I don't have a problem with GMOs on principal. If we can develop safe disease and insect resistant foods then I'm all for it. It's easy for people in the west to dismiss GMOs and tell people to grow their own veggies, etc. That's a laudable aim, but it's not practical for everyone. Some people work long hours or don't have the space.

That said, I am wary of it being controlled by the likes of Monsanto.

In short, I trust the science, as long as it is conducted rigorously and used ethically. The jury is still out on both those counts.

If that is all true (and I read through much of the linked study and made little sense of it since I'm not a nutritionist and only took one semester of advanced molecular biology, it was particularly technical and hard to follow), then golden rice seems to be the exception.
As I read it, 55-70% the RDA was the maximum vitamin A that could be expected, with the range being quite large. (oddly they cite a 200 gram rice dose given in the study has 1.3mg b-carotene/3.8 to get .34mg retinol, then a 100 gram dose is estimated to provide 55-70% EAR , then they say a 50 gram dose, a more reasonable amount for children to eat, would provide the same amount as the 100 gram dose did?) Even if it can supply 1/2 the daily allowance of vitamin A (which I'm not sure it can from the study you cite), that still does not make it 'safe' to release into the 'wild', or 'better' than natural, easy to grow alternatives as unknown long term side effects have not been studied. It may be better than doing nothing, or even better than natural alternatives, but without long term studies we simply can't know. That's my main point.
$10K a year is not much for a farm to make, most small farms make far more than that, but also need to spend all they make to keep going. That limit seems to say they DO intend to charge most farmers for this seed eventually. If that's $10K a year profit, I'm OK with that.
I would say we should hold up potentially life saving technology until we know the unintended side effects, we should not experiment on the needy (or the public in general) and claim it's in their best interest. We certainly should not do it in secret, as in non-labeled gmo's.
Monsanto is not the only bio-tech company that acts like this, just the most public. Most GMO creating bio-techs are pitbulls about protecting their 'intellectual property', even when it floats onto someone's property without their knowledge.
I stand corrected, she did say that. I missed it. I do not claim they don't have higher yields, I think that's their whole point and I think they do a decent job of producing more. I just don't see that higher yields are worth the possible long term damage and I think more, longer term, double blind studies need to be done by disinterested parties. Long term side effects can take a long time to show up, and with something this new to the food source, it deserves careful consideration, not profit driven usage.
Again, 'golden rice' is an exception if you are correct. My limited experience is with Monsanto corn and soy, which seem to be in a different category. Most GMOs are not made with variety, and ARE made to have a clear adaptive advantage, so I made an assumption that 'golden rice' would be the same. My bad. Even with that though, the genes WILL end up mixing with some other non-gmo rice, making it difficult or impossible to ensure your crop is not gmo of that's what you want. They may not dominate, but if they end up causing cancer in 10 years, and by then 99% of rice is 'contaminated', then what? I just think safety (edit: I meant to say forethought) is the better part of valor, and better that a few go without today than open the possibility of all going without tomorrow when patience and thoughtful examination can prove safety. Of course, I'm not going blind of vitamin A deficiency or starving from lack of corn...so perhaps my opinion doesn't matter.
To a few of your other points, if gmo's are safe, prove it (Monsanto and the like) and do it incontrovertibly and publicly, then we'll all want them. If the argument is that 'stupid hippies have convinced everyone they're bad, so we have to sell them in secret', that argument doesn't hold water in my mind. Monsanto could certainly afford a public service campaign if the science was in, but the LONG term studies aren't done yet.
Teaching someone to grow peppers or other vegi's seems easier than modifying a crop and spreading the seeds, it takes about 5 minutes and adds variety. I think that's better than treating them as un-teachable and experimenting on them.
...and I agree with the scientists in sciencemag, destroying the test fields isn't helpful and answers nothing.

Monsanto does not own Golden Rice. Also many subsistence farmers in third world countries grow rice, because it is a cheap dietary staple. Asking them to switch to producing a totally different crop in order to fight vitamin deficiency is unrealistic.

@Sotto_The issue is the power and influence one corporation has over the world's food supply and those who would use their influence in the Department of Agriculture and the Supreme court to implement sweeping legislation or hinder the free will of the small, medium, large or other farmers who would have nothing to do with Monsanto's seeds or who wish only to use sumbunall of their products, not whether a farmer is given their rice for free in an ethical fashion to grow some proprietary rice (ever try to grow rice? S'pretty dependent on climate and seasons, rainfall and other environmental conditions, not to mention the hectares it requires to cultivate) as opposed to say leafy greens of all kinds, sweet potatoes, squash, all of which are much more easily cultivated AND, have shorter seed to fruit times as well as requiring much less space AND, are chock-full of Vitamin A.
We don't even mention here Paprika, Red Pepper, Cayenne, Chili Powder, which are WAY higher in Vitamin A and pretty much grow like weeds when cultivated by morons.

Shaky and hollow point your study cited as well, to support what is obviously a fishy prospect providing this option to poorer countries when you consider the back-door dealing that a corporation like M practices and their track-record of driving small farmers out of business with endless litigation and an army of lah-yahs, investigators, all petty thugs and criminals on their payroll.

A no-brainer? Yeah, if you spout the party-line and din't use your brain but instead cited an "official' study from a 'recognized', 'expert's' journal.

Again, loaded language in your closing with the assumption that most opponents and vocal activists of GMO crops are science deniers. Broad, brush-strokes my friend.
Labels.

I for one want these motherfucker's labs under extreme scrutiny and their science tested and re-tested by those not on their payrolls or whose interests do not include stocks in their concerns. I also want heirloom seeds, regardless of yields, whose fruits produce fertile seeds.

MOST GMO crop's fruited seeds are as sterile as your argument, the genetic markers tweaked similarly to insure that the market on common-sense and centuries-honored methods be cornered and rendered inadequate.

If GMO really was more healthy than regular stuff, the labeling would be there. All the lobbying by Monsanto and a like to get rid of GMO labeling is a clear warning sign: they don't want you to know it is there. Again, repeating, if it's the best option, it would say in big, bright green letters "made with the best designed GMO crops".. Ask yourself, why isn't it so?

As much as I disagree with Kevin O'Leary on most things, I'm with him on this. The girl is impressively assured and sharp for her age, but a lot of what she is saying with such confidence is simply false.

For instance, she says that Golden Rice has been shown not to work. Untrue. There is plenty of scientific evidence showing that Golden Rice is a good source of vitamin A (example). Given the huge problems associated with vitamin deficiency in the third world, and the strong scientific support for the efficacy of Golden Rice, the movement against its use is basically like the anti-vaccination movement -- uninformed and dangerous.

Also, Golden Rice is distributed for free to poor farmers (thanks to Ingo Potrykus, its creator), so its not like farmers have to go into debt to pay Monsanto or something in order to use it.

There were other falsehoods in what she said (like her absurd claim that GM crops don't produce higher yields) but this one really stood out for me. Golden Rice seems like a no-brainer: an unambiguously positive scientific development that is being distributed in an ethical manner. Spreading misinformation about it in order to discourage its adoption is unconscionable.

I think its important to have people out there protesting and warning against the excesses of companies like Monsanto, which has an unfortunate stranglehold over most GMO distribution. I just wish the most vocal activists weren't also science-deniers.

I hate to say something 'pro' Monsanto but the example listed in Percy Schmeiser is NOT an example of a farmer that accidentally had his field cross contaminated by Monsanto's seeds. Percy collected seed from his own crops to plant the following year. One year that his crop bordered a neighbour's Monsanto crop, he intentionally harvested seeds only from along that border. Even more importantly, he sprayed the strip with round-up first. Deliberately destroying your own seed crop with round up isn't 'normal' procedure for any seed grower. Percy Schmeiser knowingly and deliberately did everything he could to plant Monsanto's round up ready seeds. He in many ways went to greater lengths and efforts to get the seed than farmers regularly using it.

His case is one of whether what he did should be legal, in my opinion it should be, and tough luck to Monsanto as long as he's not off re-selling it I think it should be ok. Turns out Canadian law went the other way and declared it copyright infringement. I can understand the argument that GMO research can't happen if there's no profit in it, but it's a hard line.

All that though is to simply point out that this doesn't seem to be only about those guys accidentally being contaminated. The specific example the speaker references went to great lengths to get Monsanto's seed into his fields.

Fuck the Fed. and Monsanto.

Death to Monsanto!

The US Government = Monsanto. Doesn't anyone see that? The individuals serving in both switch positions from time to time. Meaning: Everyone who works for Monsanto has worked for the US Government, and everyone who works for the (relevant agricultural positions in the) US Government has worked for Monsanto. It's the same people!

FUCK MONSANTO!!!

I used 23andMe for analysis of my saliva. The DNA is mine, what I choose to do with the information is my choice alone. Same as palm reading and seeing a psychic (if that's what you're into), or peeing into a cup - I can act on the information or not, my choice. If the FDA is so worried about and more importantly has time and money to spend engaging this company on the possible health effects of users who act on the information, I'd say their priorities are fucked up or at least their motivation is unclear.

Point of contrast - here's another product that can possibly cause harm, but were's the cease and desist for this one? I can go down to the corner store and buy a known to be addictive product, with labels that indicate "Smoking Kills", but the tobacco companies are still free to sell it and go about their business. The accuracy of the tests conducted on addiction, health effects etc. related to tobacco are still in debate. You know "We're still working on it". We choose whether we want to use this product, even though it doesn't only put the users life at risk (presumably) but also those around the user (presumably), same as we choose what do with 23andMe reports. However, I'd wager the known risks and costs associated with allowing tobacco use to continue is orders of magnitude higher than it ever will be for the 400,000 or so customers that have used 23andMe to sequence a portion of our genome. Why don't we work on the hard & obvious problem first?

Tempest in a tea cup.

ps. I wonder what the ulterior motive is? Perhaps the FDA is in cahoots with Monsanto in planning copyright on specific genetic sequences for humans, as they do now for crops. Hmmm... they could call it the Soylent Green experiment.

The FDA is pure evil. They are in bed with Monsanto. Both should cease to exist completely as soon as possible.

There's my opinion.

The whole "let the market decide" is completely stupid.

But GMO's are safe, even though Monsanto is a horrible, piece of shit of a company, and labeling GMO's as such is a fear-mongering technique, that only serves to spread ignorance.

For those like myself who are not familiar with the technique:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grafting

Monsanto never produced anything so freakish, but it seems these are relatively safe (at a glance). The only real problem I see is: isn't this pretty much dead after one year?