edits by 62.123.204.178

I reverted the page back from the state this user left it in. Upon reading the changes after that, and the changes he made, it seems clear that user's objective was to eliminate the citations and otherwise damage the article, and everything after that was just repairing it or reverting vandalism. I apologize if I missed some valid edits and clobbered them, but I didn't really see a good reason to correct all the individual bits of damage this anon user did. --FreelanceWizard 21:58, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Small error

In Genetic modification of animals:

"By selecting mice whose germ cells (sperm- or egg-producing cells) developed from the modified cell and interbreeding them, pups that contain the genetic modification in all of their cells will be born. Baylor College of Medicine currently has one of the largest transgenic mice facilities in the country."

Which country? The U.S? Elamere 12:23, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Vandalism

Someone changed a subheading to "Gay Rights." Can someone fix the correct subheading?

Bloody rox 16:52, 28 June 2006 (UTC)Bloody Rox

Image size

Can Someone upload a single frame gif instead of that 1MB, there ARE 56k'rs out there... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.247.240.244 (talk) 04:46, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

genetic crossings

Cut from article:

despite many known examples of natural genetic crossings occurring throughout history (see for example horizontal gene transfer)

If this is one side's argument in favor of GM - or a rebuttal of an anti-GMO argument, let's source it. Who says it's "natural" or "un-natural"?

In fact, who are the primary proponents and opponents of GM, GMO's and genetically modified crops? I heard that some European countries won't allow imports from poor African countries of GM food crops. Free market advocates call this unfair. Can someone identify the disputing sides a little better? And outline their arguments more clearly? --Uncle Ed 19:40, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Vandalism

Someone has vandalised this article, replacing a line which should say 'There has also been the genetically manipulated bull Herman with 55 offspring' with 'There has also been the genetically manipulated your mom with 55 offspring', under the section Genetic Modification of Organisms. Please revert this. 85.12.80.128 14:41, 5 December 2006 (UTC) Unregistered user

Transgenic Organisms

Should the page "Transgenics" really redirect to this page? According to Winter et al (2002) "Transgenic organisms (incorrectly termed genetically modified organisms, GMOs)...". If this is the case then surely a separate article should be started? I don't claim to be an expert on the subject, just wondered what the general consensus was?

[Winter, Hickley & Fletcher (2002) Genetics 2nd Edition (BIOS)]

Alex 17:11, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Link [ http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/News-transgenic-fish-making-waves-090109.aspx Transgenic Fish Have Risks September 1, 2009 ] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.44.27.218 (talk) 18:57, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

transgenic organisms are a subset of GMO/GEO

THat's the part that this article doesn't get right. Transgenic organisms are when you take a gene from one species and put in another. That is one way to create a GMO. There are many ways to create GMOs by only using one organism/species DNA, e.g. moving promoters around, recombinant DNA techniques on only that organism's genes, etc.

This should be fixed. Also, the term transgenic is never defined before it is used, so a reader with no background knowledge would be clueless to what that meant. --Rajah (talk) 07:19, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Horizontal gene transfer

Horizontal gene transfer should me mensioned someware in the article.--87.64.0.216 18:57, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Other forms of change

Besides changing DNA, it is also possible to treat seeds with colchicene. The result is an organism with double the normal number of chromosomes. I do not know whether this line of study has been much pursued lately. It was quite active around 1960.P0M 04:57, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

I dunno how much this is used at the moment either. There is a good bit of info on this at the Colchicine article. The reason why this stuff is not really discused on the GMO page is that the definition of GMO is arbitrarly set so that it only includes organisms that are the result of direct manipulation of DNA using the techniques of molecular biology. So induction of chromosome doubling counts as classical plant breeding and does not result in a GMO. This definition of GMO is apparently legislated around the world. But it is a pretty arbitrary distinction when you consider all the other "unatural" techniques used to produce crops that have had their genetics modified. You can use mutatagenisis or cochicene to modify the genome but you don't end up with a GMO!!! Such is the way of govenment regultations on this issue.Ttguy 01:35, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Genetic Engineering

Have there been a case of a human gmo?

Sort of. With viruses new functional genes have been inserted into human cells. A good example is for cyctic fibrosis, a nasal spray with the virus infects the lung cells to help them restore a more normal function. But this should be considered treatment rather than genetically modifying in the GMO sense. No germline transmission has been attempted. I'd imagine it is illegal for one. David D. (Talk) 17:25, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

GMOs Affects on the Environment sections added by Karoline2006

The edits made to add the sections on GMOs Affects on the Environment contain some useful info but are problematic. They seem to be a cut and paste from somewhere else as the text does not really intergrate into the rest of the article.

The section headings are not section headings so they appear to part of the "Government support for and ban of GMOs" section.

The references are not formated properly.

There are factual in accuracies. Eg Tasmania is not a country but a state in Australia. BTW If you want to talk about states in Australia, NSW and Victoria have just lifted their bans on GM Canola crops.

This line from Ho and Cummings is such a scaremoungering lie as to be funny - if you know it is a lie.

"To make matters worse, the agrobacterium that was being used to genetically modify these trees is capable of producing tumors in the infected species, which can pass tumors onto both animals and humans (Ho and Cummins 2004). "

Agrobacteria can never cause tumors in animals. Agrobacterium is a plant pathogen. The wild form of it can cause tumours in plants. But the form used in GE plant production is "disarmed" and can not cause tumors in plants. Such a claim is typical of Mae-Wan Ho. Note the source of the quote is not a peer reviewed scientific paper but a publication of a environmental activist NGO.

I am not sure that the text can easily be re-habilitated so I am going to delete it. But if Karoline2006 wants to try an rehabilititate it by better integrating the information then she should give it a go. Ttguy (talk) 22:20, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

This statement is factually inacurate "the generational system fails to consider environmental impacts" since regulations governing the release of GMOs around the world explicity consider possible impacts on the envionment. For example it is considered if the crop plant being released has wild relatives that it might cross breed with. It is considered whether the release is to be near a center of diversity for where the crop originated. It is considered as to whether the traits of the GMO are likely to increase its weedyness or invasiveness. There are many things that are considered to do with the environment when applying for a general release of a GMO to the environment. Ttguy (talk) 22:27, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

This statement is an overly simplistic analysis

"[GMO trees] also soak up quite a bit more water than non-GMO trees because of their rapid growth. "

What is important is not how much water a tree uses but how much water per tonne of wood a tree uses. If a GM tree uses more water per day but produces wood faster then we have not lost anything.Ttguy (talk) 22:33, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Ttguy: YOu are describing the impact on wood production, not on the groundwater table. If GMO trees lower the groundwater table it could be very significant. See current problems with invasive exotics in fynbos ecosystesm in South Africa. The effects would be similar. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Primacag (talk • contribs) 21:05, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Please provide some evidence for the claim that Salmon were genetically modified so they can be "grown on a farm in fresh water". It is my understanding that the genetic modification of salmon has happened much later in the history of salmon farming - ie salmon farms have existed long before GM salmon came into existance. Until such evidence is presented it is not fair to claim that GM salmon is reponsible for sea louse problems. Ttguy (talk) 04:59, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Please provide some evidence for the commmerical release of any GM fish. I am under the impression that they are still only in research phase with this. But I could be wrong. Ttguy (talk) 04:59, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

The stuff about a genetically modified plant from the brassica family invading New Zealand is highly dubious since no GM plant has ever been released in New Zealand. According you the Karoline2006 text this GM plant "has moved through New Zealand mixing in with wild species within the family." "The GM hybrid was created six years ago, and once introduced to wild species, spread quickly." Scoop 2007 is quoted. It turns out that Scoop 2007 talks about a Candan study on the introgression of hebicide tolerance traits from Canola to weedy relatives of Canola. Scoop reports that is sigificant for NZ because a "GE brassica [is] being developed and trialled by Crop and Food Research in New Zealand". How more misleading can you get? A study in Canada is converted to a frankenweed invading and taking over NZ. Ttguy (talk) 04:59, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

The argument which states that we should not use Herbicide tolerant HT crops because this will hasten the arrival of herbicide resistant weeds is very silly. The use of herbicides causes the arrival of herbicide resistant weeds irrespective of the presence or absence of HT crops. (The first examples of roundup resistant weeds came well before round resistant crops were made.) But to say we should not use herbicides now because they may become useless in the future is stupid. What use is a herbicide if you do not use it? The argument is like being sick with a bacterial infection but refusing antibiotics because in the future the disease that is killing you may become resistant to the drug. Yes you only take the antibiotic if you are sick. No you don't take it if you have a viral infection. Yes you finish the cource. But you don't refuse the antibiotic if is effective right now.

What is one way to speed up resistance to herbicide? - use too low of a dose on the plants. But with HT crops you can use a higher does because you know the crop will be safe. So HT crops may not actually be a cause of weed resistance to herbicides. Ttguy (talk) 04:59, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Fearless mouse

The mouse that does not fear cats. A very cool application of GM technology. Tim Vickers (talk) 05:33, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

german language citations

We have some german language citations for some rather radical claims. According to Wikipedia:Citing_sources

Because this is the English Wikipedia, English-language sources should be given whenever possible, and should always be used in preference to other language sources of equal calibre. However, do give references in other languages where appropriate. If quoting from a different language source, an English translation should be given with the original-language quote beside it.

So as per this policy I am deleting the unsourced claims - they have been fact tagged since July —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ttguy (talk • contribs) 08:34, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

External Links / General

I was wondering that somebody erased my external link (Pinky Show interview, version from: 18:11, 26 January 2008 83.25.147.194 ) to an interview about GMO with Jeffrey Smith. Would please tell me the reason, cause in my oppinion this is a quite good and informative conversation.

A cartoon that advocates non-mainstream ideas seems to fail our Wikipedia:External links guidelines in two separate ways. This really didn't seem a very helpful addition. Tim Vickers (talk) 17:52, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Swiss "Dignity of Plants"

Based on material such as this and the official page, I was hoping that someone might be a little more familiar with this material to weigh in on it. I'm looking through the materials right now over the question of relevance to the Transhumanism‎ entry, and would certainly like to hear any responses. --Human.v2.0 (talk) 18:05, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Globalise "Government support for and ban of GMOs section"

Fanx added the Globalise template to the Government support for and ban of GMOs section 2 May 2008. Ie they added the "The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view of the subject."

Probably a fair call. I will try and add Australian perspective.Ttguy (talk) 00:40, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Religion

There is a long controversy section about moral issues in this article ; it might be useful to know that the RCC bioethics commission has stated there are moral grounds in favour of GMOs, and that the Church does not formally oppose genetically modified organisms. [3] ADM (talk) 18:48, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

56% mortality rate among rat pups, comparing to 9% when fed with regular soya

This edit suggests that there is "56% mortality rate among rat pups, comparing to 9% when fed with regular soya". This is a notable figure. Is the source, a regular collaborator (this isn't meant to be in any way pejorative) with Greenpeace, peer reviewed and WP:RS reliable? --Old Moonraker (talk) 15:31, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Certainly not. This was "published" in a conference talk and has not yet been peer-reviewed or published in a reputable scientific journal. I've removed this material. Tim Vickers (talk) 23:28, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. --Old Moonraker (talk) 06:23, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Tim: "Certainly not". How do you know? Link, please. Because this research was published in Nature Biotechnology. ↑ Ermakova I.V. GM soybeans revisiting a controversial format // Nature Biotechnology. — 2007. — Т. 25. — № 12. — С. 1351-1354. Additional reviews from scientists are here: http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v25/n12/index.html#cr/ So please put information back to the state before this unprompted action of yours. Thanks in advance. DenisRS (talk) 15:46, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

That Nature Biotechnology article is a criticism of the unpublished results, based on the conference proceedings, and an author response in a letter to these criticisms. In that reply Ermakova states:

They also criticize me for failing to publish my work in the peer-reviewed literature and for widely publicizing my work at various congresses, meetings, press conferences and on the internet without providing sufficient experimental support for my claims. I would respond that I have already sent papers into peer-reviewed journals (one paper was submitted a year ago).

The only place Ermakova's results have been "published" are as a non-peer reviewed conference abstract, which she cites in this letter. Have you read these articles? If not I can send you the Pdfs. Tim Vickers (talk) 17:02, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

The point is that the research was eventually published, even though as abstract, in scientific publication. The fact that Nature Biotechnology senior editor mishandled original Ermakova submission, publishing instead an abstract, does not change the fact that it was peer reviewed by many scientists. Brian John To the editor //Nature Biotechnology. — 2007. — Т. 25. — № 12. — С. 1354-1355. Mae-Wan Ho and Peter T.Saunders To the editor //Nature Biotechnology. — 2007. — Т. 25. — № 12. — С. 1355. Carlo Leifert To the editor //Nature Biotechnology. — 2007. — Т. 25. — № 12. — С. 1355. Jack Heinemann and Terje Traavik To the editor //Nature Biotechnology. — 2007. — Т. 25. — № 12. — С. 1355-1356. Joe Cummins To the editor //Nature Biotechnology. — 2007. — Т. 25. — № 12. — С. 1356.

And even if there would be no peer reviews, at no place WP:RS requires this as obligatory. But there are peer reviews, so the information will be brought back. On scientific topics, WP:RS requires this:

For information about academic topics, such as physics or ancient history, scholarly sources are preferred over news stories. Newspapers tend to misrepresent results, leaving out crucial details and reporting discoveries out of context. For example, news reports often fail to adequately report methodology, errors, risks, and costs associated with a new scientific result or medical treatment.

So there is no legitimate way to edit out information which fully complies with RS-policy; the fact that the research was done is established by standards far beyond obligatory. Information will be republished with extended/modified reference background. Anyway, thanks for your time, Tim. DenisRS (talk) 16:43, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

No, it was criticized by many scientists, peer review is a different process that formally assesses the suitability of a manuscript for publication. As Ermakova herself states, her work has never been peer-reviewed. Tim Vickers (talk) 16:51, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

It would really be helpful to me if this topic included links to GMO plant articles

It would really be helpful to me if this topic included links to GMO plant articles. Could someone put in a list for plants, animals, microbes, and any other categories. Or tell me where the list exists if I am too ignorant to find it. Thanks in advance Primacag

Biologists' and doctors' opinion

I've ever wondered why is there a controversy about this, if everybody knows that genes do mute naturally. Are natural crops under a stricter control than GM ones? I would say it's the other way... Yes, I know natural mutations do occur far less often (further less considering the organism must survive + spread its genes). But I would say there are no controls about the possible toxicity of natural crops (maybe inspections or something, but no scientist feeding rats with every product which is sold). As if Mother Nature looked after us poor humans and didn't produce venoms and toxics by Herself...

This sounds to me like when my gf told me she didn't want to eat food heated with microwave ovens since, "microwaves are radiation!". Uuuhh chernobyl microwaves... (Uuuhh plants with genes... Uuuhh mutant plants...).

Additionally, since I don't know a word about medicine: Can a product be toxic without containing toxic substances? And if the assumption is that GMO can contain (produce) toxic substances, couldn't those toxic substances be detected with an easy chemical analysis? I mean, is it real, the need to feed rats/monkeys/wathever with a product for 5/10/20 years to be sure that that product isn't toxic?

PS: My gf didn't believe me initially when I told her light=radiation and microwaves=light lol --euyyn 01:29, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I think we are behind that point to believe in " a GMO is not toxic because it contains the same protines as the not toxic original ", which made it possible that GMO food products didn't need to pass all the approval tests that are mandatory for each regular new food product out of natural crops. I think pneumonia due to feedings with modified Peas ( Vanessa E. Prescott, Peter M. Campbell, Andrew Moore, Joerg Mattes, Marc E. Rothenberg, Paul S. Foster, T. J. V. Higgins, and Simon P. Hogan. Transgenic Expression of Bean a-Amylase Inhibitor in Peas Results in Altered Structure and Immunogenicity. JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL AND FOOD CHEMISTRY, Volume 53, Issue 23 (November 16, 2005) pages 9023 – 9030. ),

damaged liver and kidneys after feedings with modified maize (30Hammond, B.G., Dudek, R. Lemen, J.K. & Nemeth, M.A. (2006), Results of a 90-day safety assurance study with rats fed grain from corn borer-protected corn. Food and Chemical Toxicology 44(7): 1092 – 1099)

or even death (Bt176)

or pre- cancerous developements in small intestine (Stanley Ewen, Árpád Pusztai: „Effect of diets containing genetically modified potatoes expressing Galanthus nivalis lectin on rat small intestine“, 16. Oktober 1999, The Lancet 354(9187):1353 (PMID 10533866)

should make us treat the issue more scientifical. For sure, it is no help on this topic, that new agrar universities are build up by the GMO industry, like in india. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.1.177.47 (talk) 21:53, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

I have Ewen and Pusztai (1999) in front of me, (courtesy of "Biomarket1", a "natural foods" purveyor—and I never thought to be writing that on Wikipedia). The changes in the alimentary tract were not described as pre-cancerous, or at least the text string "pre-cancerous" was not found in the document. --Old Moonraker (talk) 22:05, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

The corn study saw no ill effect and the pea study involved feeding animals peas and then injecting them with purified pea antigens, in order to induce immune responses. Your blatant misrepresentation of the content of these references, User:85.1.177.47, is a serious violation of our content policies. Tim Vickers (talk) 22:06, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't feel that there has been any "blatant misrepresentation" in pointing out that the document does not mention "pre-cancerous". In fact, this is approaching a personal attack --Old Moonraker (talk) 22:14, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I wasn't clear Old Moonraker - I was referring to the IP editor's misrepresentation of sources, we got caught in an edit conflict as we tried to respond at the same time. Tim Vickers (talk) 22:18, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

That's OK; thanks for the clarification. I still think my text, now deleted, was a fair representation as it contained a direct quote from the document, but the science in it is a little far beyond my level of expertise to be certain: it could be a case of undue weight.--Old Moonraker (talk) 22:24, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

The main issue was that only one of the three references cited contained anything close to what the IP editor claimed. The Pusztai paper is discussed in the genetically modified food controversies article, giving some background and responses to this highly controversial publication. Tim Vickers (talk) 22:28, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

The fact that the IP editor's contributions had twice to be corrected because the references didn't contain what he/she said they contained is significant. Having followed your suggested link to "controversies" I see that Pusztai can't be used without heavy qualification, which wouldn't be appropriate for a reference upon which a controversial statement is relying. All in all, I'm perfectly happy to leave the deletions as they stand.--Old Moonraker (talk) 22:40, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

I see your points. I wanted to add to the discussion, that "concept of substantial equivalence" is questionable, and that there is a risk if GMOs are introduced to the food chain in a procedure based on that principle. The above "Can a product be toxic without containing toxic substances?" tempted me to a quick input, but I notice that I was too unprecise. I will raise this topic again in a better prepared way. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.3.53.153 (talk) 07:37, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Czech Scientists make statement about GMOs

Controversies

Czech scientists have just released an extensive discussion of the way in which the GMO issue has been managed in Europe, allied with their current occupancy of the EU presidency. Their announcement has been briefly refrerred to and a link added to their webpage

Many European scientists are disturbed by the fact that political factors and ideology prevent unbiased assessment of the GM technology in some EU countries, with a negative effect on the whole community Prof. František Sehnal, Prof. Jaroslav Drobník, Editors,(2009) White book on Genetically Modified Crops. Call for greater role of scientific approach for genetic technology policy

Detribe (talk) 12:03, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

GMO status of chimeric mice

Recently an image of a chimeric mouse with its gene targeted offspring was removed (diff here) on the rationale that the chimeric mouse was not genetically modified. A summary of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, found here, seems to suggest otherwise. Could someone let me know if I'm mistaken in thinking that such chimeric mice are genetically modified organisms -- and if I am mistaken, how so? Thanks, Emw2012 (talk) 00:19, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Hi, I can see why you added it now. The nobel summary lists a specific case in which chimeric mice are GM.

However from reading chimera (genetics) it is pretty obvious that chimeras are not normally GM and so having a picture in this article of a chimera isn't accurate. This page really does need more pictures I must admit but we need to ensure that the organisms depicted are in fact GM. I will try and find some elsewhere but they may not exist. If you want to get some you could consider emailing some scientists and asking if they would mind them being used. I hope this explains why I removed the pic, please say if it doesn't. Smartse (talk) 00:49, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

This is the only picture of a GM animal that is already on wikicommons and it is pretty crap! Smartse (talk) 01:02, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

• As you mention, some chimeras -- like those that result from gene targeting -- are indeed genetically modified. The particular mouse in the removed image was such a genetically modified organism. So the problem here seems to have been not with the picture itself, but the vague caption that may have suggested all chimeras are GM (when, in fact, only a subset are). Would you be amenable to re-including the image, this time with a better caption along the lines of: "Some chimeras, like the blotched mouse shown, are created through genetic modification techniques like gene targeting."? Emw2012 (talk) 06:10, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Ok I've done that. Smartse (talk) 14:50, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Monsanto 2008 Q1 profit margin

The following passage appeared in the "Uses" section:

Rapid growth in the total area planted is measurable by Monsanto's growing share. On January 3, 2008, Monsanto Company (MON.N) said its quarterly profit nearly tripled, helped by strength in its corn seed and herbicide businesses, and raised its 2008 forecast. <ref>http://www.monsanto.com</ref>

I have found the 3 January 2008 press release at http://monsanto.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43&item=562 (archived) and have not been able to verify the statement made above. There is no text mention of a tripling of profit, and the aggregate financials show a Gross Profit comparison between First Quarters of 2008 and 2007 of 1.055 billion USD versus 0.682 billion USD, which is a less than 2-fold increase.

--User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 01:03, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Vague Sentence

Under the agricultural surpluses section:

"It is widely believed that the acceptance of biotechnology and genetically modified foods will also benefit rich research companies and could possibly benefit them more than consumers in underdeveloped nations."

Vague sentence that seemingly doesn't relate to the subject very closely. Uses a value judgement, and appeals to unnamed public opinion. The first citation link is broken, and the second does not immediately relate to this statement. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.21.218.138 (talk) 14:23, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Artificial Mutant

User:Settlet was told to see the lead in category:genetically modified organisms before doing any more reversions.68.148.103.90 (talk) 21:19, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps yes or no, but you changed from a recognized category to a non-existent one. This would be a "wiki" issue, not a matter of right vs. wrong. If you feel the category name should change, you can put it up for an editorial vote. Settlet (talk) 21:22, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy, nor is it a vote. The best kind of consensus is unanimity. You are one of two dissenting voices. You had a choice to either create the category for me or revert my changes. Why would you choose wordiness over clarity? 68.148.103.90 (talk) 21:42, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

I am the one who reverted all of your hard work 68.148... Perhaps you should be asking me these nonsensical questions... - 4twenty42o (talk) 21:49, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

68.148... The biggest problem with your edits, in my humble opinion, is that no matter how sensible your arguments, your proposal is not supported/verifiable, and the "verbose" version is the scientifically accepted terminology. Wikipedia is not the encyclopedia of what should be, it is the encyclopedia of what exists. Also, I don't think the debate should be on the category page. I think it would perhaps make for interesting debate on the article discussion page.Settlet (talk) 22:59, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

You can move this thread there. Please point to the exact thread name from here, and copy everything, including the discussion in the category and on my talk page. I will do it. That way, your next claim of inappropriate venue should fall on deaf ears, yours. Your claim that Artificial Mutant is not a used term is false. 68.148.103.90 (talk) 21:26, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

User:4twenty42o had a choice between creating a category for me or undoing all of my changes. Why would you choose wordiness over clarity in my actions to move category:Genetically_modified_organisms to category:Artificial_Mutant? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.148.103.90 (talk) 21:51, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Ah there you go... You changed the cat name to one not used which created a redlink and more work. That's bot work not human work. Then there's the connotation that a genetically modified organism is A) artificial or B) a mutant... If we do it your way there will be more work and more drama I am sure. So I did it my way. Perhaps you should discuss these changes at the articles talk page. - 4twenty42o (talk) 22:03, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Avoiding work is the hardest job in the world. In my case, the work I want people to avoid is the connotation that genetically modified organisms can involve selective breeding, as literally, they can. If you define GMO like the category does, then selective breeding is excluded: It becomes equivalent to Artificial Mutant. Artificial Mutant does not need clarification or definition. What does clarity hav to do with drama? 68.148.103.90 (talk) 21:14, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

you are removing working blue links and replacing them with red links to a non-existent category, this is why i have been reverting your edits. if you would like to change those links, consider creating the category you believe is more accurate first, then make the category changes. WookieInHeat (talk) 22:03, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

IP#s cannot create categories or articles. As I explained to the last two guys, you had a choice between reverting ten changes or creating the category for me. That's at least three refusals, so I do not feel very welcome, so I will not be creating an account, unless my categories for discussion application goes through. 216.234.170.88 (talk) 02:56, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I favour 'Genetically_modified_organisms' over 'Artificial_Mutant'. The term mutant implies that the organism has undergone a genetic mutation, which doesn't give the impression of the full scope of the changes that can take places in GM engineering where alien material my be incorporated into the organisms genes. Also, GMO is a more common term as opposed AM :s Abergabe (talk) 09:10, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

As technique becomes more radical in potential, it becomes more important to avoid euphemism. 216.234.170.88 (talk) 02:56, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

In case the consensus, as well as common sense, isn't clear enough, I think that the category should remain as GMOs. If we created an "artificial mutant" category, many conventional crops would belong in it as well, since they were created using mutagenesis. Smartse (talk) 10:23, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Muta-genesis iz explicitly in the category of artificial mutant, and it should be in the category of GMO, for now. If it's not, then I will put it there. No conventional crops were created with mutagenesis. 142.59.48.238 (talk) 15:21, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

I am a genetically modified organism. I am a product of selective breeding, which can be confused with GMO. Due to recessive genes, I am even different from both of my parents. The process of making a GMO on a large scale involves either selective breeding or massive cloning. Nobody haz knocked out any of my genes. Nobody has made me glow in the dark with genes from jellyfish. I am not an Artificial Mutant. Please create that category. It belongs here az a clear alternative to GMO. 142.59.48.238 (talk) 15:54, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

U.S. pressure over EU

Is there a place for this information? 188.2.166.104 (talk) 17:05, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

That has now been added with a good source, but I don't think it belongs in an article on GMOs, when we have separate article for Genetically modified food, Genetically modified food controversies, transgenic corn and MON 810. The information has almost nothing to do with the US govt position since it was the view of only one ambassador and we cannot know whether anything was done with according to what he recommended. If it belongs at all in this article, it belongs under the France section where the decision to ban MON 810 is already mentioned. SmartSE (talk) 16:03, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

As much as I'd like to say that it isn't about GMOs, this subject is highly politicised (something which I think the article underplays at the moment), so I think it could be worth a passing mention - as long as it's framed as being about the politics of GMOs and trade, rather than biology/safety, so to speak. bobrayner (talk) 18:11, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Politics haz a way of becoming news, buried, only to surface again az policy, compromised, then enforced with leaks. Wikipedia is not news. News is the first rough draft of history. This article should be restricted to Biology, Chemistry, and Physics. Maybe you can throw in a modicum of enforced law. Wherever feasible, though, move it to Genetically modified food controversies, so that this article does not get boring and large. Politics? Huge! Mind-numbing. 142.59.48.238 (talk) 17:24, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Proposed rename

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: not moved Dpmuk (talk) 22:56, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

---

Genetically modified organism → Genetically-modified organism — 22:04, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

• Strongly oppose: According to WP:HYPHEN, #3, bullet 4: "A hyphen is not used after a standard -ly adverb unless part of a larger compound." –CWenger (talk) 22:31, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose per Cwenger and WP:COMMONNAME - I can't find any sources that use a hyphen. SmartSE (talk) 22:35, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose per SmartSE - I've never seen a hyphen used between these two words. 78.26 (talk) 23:17, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose per above.  — Amakuru (talk) 09:18, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose; I'm skeptical that the move would satisfy WP:COMMON. bobrayner (talk) 12:57, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

A Short Review

Overall, I would say this article is fairly balanced and comprehensive. There are a few recommendations I would make. In the section entitled "Transgenic Animals" under "Mammals", it says that the enviropig excretes less phosphorus and gives data but it doesn't say what the implications of this are, nor is there a hyperlink to information about phosphorus on wikipedia. Without such information, a reader who doesn't know what phosphorus is may be thinking "Why is this important?". In the same section under fish, you might want to mention the company AquaBounty who has been fighting to try and introduce GM salmon to US markets.

Since I run a tank, I am familiar with phosphate. I will ensure that there is a hyperlink to phosphrus az relevant az possible. You should remember that there will only be one, though, and that if you miss it, then you hav some typing to do. Pages get kind of ugly if we link everything that's linkable. 142.59.48.238 (talk) 17:52, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

The section entitled "Detection" seems technical to the point of unintelligibility to the average person reading this. It also doesn't contextualize or explain what the testing process is for, what's being tested and why. It's good to have the science and rigor in these articles but it seems like it should explained more with a wider audience in mind.

I agree. There is a see-also article on detection, so I will just snip it. If anyone wants to move it into an article where they should be spelling out all of those acronyms the first time, it iz here.

I will look at that again. I did not hav a problem with the section. The detection is for GMOs. They can test for either materials that genes make or the genes themselves, whichever iz more reliable. 142.59.48.238 (talk) 17:52, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

In the section entitled "Food Chain" it says "All studies published to date have shown no adverse health effects resulting from humans eating genetically modified food" with a cite. I would like to know if that includes longitudinal studies since GMOs have not been around very long. If not, that it should be mentioned.

I hav my doubts about that even being a fact. Starlink corn iz not fit for pigs and Taco Bell recalled some of their product for testing pozitive with StarLink. 142.59.48.238 (talk) 17:52, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Under the section "Private Investments", it should be mentioned that opponents and critics of GMO policy argue that world hunger is the result of economic and political systems and not food scarcity.

I agree. I do not know who to source for the information though, because it's under politics and economics, and it's very hard to get unbiased information out of either topic. 142.59.48.238 (talk) 17:52, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Under the section entitled "Transgenic Organisms", in the 5th paragraph regarding Monsanto and the Canadian case against Schmeiser, alot more could be said here. This is a huge issue not only in Canada but the US. Many small farmers have been tied up in litigation with Monsanto for years over copyrighted seed accidentally drifting onto their lands. Until the patents expire in 2014, this will continue to be a hot issue and Monsanto is busy campaigning to extend patent laws. The legality of this is as significant a controversy as the potential environmental impacts of cross-pollination. The patenting of genetic material raises a host of ethical and legal issues. Regardless of your views on the matter, it seems more attention could be paid to the issue in this article.

No. The article should be restricted to Biology, Chemistry, and the Physics of containment. Az soon az the topic becomes hot and controversial or cold and a matter of enforced policy, it belongs in another article. 142.59.48.238 (talk) 17:52, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Lastly, in the section entitled "United States", there are two recent policy developments that should probably be mentioned. One is the recent agreement between Whole Foods and other organic producers in the US not to oppose the introduction of GM alfafa (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ronnie-cummins/the-organic-elite-surrend_b_815346.html?view=print). Also the FDA recently decided that GMOs are "substantially equivalent" to non-GM products. This was under the auspices of Mike Talyor, a long-time GMO industry lawyer who was appointed to head Obama's new "White House Food Safety Working Group" (http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_18635.cfm)Vince.b.green (talk) 20:40, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Please see genetically modified food controversies.

Transgenics needs its own larger page

Though it is true that transgenics is a type of GMO technology, it has vastly different ethical considerations and associated environmental and health risks. GMOs carry no more ethical considerations than old fashioned selective breeding. Transgenics is a whole different ball game. I suggest leaving just an introductory paragraph or two regarding transgenics on this page, but give back to the page transgenics the bulk of the transgenic content that is found on here. It would be more scientifically honest to proceed this way. It is unfortunate that pop culture and fear tactics have confounded the two in recent years, but they really are quite distinct technologies with vastly different scientific and legal hurdles to surmount. To muddle GMOs and transgenics indiscriminately is a disservice to the encyclopedia, which is against Wikipedia policy. All the controversies surrounding GMOs are really directed at transgenics. GMOs have been around for much longer than transgenics.--Tallard (talk) 13:15, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

I would agree, except transgenics uses old and new technology. I imagine Monsanto would love to use cloning, too, except it iz a much more expensive process than selective breeding when it comes to making seed on a large scale. It iz a large article, and I agree that proponents like to exploit the use of old technology with the new, and I do not see an easy way to separate the two. 142.59.48.238 (talk) 17:07, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Use of terms interchangeably

Many of the articles in this series fail to properly differentiate between genetic modification, genetic engineering and transgenesis. Genetically modified tomato and genetically modified soybean, for example, both contain instances in which all three are conflated simultaneously. Considering the most likely reasons for this problem, I suggest that we create an essay for editorial reference.   — C M B J   00:31, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

"Accuracy"/Repeatability of gene insertion techniques used

I have seen several mentions on various (more-or-less anti-GMO) Internet sites about the gene-insertion techniques used in current agricultural GMO are not all that precise - describing the insertion as more of a "gene gun" that sometimes will disrupt existing genes or other genetic elements (coding for siRNA or other recently discovered elements). There is (allegedly) a reference somewhere to a study done on GMO-soybeans that found that levels of something like 50-100 proteins differed significantly from non-GMO soybeans, in addition to the desired inserted gene product (generally antibiotic resistance) - but I have never seen any specific references. This seems like a possible cause of alleged harm by GMO foods, especially regarding possibly altered allergic responses - and as such would possibly merit a subsection in the Controversy section. Does anyone have any hard information about this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.223.232.121 (talk) 22:25, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Currently there is no way to direct where a gene will be inserted, although the use of zinc fingers may allow targeting in the future. The gene gun method, which you are describing, could disrupt multiple genes and in turn affect the expression of multiple proteins. The main method, and to my knowledge the only method used for the currently commercialised GM crops, uses Agrobacterium to insert the gene. This method should insert only one copy of the gene, but if it is inserted into an existing gene within the plant it could disrupt it. If the disrupted gene regulates other genes then it is possible for the expression levels of multiple proteins to be changed from this method. It should also be noted that expression levels of proteins will vary between non-GMO soybeans, making it difficult to determine whether the effect (or how much) is due to the inserted gene. In either case references to peer reviewed papers would be needed before anything is added to the article. AIRcorn (talk) 23:26, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

lead should mention controvery

per wp:lead the article introduction should summarize the complete article, including the controversy section. and daughter articles are considered a part of this when it comes to that summary. 24.98.198.204 (talk) 05:34, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

I do not think the controversy section can ever be summarized, (it will be in the law books and protest demonstrations for ages), which is yet another reason to put it into its own article. I feel qualified to amend the lead-in. 142.59.48.238 (talk) 20:23, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

genetically modified organism#Regulation

Deletion of redundant material does not need consensus. The material you put back in is already in another article, which is better organized. For reference, if the port to a see-also was not done adequately before I deleted that section, it is archived on the talk page. Deletion of material in other articles does not require consensus. 142.59.48.238 (talk) 20:30, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

I disagree. There is lots of duplicate information throughout Wikipedia, because various information is germaine to multiple topics. I think perhaps the information was over-detailed at the GMO article, and the reader should be then be referred to the main article on GMO regulation if more information is desired, but for a comprehensive study on GMOs, a section on regulation should be included. 78.26 (talk) 21:35, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

The section on regulation wuz already getting to a quarter of the length of the total article. 142.59.48.238 (talk) 23:50, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

As further comment, this discussion should really be taking place on the article talk page, so other editors may see the thread and have the benefit of your point of view. 78.26 (talk) 21:39, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

This inevitably haz a non-worldwide view. The main article iz divided into countries. Maybe there should be a rule, or maybe there is a rule about wikipedia not being a law book. It would help in merging the regulation section if it were sub-categorized, if the paragraphs were named or something. Tentatively, I am just deleting regulation. There is an article for regulation in the see-also. Before I delete it, that version is archived here. 142.59.48.238 (talk) 19:48, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

I think this needs to be discussed. It's a very important concept to the topic. Given your concerns, I think you might want to add the {{globalize}} template at the top of the section. 78.26 (talk) 20:24, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

I put a {{worldview}} tag in. Law haz never been and will never be a science. It iz an art, and that art will be different all over the world. I think people like seeing articles that might be done, especially in Science. No way iz to finish an article about law all over the world. For your convenience, I've even copied the see-also here. No end iz to law. No end iz to controversy. Even the credible sources are different. In biochemistry, there are universities, institutions at universities, and Pub Med. So, it would be a strain on reviewers of sources to trust a newspaper here, and Pub Med there. I am strongly against mixing science and arts. I do it all of the time in my life and my writing, and at some points, I hav to divide them. Wikipedia is one of those points, and if you look at their category structure, Science and Arts are quite distinct. 142.59.48.238 (talk) 21:14, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

I am bummed! I worked all day yesterday to harmonize the GM Food article, the GM Crops article, the GMO article, and the Regulation of the release of GMO article and the GM controversies article. It is terrible wiki-ness and just plain sloppy to have overlapping material in 5 different articles, none of which is complete and some of which contradicts each other. For regulation, all we need here is a brief summary statement and a link to main. People know how to click! And by the way, the main Regulation article is Global! The tag is a sign of how silly it is to have lots of content here.Jytdog (talk) 22:26, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

To be super-clear, I propose that all the content should be merged into the regulation article, and replaced by the lede of the regulation article with a link to main. Jytdog (talk) 23:24, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

OK, no comments so I am going to merge this section into the article on regulation and leave a stub.Jytdog (talk) 17:30, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Genetically modified organisms-related articles

The articles this discussion should concern:

• Genetically modified food controversies
• Genetically modified organism
• Genetically modified food
• Genetically modified crops
• Genetic engineering
• Genetically modified fish
• Regulation of the release of genetic modified organisms

The concept of genetically modifying organisms (especially crops/food) is a fairly controversial topic, so I would imagine that the articles get a fair amount of visitors. That said, I want to point out some issues to the articles that could be fixed. I've assigned numbers to each suggestion/issue, so that they can be discussed in separate sections.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Yutsi (talk • contribs)

Quick comment. I have been checking page hits

First as a reality check

the Katy Perry article avg is about 17,000 hits per day http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/katy%20perry

More seriously the article on China has about 20,000 hits a day http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/china

Of the articles you mention....

GM foods is highest ballpark avg 2200 http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/genetically%20modified%20food

GM organisms avg is about 2000 http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/genetically%20modified%20organism

genetic engineering is about 2000 as well http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/genetic%20engineering

GM food controversies has been big of late but still avg only about 1000 hits (recent increase may be Seralini press release, California referendum.. I'd like to think it is because I have concentrated information there

http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/genetically%20modified%20food%20controversies

GM crops is pretty small, maybe 500 average. As I note below, I don't think people actually care about agriculture.

They care about food and the contoversies. Right?

http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/genetically%20modified%20crops

Regulation of the release of genetic modified organisms is the smallest, maybe 70. I think the title of this article is terrible but have not tackled renaming it.

http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/Regulation%20of%20the%20release%20of%20genetic%20modified%20organisms

The title name is fine. There are regulations that govern approval to work with GM organisms and regulations that set the protocols and restrictions while they are being developed and tested. This article is about the regulations governing the release of these organism into the environment. I was working on a parent article and will release it (unfinished most likely) to mainspace soon. AIRcorn (talk) 02:15, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

So.. not sure if that meets your idea of "fair number of visitors". :) Jytdog (talk) 17:56, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Frankly my dear... If an article gets 10 hits a day on average IMO it earns its place in WP. This is supposed to be an encyclopaedia, not a tabloid rag. Not every word in a dictionary gets looked up every single day, and some of the most valuable entries are exactly the entries that one has difficulty finding anywhere else, sometimes because nowhere else bothers to publish them. Let's not fall into the trap of "I wish people would stop pestering us for X; we don't stock X; there is no demand for it!" As long as we can produce articles with intrinsic substance and significance and with a decent presentation of information and relevance, our only reaction to a low hit count should be to check whether it could be better presented to strike the eye of potential readers. JonRichfield (talk) 08:28, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

sarcasm my dear! I think you misunderstood my point. I have spent hours working on these pages - I want them to accurate because I believe wikipedia should always be excellent, regardless of whether the topic is "popular". You got more to my point with your last remark - and that is, how used are these pages? Relative to "popular" topics, and relevant to each other? Why is the regulation article - the one I would hope people read and learn about a lot, so rarely consulted? And my comment about "not sure if that meets you definition of fair number" - I really meant that - I have no idea what Yutsi had in mind when he said that. I like data and hard numbers so I put them out there.Jytdog (talk) 01:23, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Crossed wires my dear, I suspect. The nearest I came to deliberate acerbity was in rejecting any idea that a low hit rate was a priori a basis for questioning the justification for an article's existence. Sure, if large numbers of people read important topics, that looks good and we should aim for it, but for a lot of really vital technical topics it is fashionable to raise Cain chanting meaningless slogans in the streets, but God forbid that anyone should actually take time learning what it really is all about. (GMO-hatred is not the only such topic, mind you!)

• 1. Per WP:SELFREF, self-references like "This article discusses x" should generally be avoided in the article's body, and, from a glance, these articles seem to use a lot of them.
• 2. The Further reading and External links sections could be sorted better. For example, they could be divided into subsections of Pro-, Anti-, and Neutral, or divided by the format of the publication (Web, book, journal, etc.).
• 3. There seems to be a significant amount of overlap in the articles. For instance, Genetically modified food seems to be mentioned a lot, especially when controversy is mentioned (e.g. in the last paragraph of Genetically modified organism's lead).
• 4. Genetically modified fish should be moved to Genetically modified animal, since transgenic animals do exist.
• 5. Since most of Genetically modified food concerns Genetically modified crops, we should merge the former into the latter, and merge any material in the former about animals into Genetically modified fish / Genetically modified animal. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yutsi (talk • contribs)

Issue 1

hi read this — Preceding unsigned comment added by Purebuzzin (talk • contribs) 11:56, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Additional note. I just read the WP:SELFREF and I don't agree that anything here violates it. It is 100% OK to say "this article refers to X" What is not OK, is to write, "This Wikipedia article refers to X". That does not occur. The policy also teaches away from self-references that would not work in other media, for instance, in print. None of the instances do that either. So I disagree that anything violates WP:SELFREF. Jytdog (talk) 00:13, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

• Thanks for raising these issues. I have done a lot of work on this suite of articles over the past few months. When I came upon them, they were a real mess. By "mess" I mean things like:
  

(i) the same matter was discussed across all these pages. At great length, sometimes verbatim but often one stretching out randomly in X direction and another in Y direction. Most of the overlapping material concerned the controversy - namely, people emphasizing studies, especially from the Seralini group, that endeavored to show that GM food is very risky and regulators as not being strict enough.

(ii) the same study would be cited three or more times in a given article, described differently and with the reference formatted differently, making it appear that there were many more studies than there actually were.

(iii) there was not a lot of actual content. For instance there was really nothing about how farmers use GM crops or why they matter to farmers. But farmers are the ones actually buying the GM seed and using them. And the GM food article, remarkably, said almost nothing about what food you find in the store is GM. Again, remarkable.

I think that the articles were messy for three reasons:

a) fact: there is a set of people, anti-GM people, who are emotional about these issues. They are worried and angry and want other people to be motivated to help change the current system. (I still don't know much about the demographics or size of that group. Something on my "to-research" list)

b) fact: There are a few "segments" of material, each of which is fairly complex in and of itself, that read on each other, again in complex ways. The 'segments' can be divided up as the articles are -- the underlying science (genetic engineering article); broad examples of application of genetic enginering (GMO article); agriculture (GM Crops); what you actually might eat (GM Food), regulation of GMOs and food (regulation), and the whole controversy (which touches on all those and more).

c) judgement by me: a lot of the people (not all!) who are the most emotional, and most motivated to edit wikipedia, especially in what I call 'drive by" editing (don't have a logon but edit from an IP address, one or two times maybe) are also (gulp) ignorant about a lot of the complex matter. I don't mean "ignorant" pejoratively, just that they don't know stuff and I don't think they care to know. (see iii above) There is also a lot of half truth "information" about these matters that is passed around in that community. For example, much online discussion of Monsanto vs Schmeiser is wrong - and was wrong in several places in Wikipedia.

Therefore, when I cleaned these articles up by separating matter, getting NPOV sources, editing POV text to make it NPOV, etc, I tried to also signal very very explicitly to readers and editors what they could expect to find in a given article. This is to try to help prevent readers from expecting to find -- or wanting to add -- something about environmental damage from GM Crops in the article on GM Foods. The way things are configured now, nothing about environmental pros or cons of GM crops belongs in the GM food article, because that article is about actual GM food - the stuff you eat. What is GM food, exactly? That is what you should have learned after reading the GM article. And you should know that there are articles on other, complicated matters, that you need to read as well if you want to understand the whole picture.

I realize that this explicit guiding language is not normal wiki style. But because of the above, I think is essential to retain these explicit guideposts. Otherwise the articles will moosh back together again.

Two regular wiki editors, arc de ciel, and aircorn, have also raised concerns about this as well -- see User_talk:Jytdog#CommentJytdog (talk) 17:20, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

• As I stated at Jytdogs talk page, I would prefer hatnotes to refer to different articles on similar topics. AIRcorn (talk) 01:50, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

Another user, Semitransgenic has objected to this paragraph - deleting it and noting "remove editorial remarks, use dablinks at the top of the page to tell readers of other relevant content". Happy to see a proposed example!Jytdog (talk) 15:39, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

I don't support this kind of in-article editorialising, dablinks (hatnotes), or an infobox would be a better method, the tone of the lead in general needs addressing. Semitransgenic _talk. 15:47, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

It is not editorializing in the sense of giving an opinion. If you want to provide sample hatnotes I would be very interested to see them! What do you mean by "tone"?Jytdog (talk) 15:52, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

starting a paragraph with words like "nonetheless" etc. veers towards MOS:OPED. Lead prose should ideally be pragmatic, just provide an accurate summary of the key/notable content found in the main body of text. Semitransgenic _talk. 16:19, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

If nothing else could we get an answer to this issue. The paragraphs that this concerns are these ones. AIRcorn (talk) 21:01, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

I am OK with how this was handled at Genetically modified food controversies if you want to implement, aircornJytdog (talk) 22:21, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

No problem. It is not looking like this is going to be closed soon. AIRcorn (talk) 00:07, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Issue 2

• To the extent that these sections remain, I agree that they could be sorted that way - it would be better. In general I have tried to eliminate these sections, slowly, making sure that the matter is incorporated into the suite of articles. I understand that this is best under the MOS.Jytdog (talk) 17:21, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
• The external links sections should be trimmed to just websites that contain an overview of the whole topic (i.e a website about GM mice should be on the GM mouse page, but is not needed on the GM organism one) but are not suitable for inclusion in the page itself (i.e a large list of GM crops like here. The less the better in my opinion and would be more than happy to see them trimmed. I however do not think that they should be separated based on their alignment. AIRcorn (talk) 01:57, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

Issue 3

• I don't really understand this point. Perhaps you could explain better. My POV: People's concerns about GM food are what drove the mess and what drives a lot of the ongoing editing. I have done my best to carefully sort things out. In my mind, GM food per se (what is it?) should be handled in the GM food article, and controversy around it (and many other surrounding issues), in the controversy article. Regulation of it and GMOs that produce it, in the regulation article. Crops that produce it (and other things) in the GM crops article. GMOs in general, and genetic engineering in general, in those articles. These topics are inter-related, for sure. They need to mention and reference each other. But the topics are separable. Jytdog (talk) 17:25, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
• Some overlap is inevitable, but it should be reduced as much as is practicably possible. I don't particularly like controversy sections in articles and would rather see the issues mentioned in the appropriate section. Although I concede that this might be hard to maintain in these articles. What should happen if we have a controversy article is that the GM food should have a controversies section linked with a main template to the controversies article. It should include a couple of paragraphs outlining or summarising the main points associated with food. The GM crops should have the same except its paragraphs should focus more on crops and so on. AIRcorn (talk) 02:05, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

The hard thing about your proposal, aircorn, is that opponents of GM food very rarely have a single focus and it is very hard to sort out the "heart" of many objections. Many seem to care most about industrial agriculture (many angles on this... so-called "corporate control of the food supply", messing with "nature", chemical use, etc. Others really seem to care about riskiness of the food they eat. Others seem more focused on corruption of regulatory agencies. And all those issues very much overlap and feed into each other. And there are problems that touch on everything. The key issue can be broadly captured under the rubric of gene flow/contamination. People worry about gene flow from GM crops to other crops and to weeds (environmental concerns and food-safety concerns, especially with pharming crops, and economic concerns for organic farmers); people worry about harvested crops being mixed (a la starlink); people worry about litigation from gene flow or contamination (mostly based on misunderstandings of Monsanto v Schmeiser). So I ended up with one big honking controversies article. Happy to hear thoughts about how to rationally separate!!13:55, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Answered below AIRcorn (talk) 00:21, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Issue 4

• No objection! Except that no article exists on genetically modified animals. Your link above points to an external links section in the GMO article.. strange. Jytdog (talk) 17:25, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
• I would not move that article, if any should be move it is Genetically modified mammals with fish, insects, etc added as sub sections. AIRcorn (talk) 02:07, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
• All this points, to me, to one article one main article on GMOs with subarticles to the various ... biological kingdoms maybe?? Jytdog (talk) 13:56, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Issue 5

• I disagree very strongly. People care about what they eat -- what goes into their bodies. GM Foods needs its own article. GM Crops are agriculture -- most of the information you need to know in order to understand them, has nothing to do with food. Much of the material now in the GM crops article was originally in the GM foods article and I pulled it out and put into the GM crops article, and then expanded it. It still needs more expansion in some sections as noted in the article. Farmers don't buy GM seed, thinking about food. They buy them because they make sense to farmers as businessmen. The companies don't make GM seed, thinking about food. They make them so that their customers --farmers -- will buy them. It's agribusiness. It's not about food. (I am not saying that is a good or bad thing -- no moral judgement - it is just the way the world is). It is absolutely true that the companies have to satisfy regulators in order to do business, because some (but not even most) of the product directly becomes food and so it must be safe enough to eat. Most of the product goes to feed livestock and poultry (which then become food). Much of the product is used industrially and never becomes food (cotton, corn for biofuel, potatoes for starch used industrially. etc). It is true that some GM crops used directly as food have failed because farmers' customers didn't want to buy it as food (the New Leaf potato failed because farmers' target customer, McDonald's, didn't want GM potatoes for french fries, even though they satisfied Americans' desire for perfect-looking, unblemished food). But GM crops is its own topic. Look how long that article is already! And the GM foods article also requires expansion itself.. not even close to describing all the food you find in the store that is GM.Jytdog (talk) 17:36, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
• Keep them separate. Not all crops are food (cotton is one of the most common GM crops and it is a stretch to label it food, plus you have Amflora and biofuels that are being developed) and with the development of the GM salmon soon not all food are not going to be crops. It still needs some work separating the two, but the crop/food split is a good one at my mind. I would bring back the GM plant article at some stage too, and make it a parent one of the crop one for much the same reasons, there are some important GM plants used in research that are not and never will be grown as crops. AIRcorn (talk) 02:12, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

I have no quarrel with most of your points and the proposed separations of topics seem reasonable to me, but I am mildly puzzled as to why you exclude cotton from food plants as a topic. I don't eat much fabric or cotton wool myself, any more than I can help anyway, but I have eaten a lot of foods prepared or canned in cottonseed oil and have probably eaten more products of cottonseed cake than I know about directly, and a good deal more meat from animals that have eaten large quantities of cottonseed cake. Once you remove the gossypol, either artificially, or genetically, cotton is quite an important food plant. And beware what you say about hemp and poppies too! Just an obiter dictum... JonRichfield (talk) 08:41, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Not too familiar with cottonseed oil, although I knew it existed. I mostly think of cotton as the fibre. Cotton would probably have to be mentioned in both articles, along with maize and the other food crops. Am working on organising a kind of heirachy now, so hopefully we can get the split better organised. There needs to be a Genetically modified cotton article created, plus one for tobacco, Arabidopsis and other important plants. AIRcorn (talk) 12:34, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Right. That is the sort of thing I had in mind in my comment below when I spoke of "adjusting or even radically changing the suite of articles in the light of matters emerging..." JonRichfield (talk) 16:25, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks John! I am very aware that cotton is used to make cottonseed oil -- in fact I have been trying to get the Andrew Weil website to change its stupid page on cottonseed oil which is not accurate. http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/QAA400361/Is-Cottonseed-Oil-Okay.html See the Cottonseed_oil#Concerns_about_fats_and_toxicity that I edited to make accurate. And I do list cottonseed oil in the Genetically modified food article. In my comments above, I was not trying to exclude the use of cottonseed oil as food; I was just making the point that the cotton from GM cotton plants -- along with many other products of GM crops -- are not used for food. Sorry to have created a misunderstanding. Jytdog (talk) 13:13, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

No problemo. All such misunderstandings should only be so easily fixable ;-) JonRichfield (talk) 17:15, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

• Comment: To forestall almost inevitable accusations of POV, if not actual corruption by evil multinationals, I have no material, contractual, or commercial interest in any form of GM that I know about. Idealistically and intellectually I am deeply interested in the matter and deeply alarmed and disgusted at such examples as I have seen so far of, for example, large scale plantings of crops with genes for defensive production of single substances for pest control; such abuses rank with the early days of misapplication of antibiotics, both in human medicine and in agricultural and veterinary practice.

Interesting comment! I like the comparison with antibiotics. GM seed with stacked traits are now 25% of the market and growing steadily (http://www.isaaa.org/resources/publications/briefs/43/executivesummary/default.asp), so things are snapping into a line of intelligent use quickly....Jytdog (talk) 13:19, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I was not aware of that trend. It is encouraging, though of course it is just a hint at the depth of responsibility that we bear when tinkering with such powerful tools. If we are not careful we shall simply turn a vital biotechnological opportunity into an exercise in the fostering of super-pests. JonRichfield (talk) 19:46, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

That said however, I regard GM as a field on a par with computing, the control of fire, printing, and the development of modern science in terms of historical importance for the future. There is no way that we could rationally justify ignoring or sidelining it. The question of how to present it, including how to split the topics into manageable articles is what matters, as already indicated in several of the contributions to this RFC. I have no particular quarrel with the proposed titles as presented, as long as each is coherently written and adequately cross-linked to the others. Questions such as what readers care about putting into their bodies are far less important than questions concerning the clarity and perspective of each article. Since the articles are in inevitably not independent, there must necessarily be some overlap, but this is hardly a new problem and requires no new techniques in dealing with it. Concise cross-reference plus clear reference to the main article for each topic is naturally important, but hardly challenging.

As I said, I have no quarrel with the proposed split, but I also would have no problems with adjusting or even radically changing the suite of articles in the light of matters emerging during their authorship and editing. JonRichfield (talk) 09:05, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Principles in using subarticles

Hi

IMO, any time we have subarticles, there should be a standard, brief paragraph in the "head" article (ideally taken from the lede of the subarticle and edited for concision if necessary) and a link to "main", and then keep an eye on those standard paragraphs for changes so that they stay short and plain. Ideally, no statistics would be in those standard paragraphs, otherwise when new data emerges we have to go back and update the data in many places which will inevitably lead to missing things and the overall suite falling out of sync within itself and with reality. I feel that we should try hard to avoid having long sections in different articles that cover the same matter. This was the state in which I found articles within this suite several months ago and most of my work has been consolidating overlapping material into clear, NPOV, well sourced discussions. Having a suite of articles covering various aspects of complex matter is indeed common in WIkipedia, but it is also commonly handed badly IMO. For instance in the suite of evolution articles, the main evolution article has a history section that is very long (7 paragraphs that fill my screen)... and there is an entire much longer subarticle on the history (about 10x longer). I glanced over the two texts and they don't tell the same story or even use the same refs.... this is not a happy thing for an encyclopedia and we should avoid doing this. This is for me a very important principle and I hope we can discuss it. Jytdog (talk) 13:58, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Organisation and consistency is the bane of Wikipedia. This seems reasonable though. AIRcorn (talk) 00:16, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

sorry you have thrown me off.. do you mean lack of organization and consistency are the bane (i.e. a source of harm) or do you mean that pursuing them is a bad thing? sorry, i don't know you that well and this was confusing...Jytdog (talk) 01:09, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

It was meant slightly tongue-in-cheek. Due to its nature Wikipedia tends toward inconsistent disorganisation (anyone can edit after all). It is amazing that it works as well as it does. Providing order is an admirable thing, and I will help out as much as possible, but at the end of the day you are going against the natural inertia of the project and no matter what you do, if you want to keep it organised it is going to take constant watching. AIRcorn (talk) 02:37, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

I totally hear you on that. :) I intend to watch for a long time. But I also want to structure things as much as possible, with explicit markers "This goes here, that goes there" - to help keep things in line.Jytdog (talk) 03:30, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

I don't see you getting consensus for the self references (issue 1 here). I would suggest using the hidden text function. Simply type<!-- Add appropriate comment here -->. It will only be seen by editors when the click the edit button. See this for how it might work. AIRcorn (talk) 03:39, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

(starting tabs over) Hi Aircorn... so far nobody has gone to the mat on the the self references. With respect to the objection raised in Issue 1, I wrote above, that if you read Wiki's self-reference policy, it is clear that these texts do not violate that policy. Nobody has responded to that so I assume nobody disagrees. My sense is that you and arc de ciel have objected on more stylistic grounds... but neither of you has gone to the mat on this. Is this indeed important to you?

But let's go back to the subject matter of this section. I have been trying to lay down a principle that sections for which we have big subarticles should just be very brief stubs - 1 paragraph taken from the lede of the subarticle, so that we don't end up with long, weedy descriptions of a given issue in different articles that extensively overlap with each other and with the main subarticle... which leads to inconsistencies and disorganization that you have described as a bane of wikipedia (and I heartily agree!). I thought we had kind of agreed on this... but you just recently expanded one of these stub sections with a bunch of material copied from a subarticle. So what gives? How shall we do this? I have been tempted to go into some of the articles you have created and apply this "stub principle" (for instance you have a section on "regulation of the release of genetically modified organisms" in your "regulation of genetic engineering" article that is my mind is waaaay too long and should be just a stub, as we have a whole article on "regulation of the release of genetically modified organisms") but i have held back from stubifying that section until (and only if) we reach consensus here.Jytdog (talk) 18:09, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

No one needs to got to the mat. We have consensus so far (me, Arc and Yutsi against you so far) not to use them. Is it important to me? No other things are more important at the moment, but one day I would like to get the articles up to Good standard and that is not going to happen with those instruction paragraphs in the lead.

I think we slightly misunderstood each other above. I agree that there should only be short summaries in the head articles, but we have a disagreement over what is short. I think that there needs to be enough information in the parent article that the reader will get a good overview of each topic, they should not be obliged to go to another article to find this. They should only have to go there if they want to find more details. Basically each article should stand on its own and stubby sections are not going to allow that. Three to four paragraphs covering the regulation and controversies should be enough, but anything less and the article is going to be incomplete. AIRcorn (talk) 21:38, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for talking! OK, on the guide paragraphs.. both Yutsi and Arc based their objection on their understanding of wiki policy, and as mentioned, I don't see how these run afoul of the self-reference policy. You seem to be basing your objection on that too, when you say that an article with these paragraphs, will never be Good. But what is the basis for that? Please explain...

Thank for zeroing in on the "stub" issue. I really appreciate it. So to you the key principle is that the article should stand on its own with respect to providing a good overview and that a compact stub is not enough. I had thought that the stub does provide an overview, but what I am hearing is that this is too high level for you -- it is not a "good" overview. So you want more of the story in all the articles. Whew that is all a tall order for complex matter like this. It helps me understand why you want longer "stubs." OK I need to think about this a bit! I will write again in a couple of days, this requires thinking and if I come into alignmnent with you, some major resetting for me. Thanks again.Jytdog (talk) 22:48, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

The Good articles have a set of simple criteria that they have to meet in order to gain that status. IMO they are a great base that every article should aspire to. One of those criteria is compliance with WP:Lead, which I don't think the navigational paragraphs meet. Another one is broadness, which is why I think we need more than one paragraph stubs in important sections. AIRcorn (talk) 16:41, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm not really watching the articles right now, but I just wanted to confirm that the objections I raised were indeed answered. It doesn't "feel good" from my own style perspective, but I don't know of any style guideline that rules it out. Also, I think that the general organization Jytdog has put in place is a good one; as he said, my concerns were only about the way they were disambiguated. It seems that people adding the same citations repeatedly is common in this group of articles, and this organization would probably help a lot. Arc de Ciel (talk) 03:00, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Overall structure

Let's have a focused discussion on overall structure. This is part of the topic mentioned above but only part. Let's map it out. It would be really great to do this with some kind of software that allowed us to draw things, but I am ignorant of how to do that. So I will take a shot at this using words alone.

Here is my perspective

• genetic engineering (head article; should describe history and techniques and a high level overview of uses)´
• GMOs - this should work be organized by the biological taxonomy of the kinds of organisms that have been modified and briefly state the purpose of the modification --> subarticles on various GMOs
• GM crops - describes the agriculture and agribusiness of GM crops. Not about food, about crops. --> subarticles on various crops (many will be same subarticles of GMOs above)
• GM foods - describes what foods we eat are GM. Not about agriculture, about food. This is by far the most trafficked article in the suite (fact), because people care about what they eat (opinion).
• regulation - should be a brief, standard, subsection of each of the articles above, and describe the general principles of regulation, and provide an overview of each countries' current regs (right now lacks international agreements like Cartagena Protocol - needs to be added) --> subarticles on each country's history of regulations and international agreements
• controversy - should be a brief, standard subsection of each of the articles above, and describe all the aspects of controversies around GM crops and GM food --> subarticles? I struggle with this. Part of my goal here is to give the full controversy full voice in one place, so that it is not inserted into every article on every genetic engineering topic, and gets clear, NPOV discussion someplace where everybody can find it.

All this done with the principle of subarticles mentioned above...Jytdog (talk) 14:00, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

I agree with pretty much everything here. Although I would think you would have to cross reference food in the crops article and crops in the food one. As far as the controversies go I would have a section solely on the health concerns in GM food and one solely on the environmental concerns in the crops one. Then I would have a section over-viewing the other concerns. I think the length of the controversy section should depend on the article. GE, food, crops, plants, animal, organisms should probably get their own section with a good overview of the issues relevant to each topic and a {{main}} to the controversies article. The sub-sub articles can probably just get away with a link provided in an appropriate section (e.g. in Bt brinjal it says in the first sentence of controversies "There are many controversies surrounding the development and release of genetically modified foods, ranging from human safety and environmental impacts to ethical concerns such as corporate control of the food supply and intellectual property rights" in the lead of the controversies section). The rest of the section just details the issues with the titles topic and does not dwell on the overall controversies. For the controversies article itself I would keep the public perception as the first header, then have health concerns, environmental concerns, regulatory concerns (including labeling), religious concerns and Intellectual Property concerns (including corporate control). Most should fit into one of these broad categories. It may become necessary to split health and environment to separate articles to reduce the size. AIRcorn (talk) 00:13, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Let me get this straight. You would have a pretty long section on controversies in (for example) the food article - in that one, focused on health. Then, again in the main controversies article, you would have another fairly long section on health (which is all about food)?Jytdog (talk) 01:53, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Depends what you mean by pretty/fairly long. I was thinking two to three, possibly four paragraphs (maybe a bit more in the controversies article). The health section in the GM controversies is well beyond fairly long already, especially if you add in Pusztai and Serilini. For example the GM food could be presented like:

• History
  • [main to GM History]
• Process
  • [main to GM Techniques]
• Plant based
  • [main to GM Crops][see also to GM crops]
• Animal based
  • [see also to GM animals]
• Regulation
  • [main to GM Regulation]
• Detection
• Health concerns
  • [main to GM health concerns (if split from controversies)]
• Other concerns
  • [main to GM controversies]

I like the smallification of text!! didn't know one could do that. Funny that you have "animal based" - there is no GM food from animals (yet). but in theory i see what you mean. But i disagree really really strongly that "GM crops" is main for plant-based GM food. GM crops is about agriculture. its not about food. why do you think gm crops is about food? more to say but that stopped me - one thing at a time!Jytdog (talk) 03:34, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Should have been see also like the animal one. AIRcorn (talk) 03:44, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Seems to me acceptable.Fox1942 (talk) 14:09, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Long term Roundup herbicide or Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize extremely toxic & carcinogenic PMID 22999595

Séralini GE, Clair E, Mesnage R, Gress S, Defarge N, Malatesta M, Hennequin D, de Vendômois JS.

PMID 22999595

Long term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize.

Food Chem Toxicol. 2012 Nov;50(11):4221-31. doi: 10.1016/j.fct.2012.08.005. Epub 2012 Sep 19.

Abstract

The health effects of a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize (from 11% in the diet), cultivated with or without Roundup, and Roundup alone (from 0.1ppb in water), were studied 2years in rats. In females, all treated groups died 2-3 times more than controls, and more rapidly. This difference was visible in 3 male groups fed GMOs. All results were hormone and sex dependent, and the pathological profiles were comparable. Females developed large mammary tumors almost always more often than and before controls, the pituitary was the second most disabled organ; the sex hormonal balance was modified by GMO and Roundup treatments. In treated males, liver congestions and necrosis were 2.5-5.5 times higher. This pathology was confirmed by optic and transmission electron microscopy. Marked and severe kidney nephropathies were also generally 1.3-2.3 greater. Males presented 4 times more large palpable tumors than controls which occurred up to 600days earlier. Biochemistry data confirmed very significant kidney chronic deficiencies; for all treatments and both sexes, 76% of the altered parameters were kidney related. These results can be explained by the non linear endocrine-disrupting effects of Roundup, but also by the overexpression of the transgene in the GMO and its metabolic consequences.

PMID 22999595 [PubMed - in process]

Full Free Text:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.fct.2012.08.005

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278691512005637

http://research.sustainablefoodtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Final-Paper.pdf

--Ocdnctx (talk) 19:15, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Main discussion at [[Talk:Genetically modified food controversies#Long term Roundup herbicide or Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize extremely toxic & carcinogenic PMID 22999595]] AIRcorn (talk) 20:38, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

I'd like to point out, here, what the EFSA and other bodies have said:

Serious defects in the design and methodology of a paper by Séralini et al. mean it does not meet acceptable scientific standards and there is no need to re-examine previous safety evaluations of genetically modified maize NK603. These are the conclusions of separate and independent assessments carried out by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and six EU Member States...

ToreBKrudtaa, what do you think about that? bobrayner (talk) 11:37, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Comments from Tore B. Krudtaa

---

TEXT BELOW by Tore B. Krudtaa ------------

I NOTICE THAT MY CONTRIBUTION to the section Controversy is removed within minutes, by people which claim my sources are unreliable. If such allegations are put forward, then read the text below which is my adding to text allready present in this section, and specify WHAT parts are based on unreliable sources...

---

START BELOW BY TORE B. KRUDTAA, and are ment to be published in Controversy section, please do not change -----

Current risk assessments on GM-plants are in a miserable state. This is mainly because introduction of genes from other species such as viruses and bacteria, and because scientists are not aware of all the changes that is happening in the plant genome when packages of patented genes are forced randomly into the plant DNA, may cause new diseases, new allergens and new toxins. Add to this that most of the feeding studies done by the producers are to short (3 months or less) to detect chronic and/or reproductive issues. The result of this is that the regulatory bodies that risk assess those GMOs do this on flawed data. Another important issue here is that it is next to impossible to get access to the raw data from the feeding study done by the GMO producer. This was clearly stated in a lecture by professor Gilles-Eric Seralini in 2010 (GMO Risk Assessments Based on Bad Science - You the Guinea Pig).

Two very important feeding studies on rats show that rats get sick when they are given GMO in their food. Árpád_Pusztai and his research team discovered this allready back in 1998. Shortly after he went out public with the main discovery of that study, that the rats got sick, he was dismissed and discredited in media. After his findings he suspected that one of the most used promoters used in genetic engineering of plants, Cauliflower Mosaic Virus (CaMv 35S), may be one of the reasons why the rats got sick. He was never able to do more research on this assumption, because he was fired. Note that Árpád_Pusztai was not fired because his study was flawed in any way. The reason was that the issue had suddenly become a political issue, and that politicians did not want the story to get out to the public.

In september 2012, professor Gilles-Eric Seralini from CRIIGEN (Committee for Research & Independent Information on Genetic Engineering), published results from a feeding study on rats: Summary in Vivo. This was the longest and most thorough toxicological study ever done on Monsanto's GM-maize NK603. It showed that rats fed the GM-maise NK603 developed tumors significantly earlier and more often than the control group, as well as problems with liver and kidney. Shortly after Seralini published his results, there was the normal allegations from PRO GMO scientists and writers. African Centre for Biosafety has written a document about both Seralini's findings as well as commenting the various allegations that the study was flawed: Setting the record straight on the Seralini GM maize rat study.

There are also feeding-studies done by the producer which also show that animals get sick when feed GMO. Mahyco, the producer of Bt Brinjal (a GM-eggplant) did a feeding study on rats which they claimed showed no negative effects. After independent reviews on the raw data from the study, it was obvious that the rats health was negatively affected: GMO eggplant confirmed to be toxic.

Another controversy with GMO is that most of the GMOs on the market are sprayed with highly toxic herbicides. Dr. Huber has newly discovered a new pathogen in feed from GM-plants. This new pathogen is of the same size as a virus. It can be grown in a laboratory and is linked to infertility problems and other health issues in animals that are feed these GM-plants: Dr. Huber on how Glyphosate and GMO destroy soil quality - affecting health of plants, animals and humans. Neither the USDA or European Commission has so far shown any interest in this serious issue.

In India there has been reports that show strong indications that GM Bt Cotton cause health issues in both animal and humans: Ill effects of Bt Cotton.

One of the strongest opponents against the use of GMO outside closed laboratories are Jeffrey M. Smith. Recently he published a documentary film about GMO: Genetic Roulette - The Gamble of Our Lives. He has also published several books on the topic as well as up to date information about GMO: Institute for Responsible Technology.

---

END ABOVE TEXT BY TORE B. KRUDTAA, DO NOT REMOVE ----- — Preceding unsigned comment added by ToreBKrudtaa (talk • contribs) 11:38, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

They all are. They are all from groups that are strongly apposed to GM. It will be like writing a whole controversy section using Monsanto or other GM companies as a source. On top of that there are plenty of reliable secondary sources that discuss all the points you mention above. They discuss the issues much more nuetrally. AIRcorn (talk) 11:57, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

What you say is pretty interesting. You are indicating that this section is best written by the GM-industry or people that are PRO GMO, or by people that are neutral (and by the way are not interested in all the evidence that points to health and environmental issues). The nuetrallity you are talking about are pretty much none-existent in much of the text related to controversy for GMO on wikipedia. That is the reason I wanted to add my part.

You are partly right. Wikipedia is written from a neutral point of view, which represents all sides, but has special policies about fringe theories. If you do not accept this, then you are going to have a hard time getting edits accepted in Wikipedia. If you have not read it, please see WP:NPOV and Wikipedia:Fringe theoriesJytdog (talk) 04:11, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

People have over and over claimed that my sources are NOT credible. If so, there should not be any problems to specify those claims right here. Currently the Controversy section is missing data. There is no need for such an important topic-section to consist of only a couple of lines. I take it for granted that if the guys that produced the allegations that I post something that is not reliable... and that those people (or other) cannot discuss those issues here, that I will be able to post my text in the Controversy section in a short time of period. So again. Do anybody here that controversial issues such as data indicating that GMO are unsafe, will be put forvard by the GMO-industry or by people that are for the use of the GMO-industry? If groups that are against the use of GMO, cannot post here simply because they are against GMO ... then that is quite something. There is a reason that people are against the use of GMO. The main issue here is that the so called technology that is used to make those GMOs are basically flawed, untested and pose a high risk for those that eat e.g. GM-plants and the environment.

Actually if you go to the article on Genetically modified food controversies you will see that both Seralini and Pustazi are discussed there. On your talk page and in my reversion of your edits, I recommended to you that you bring this discussion there, but you apparently have still not gone and read that page.Jytdog (talk) 04:11, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

I have seen examples on the GMO pages where people mainly claim that the latest toxicological study made by Seralini, is flawed (se my original text above for a link). The interesting thing here is not wether there is 10 or 100 or 1000 other people claiming the study to be flawed. The most interesting is to look at how the way the study was done, what was measured, how the data was interpreted and so on, and compare that with the rest of the feeding-studies on GM-maize NK603 and Roundup. There is no doubt that e.g. Monsanto's own feeding study on rats with maize NK603 are deeply flawed in comparison with the Seralini study. No surprise that there has been a discrediting campaign against his work. There is much money related to this. But those diskrediting campains are deeply flawed. That is explained well in the PDF from African Centre for Biosafety (also in my text). The point that EFSA has turned against the study from Seralini, are not a big surprise. There has been many complaints against the EFSA GMO panel. Some of that discussion can be seen here: EFSA's final report on Seralini fans flames of controversy and here: IS EFSA NOW COMPLETELY BONKERS?. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ToreBKrudtaa (talk • contribs) 12:53, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

I never said it would be best written by the GM industry, I am not sure how you got that impression. What I am saying is that it should be written using sources that are not from anti-GM organisations or from the industry. There are plenty of peer reviewed journals out there that review the safety of GMOs. That is where we should be looking for information to put in a controversy section, not organisations like GMwatch, monsanto.no or Jeffrey Smith. These sources are not credible because they do not meet our definition of reliable sources (they are self published and have no editorial oversight), let alone the more specific reliable sources needed to make health claims. I actually agree with you that the controversy section here should be a bit longer, however it needs to summarize the Genetically modified food controversies article, not consist of a few cherry picked studies. That article itself is undergoing some revisions at the moment so there is not much point doing much here until that one is n a decent shape.

As to the Seralini study, it does pose an interesting situation. That along with Pusztais 1998 one are the only published peer reviewed studies that describe potential health impacts of eating GM food. They are mentioned over at the controversy article and I would be open to a brief mention of them here. If that is done then their weight needs to be taken into account. Basically we have to balance the presentation of these two studies against the hundred plus other studies that show no negative effect. It would also have to present them in a way that describes the criticisms of the studies (it does matter that many scientist - some not even interested in GMOs - have come out against the Seralini study).

I am strongly opposed to this. The stub works, in referencing that there are controversies and referring readers to the controversies page. Just a few months ago this page and the other GM-related pages were over-run with content like what Tore wants to add, and there was little to no actual information about GM food, GM crops, and GMOs. Please leave the stub here and let's keep the extended conversation about controversy on the controversies page. Respectfully, I say that it is not true that Seralini and Pustazi are "the only published peer reviewed studies that describe potential health impacts of eating GM food" and on two levels. First, neither of them are studies of humans eating food derived from GMOs. Second, there are tons of other tox studies that have been published in peer reviewed journals --please see Genetically_modified_food_controversies#Animal_feeding_studies.Jytdog (talk) 04:11, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

I know. I still think you are wrong, but it is hardly the most pressing thing with these articles and overall I think you have improved them all greatly. I was careful to include "potential" in my statement as I know that there is an 'animals aren't humans' school of thought when it comes to toxicity screens. I possibly should have included "negative" in front of impacts though, as that was what I meant. I am aware of other animal studies, but none that describe negative impacts of GM food. AIRcorn (talk) 04:47, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

:) I hear you. Jytdog (talk) 12:56, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

You say the most interesting thing about the Seralini study is how the data was interpreted. If you look at the top two graphs in Fig 1 (the ones relating to mortality and GMOs) you will see that out of 10 total in each group, 3 male rats died in the control group whereas 5 died when fed 11% GMO, 1 died when fed 22% GMO and 1 died when fed 33% GMO. If you wanted to interpret these results you could say that when rats are fed higher levels of GMO it actually delays mortality. Didn't see that published much in the media when it was first released though. However, you don't need to know much about stats to know that these numbers (ten rats) are too low to draw any meaningful conclusion on mortality. AIRcorn (talk) 23:53, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

I often find it useful to refer to Hoofnagle's list of 5 general tactics used by science denialists. This list isn't about GMO; various people have found it useful in many different fields.

1. Conspiracy. For instance, "I do not agree with your agenda here. PRO GMO people are not credible in this section. Period! My sources are credible!"

2. Selectivity (cherry-picking); emphasising studies which claimed bad things about GMO, but not mentioning the serious flaws in those studies, and ignoring the other higher-quality studies which returned different results.

3. Fake experts; such as holding up monsanto.no and Jeffrey M. Smith as authorities on GMO.

4. Impossible expectations (also known as moving goalposts); a good example might be the design of terminators to reduce the risk of cross-pollination, only for internet ranters to reframe the terminators as the end of life.

5. General fallacies of logic - like this nonsense. There's plenty more where that came from.

I don't think our content should be dominated by source-misuse, fallacies, and denialism. bobrayner (talk) 13:22, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Following up on this, the www.monsanto.no references are especially unsuitable as ToreBKrudtaa is the author. They can't be referenced per WP:SPS and WP:SELFCITE. SmartSE (talk) 13:55, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Smartse I agree with you - www.monsanto.no cannot be used as a source as per the policies you cite. Thank you.Jytdog (talk) 17:22, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi Tore - Thanks for finally bringing this to talk and engaging with us -- this is how Wikipedia works - it is a really amazing thing, where a community of users works together to make statements about reality. I find the wiki-process and the wiki guidelines really beautiful. This is not like your website, where you can post whatever you are like, in a vacuum. We are responsible to each other here. That said, let's get to it. First question for you. You seem to be relying a lot on the recently published Seralini studies (although I understand you have been working against GM for a long time). Have you actually read the criticisms of the recent Seralini study by regulatory agencies, with care? That is all I will ask for now, since I need to understand what you know and what you don't in order to discuss this with you. Thanks.Jytdog (talk) 14:19, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

The main issue here, and what is the basis for the Controversy on GMO is, among other issues, the fact that the GMOs on the market is undeniably poorly studied, as well as the feeding studies are way to short. The result from the Seralini study is a strong indicator of exactly that. His study also indicates, as well as the study made by Arpad Pusztai suggest that the gene-sequences themselves may be the cause of the health-effects on rats when they are fed GMO. Why not ask for more independent, and long term studies of this kind, instead of discredit these scientists? It is quite irresponsible by the scientific community and by the GMO-industry to use the population as guinea-pigs. There are plenty of other studies to be mentioned which find problems (healt-issues, environmental issues) with GMO, but I think a good place to start ... in proving me wrong is the Seralini Study. And for those of you which want to produce a discrediting attack against Seralini here, I suggest that you read the short and very well written paper by African Centre of Biodiversity on the Seralini Subject. A link to that report is also in my original text that was removed from the wikipedia Controversy section. No need to repeat false allegations that is allready described in the report from African Centre for Biodiversity. To Jytdog: I do not need to read through those papers... since scientists at African Centre for Biodiversity allready have dealt with these false allegations against Seralini's study. I'm not the one that's complaining on my sources, therefore it is not my job to produce the text that eventually show that the Seralini study is flawed. Jytdog and Smartse ... time to do some work. It should not be that hard to show me the text that eventually show the Seralini study is flawed... so show it here... 3 or 5 points... main points. Short points... can you do that? Or is it to difficult to find? — Preceding unsigned comment added by ToreBKrudtaa (talk • contribs) 14:28, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Another thing of interest here is that I'm the only one that is honest about who I really am. So what interests do Jytdog and Smartse represent? Who are they? Is that knowledge not of imprtance in this discussion?

There is no need for any Wikipedia editor to be required to personally prove or disprove anything. In fact, it is against Wikipedia policy against original research to do so. Wikipedia has excellent sourcing requirements (called WP:MEDRS) for medical claims in article content, and the negative health effects (or lack thereof) of GMOs on human health is a medical claim. Review WP:MEDASSESS, the individual opinions of someone giving a lecture would fall under the very lowest level of evidence quality on the WP:MEDASSESS scale, that of individual expert opinion. We do not use lower-quality evidence to contradict higher-quality evidence in our articles. Zad68 14:39, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

In that case: None of the discrediting campaings against Seralini's latest toxicological study does not prove that anything was wrong with the study. They claim it to be so. But there is plenty of other people (e.g. scientists) that say his study is better than the feeding study done by the producer. Seralini's study is not a proof of anything. It only indicates (VERY MUCH) that something might be very wrong with the Monsanto's GM-maize NK603. Further studies should be done to find out exactly what is causing the rats to get sick. And by the way... as a precautionary principle suggest... this product and similar products should be removed from the feeding chain for human and people untill the causes are found. User Zad says that nobody have to prove anything. So... then what do I have to prove. I have published information here which is the result from the longest and most thorough toxicological study on GM-maize NK603, and then you claim my sources are not valid. How can I take you serious? So just because you guys do not like my source, and because some other scientists claim that source is no good, then that is used as a point to remove my text. But when I say my source is credible and also link to other scientists saying the same thing, then those links (or sources) are not valid. Interesting logic that is!!!

Again... who are you guys ranting about my credibility and the credibility of my sources? What is your real names?

If you are talking about this study: A Comparison of the Effects of Three GM Corn Varieties on Mammalian Health, again, please see WP:MEDRS. Are you proposing to include this study's results and relate them to human health? Off the top, there are two serious problems with doing so: 1) We do not use primary study results when we have secondary sources like reviews articles and systematic reviews; 2) We do not present results of animal studies in a way that implies in any way that there might be a corresponding effect on human health. Zad68 15:14, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi Tore - as described on my user page, I work in a university. It is a political environment and so I am not going to reveal my identity. You can see who I am on Wikipedia by looking at my edits -- you will see that I carefully follow wikipedia policies in edits that I make and in discussions on Talk. What matters at Wikipedia is what you do here - whether edits you make follow wiki policies or not, whether you behave in a civil fashion and in general follow the Five Pillars. That is all that matters. You could be the CEO of Greenpeace or of Monsanto and it would not matter, as long as you follow policies. Moving back to the matter at hand: you are trying to make scientific arguments. Scientists look at all the data and discussion available and try to make rational, non-ideological decisions about it. If you will not read the scientific criticism of the Seralini studies then I struggle to see how we can have a rational discussion about them. The African Center for Biodiversity briefing document does not adequately address the criticisms... but how can we discuss that if you have not read the criticisms? I do understand very well that you have anti-GM ideology, and that the Seralini studies support your ideology. That is all ideology, not science. Ideology and essays based on ideology have no place in Wikipedia - WP:NOT. If you will engage with the science and discuss it, we can all discuss your proposed edits related to the Seralini study in a rational fashion. We'll have to go through the same process with the Pusztai study -- there are people in this discussion who worked through how to discuss the Pusztai affair in Wikipedia, so we are in great company. There is other matter in your edits that would have to go (like the opening statement "Current risk assessments on GM-plants are in a miserable state." which violates WP:NPOV and WP:OR, and the citations from your website as per Smartse's statement above, as well as the text those citations support (unless there are sources for those statements that satisfy WP:RSMED), but it seems more useful to work through that stuff after we have dealt with substance. So please would you read the criticisms of the Seralini study and then come back to the table here? They are cited in the Genetically modified food controversies article so are easy to find. Thank you.Jytdog (talk) 17:22, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Jytdog said among other things: "I do understand very well that you have anti-GM ideology, and that the Seralini studies support your ideology. That is all ideology, not science."

You have an interesting way of argumenting. First you say I have an anti-GM ideology. To that I can simply say that there is one basic reason for that. And that is the fact that no scientist on this planet, are able to control how genes work in an organism (this is described very well here: Genome Scrambling - Myth or Reality? ) Scientists have just began to look into how genes work. When they take genes from virus and/or bacteria or (other organisms) and force them randomly into e.g. a plant genome (DNA), then they have no clue whatsoever over all the unintended changes that is happening inside the DNA of that plant. Then what happens is that a GM-producer is now doing feeding-studies using the genetically modified plant where e.g. rats are feed the GMO in 3 months or less. Most scientists are well aware that this is not long enough to detect any eventual chronical and/or reproductive issues. Add to this that one producer also discard statistical data if they see that there is statistical differences between the sexes. This way to interpret the data is basically flawed. One reason for this of course is that there is statistical differences between the sexes before the feeding-study begins. So how can the scientist then claim that they need statistical similarity after the feeding of the rats have started. This is not good science. This is fraudulant science. And this is what the regulatory is using when they risk assess the GMO. So, yes based on facts like these, you could say that I have an anti-GM ideology. There is one more thing to add to the equation here: That is the simple fact that when the GM-plant cross pollinate with other crops of same type, then the package(s) of patented genes may be truncated and/or reallocated within the plant genome (of the new plant). Scients also know that this may result in new proteins produced by the whole or partial gene sequences, or that e.g. existing traits are shut of in the plant. To put it simple. There is no such thing as control with all the new or removed traits in the plant genome at the time of forcing in the artificial gene sequences, and there is no such thing as control with how those artificial gene sequences behave when the plant laiter cross pollinate with other plants.

Then you say Seralini study support my ideology (which is based on science and not dreams by the way), and use that argument to make the Seralini study into some kind of ideology. That is a completely false argument. You know it, and I'm not very surpriced if the administrator can see this as well.

Jytdog also said: "It is a political environment and so I am not going to reveal my identity. You can see who I am on Wikipedia by looking at my edits..." I'm not interested in your edits on wikipedia. That might say something about you. But it does not say anything about where you are working, your education. Things that might affect your position in relation to the GMO. Funny you say you cannot reveal your identity because of 'political' issues. Actually, it was political issues that lead to the fraudulant assumption by U.S. FDA (Food and Drug Administration) that GMOs are generally recognized as safe (GRAS), and therefore does not need any special testing. More and more people on this planet are knowing the true store behind this political decision. More of this story here: How GMO was approved by US FDA - Biodeception

There is nothing "funny" here. What I said is true. Since you have pushed this issue, I now feel free to say that you appear to be coming from some sort of essentialist point of view. And potentially trying to open Ad hominem lines of attack, which are fallacious. And as an earlier commenter said, this topic is out of bounds. I could be the CEO of Greenpeace; I could be the CEO of Monsanto. It is irrelevant. What matters is what I, others, and you write in Wikipedia -- whether content and tone follows Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, or not. That is the last response I will make on this issue.Jytdog (talk) 04:11, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Zad, you know exactly what Seralini study I'm talking about here. I have said numerous times that I have linked to it in my text proposal above here. No need to twist my text around, or to pretend that I write something I have not. I have linked to ONE Seralini feeding study on rats. The latest one. How hard is it to find that, I may wonder? That said... here is the link again: Summary in Vivo

As I said, I do not need to read all the studies that show other results than the Seralini study, or the reviews of that study that says it is flawed. It has allready been done by SCIENTISTS. And many of them say that the study by Seralini are the best of it's kind. Would my word weigh more than the words of a scientist? I do not think so. There is a big controversy related to GMO. It is that controversy I want to focus on in the Controversy section. Not all the studies saying that everything is fantastic. What is the point with a Controversy section if it does not deal with the controversy? Hope the admin see my points here. And can comment on my views put forward here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ToreBKrudtaa (talk • contribs) 19:11, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Mendel started his pea experiments over 150 years ago now so I don't think scientists have just begun to look into how genes work. I think you would benefit by reading other scientists opinions regarding GMOs. They don't have to be strong pro ones, but basing all your knowledge on one side is not a good way to get a good understanding of a topic. I don't expect them to change your mind, but at the least it would give a stronger foundation to base your opposition on. AIRcorn (talk) 00:24, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Tore, you are kind of making my point. Science is not done once and done forever. It is an ongoing process, always building on what came before. If you will not seriously engage with published criticism of the Seralini studies then it will be difficult for you to win consensus on accepting edits you want to make about the Seralini study.Jytdog (talk) 04:11, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Tore, you referred a couple of times to an "admin". Let me explain how wikipedia works a bit. There is no "admin" that you have to convince. Day to day, all editors are equal. There are admins who can take action when editors get out of hand, as you did by edit warring, which led to you being blocked for a day by an admin. As several of us wrote to you, when there is a problem with an edit, you bring the issue to Talk. What happens here in Talk, is that we work through issues raised in order to gain consensus, and only after consensus is reached is the revised edit finally posted. Trying to circumvent the process will only lead to you edit warring again, which will attract an admin and lead to your getting blocked again. A bunch of here are trying to work with you. As you can see above, Aircorn has proposed that we include some of the content that you wish to see in this article; you can see in other parts of this Talk page that we have been debating how "stubby" sections should be that refer to longer articles. So please, try to compromise and work toward consensus. Thanks.Jytdog (talk) 13:22, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Genetically modified organism/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

Rated "top" as controversial topic with media coverage. Article may need to be looked over for NPOV. - tameeria 01:16, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Last edited at 01:16, 19 February 2007 (UTC). Substituted at 20:36, 2 May 2016 (UTC)