I've been meaning to put up some sort of post for a while on this topic, especially since my parents have bought into the anti-GMO hype. For today, all I'm going to do is point and laugh at some article I saw suggested at NewsMaxHealth — I have no idea what their general reputation is in regards to what they publish, but this is ridiculous! There is a lot of loaded language and logical fallacies, so I'm going to go through a lot of this and point out where the flaws lie. I'll be bolding all the loaded, emotional and/or fallacious words. I will also (bold) my entries pointing out them by name and linking to any posts I may have describing the fallacy.
Now, one courageous doctor is pointing to mounting evidence that leaves no doubt — GMO foods are even worse than we were told.
As this respected doctor (Argument from Authority — How "respected" he or she is has no relevance on whether or not he or she is correct.) points out in a riveting new presentation, no long-term human studies have ever supported GMO safety. Shockingly, the World Health Organization only requires a mere 90 days of testing to claim that GMOs are safe. Well, no one dies from smoking cigarettes within 90 days of starting to smoke, either! (Weak analogy — A major flaw here is that there were no bans on smoking until it could be tested. In fact, quite the opposite is true. People were smoking long before anyone even bothered to study the health effects. I also note that there is no suggestion for how long they think testing should take. It sounds like they expect a lifetime of testing, but do they seriously think it would take that long to figure out that smoking is harmful??? (I'm also suspect of that 90 days of testing claim.))
Yet while lifetime studies still have not been done on humans, scientists have done these studies on animals — and what they found is stunning. Lab mice fed just a 33 percent GMO diet begin developing aggressive cancers (particularly breast cancer), liver failure, and kidney failure. (This is likely a misuse and abuse of science. Note that they don't bother to tell us which studies. Could one of these studies have been the Séralini study? Which was a heavily refuted study, largely due to how poorly it was controlled.)
Shockingly, 50 percent of the males and 70 percent of the female animals on the GMO diet succumbed to early death at an age equivalent to 40 to 50 human years. (Another weak analogy. And is this "early death" based on the human equivalent age? The lab rats in the Séralini study, for example, tend to die within two years regardless of what they are fed. From what I gather, this is an early death compared to non-lab rats. If the "equivalent age" is then based on the life-span of non-lab rates, then there is absolutely nothing shocking about this. It's actually quite expected.)
While more people have begun to fight back against GMOs, the big GMO companies ,spend millions of dollars to defeat laws that would require GMO labeling. Quite simply, these big companies know that GMO crops are cheaper to grow, and therefore more profitable. (It's unclear to me what relevance this has to anything. I suspect this has been put in here for little more than emotional manipulation to rouse up fears of Goliath.)
In the meantime, many health experts (Health experts are not scientists, and, with how many health trends come and go, I would recommend being highly skeptical of how much such people are "experts" on anything! The added irony here is that there is this distrust of corporations because they have a product to sell (see previous paragraph). Think for a moment about how these health experts make a living and hopefully you'll notice the contradiction.) now warn us to take the only positive action available to protect our health — avoiding GMOs as much as humanly possible. But considering the fact that GMOs are hidden in over 30,000 food products, that is not an easy task.
Fortunately, one courageous doctor has stepped up to the plate. Dr. Russell Blaylock, one of America’s leading medical researchers and nutritionists, has created a special free video presentation that explains the hidden health hazards of GMOs. Dr. Blaylock will show you how to protect your family from GMOs and their dangers — aisle by aisle at the grocery store.
... (Much of the rest of this article seems to be nothing more than an advertisement, so I'm going to skip all of that.) ...
Since the introduction of GMO foods, many cancers and other diseases have skyrocketed in humans. Can this really be a coincidence? (Yes. Yes, it can. Correlation does not imply causation. What other things have been introduced in this time? Personal computers! They're the real culprit! But, seriously, cancer, for example, is a disease that becomes more and more likely as we get older. Life expectancy has been on the rise. Therefore, more cancer. (Add in that we probably have better diagnoses of cancer and this error, known as confirmation bias, gets worse.) There is no reason to associate this with GMO's.) ...
So, I did decide I should look up some info on this Newsmax Media. Lo and behold, it's a conservative news media! I find that hilarious. As I've heard one person put it, some people are so far left that they wrap around back to the right! (He also referred to such people as the "Tea Party of the Left".) In the case of GMO's, that seems to be getting to be more true all the time.
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