GMO discussion

>I'd rather listen to reason, experimentation and evidence than someones denial due to conflict of economical interests.
geneticliteracyproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Nicolia-20131.pdf
Please do so.

>These images certainly look striking, but what do they mean? Well, not much. First of all, as many have pointed out, the photos chosen are deceptive in that not enough of the groups are shown, nor can we be sure that these are representative. Also, as Mark Hoofnagle points out, the assay for inflammation in the gastric mucosa of the piglets was only based on gross pathology. Basically, there was no histological study and pathological examination of the tissue to detect and quantify actual inflammation. Basically, the assay was based just on a gross visual inspection of the the tissue by a veterinarian (not even a veterinary pathologist even, as far as I can tell). Unfortunately, such inspections can be highly misleading, particularly after animals have been slaughtered in an abattoir

>What I found particularly suspicious was Table 3. Notice how the level of inflammation is divided into no inflammation, mild inflammation, moderate inflammation, severe inflammation, erosions, pin-point ulcers, frank ulcers, and bleeding ulcers. This is not really a standard way of scoring inflammation. I don’t know about pigs, but in humans there are a variety of scoring systems for the endoscopic assessment of inflammation (for example, this one), particularly chronic gastritis (which is what we’re talking about, although such redness as described would, if associated with gastritis, be more associated with acute gastritis). Worse, gross visual assessment of gastric mucosa is subject to high inter-observer variability, and, although the personnel caring for the pigs and doing the autopsies were blinded to the experimental group (which is good), I don’t see any attempt to control for inter-observer variability, and, again, no control for multiple comparisons.

>I also note that the difference between pin-point ulcers, frank ulcers, and bleeding ulcers is rather arbitrarily defined and not entirely clear. Also notice how twice as many pigs had no inflammation in the non-GMO group and that there was actually a lower risk of mild and moderate inflammation, as well as erosions and pin-point ulcers. Of course, the p-values are all non-significant, except for one: that for severe inflammation. In fact, on the entire table, the only “statistically significant” result is for “severe inflammation.” In fact, as Mark Lynas points out, many more pigs fed non-GMO feed had stomach inflammation than those with GMO feed.

>Lynas also points out that the data are all over the place with respect to reported levels of inflammation, asking the very apt question, “If GMO feed is causing the severe inflammation, why is the non-GMO feed causing far more mild to moderate inflammation?” One also can’t help but notice that for “moderate” inflammation, there was a difference favoring the non-GMO feed, and I echo the question, “Do Carman et al perform a test for statistical significance to see if GMO feed has a protective effect on pigs stomachs? Of course not – that’s not the result they are after.” Exactly. Even worse, they used the wrong statistical analysis to analyze categorical data. When the data are analyzed more appropriately, there appears to be no statistically significant difference between the groups, just as there was no real statistically significant difference in the tumor burden of the rats in the Séralini study. Come to think of it, Carman’s study resembles the Seralini study in that it basically looks at a whole lot of outcomes in a fairly arbitrary fashion and cherry picks the inevitable “positive” result. In fact, if you take all the groups together, there actually appears to be a non-statistically significant trend towards less stomach inflammation in the GMO group

>conflict of economical interests.
See

>There’s another aspect of this paper that’s very troubling, and it is that these animals were all very sick. Indeed, I have to wonder how they were being cared for. Over half the animals are reported in Table 3 to have pneumonia, defined as “consolidating bronchopneumonia of the cranial ventral lung lobe(s) and/or caudal lobes.” That is just not normal, and it doesn’t sound like a minor pneumonia. True, this pneumonia wasn’t histologically verified either, as far as I can tell, although pneumonia can be viewed grossly if it’s bad enough. It is, after all, basically puss mixed with mucous in the alveolae and bronchial passages. As has been pointed out in multiple discussions of this study, such a high percentage of animals with pneumonia is an indicator of very bad animal husbandry, indeed. The bottom line is that there are many, many problems with this study, the totality of which are more than enough to render its results meaningless. There is no dose-dependent mechanism for the effects reported, no rhyme or reason consistent with a mechanism that would explain why GMOs would affect just the stomach (and then only to cause severe inflammation) and uterus size. The study was a fishing expedition and not hypothesis-driven. It’s not surprising that it found something. I’d be shocked if it hadn’t.

From the link explaining why your study was bullshit

So that guy just covered the stomach issue :)

Just as a note "counter evidence" isn't really a thing in science in the way you're implying. Shitty science can be dismissed as meaningless, if you;re making assertions based on fundamentally wrong data it can be dismissed outright. Especially with the preponderance of actual decent data saying GM crops are safe.

>zero counter evidence or even repeated experiment
>a huge block of text saying "no its not like that !!!!"
Thanks for playing. But those horrible GMO ulcers won't go away just because you deny reality.

0/10

>implying the ulcers were caused by GMOs and not horrible animal husbandry

Did you even read the text I posted? Yes, it explains "no its not like that" but it gives VERY good reasons why, do you not have any counters to those reasons? Of course you don't

Unfortunately those ulcers are mostly likely a statistical artifact. That's what happens when you test 40 variables with no hypothesis. For example:

Fifteen-percent of the non-GM fed pigs had heart abnormalities, compared to six-percent of GM-fed pigs.

Liver problems were twice as prevalent in non-GM pigs as GM-fed pigs.\

Great news, GM crops prevent liver and heart failure!