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Genetically modified tomatoes are a separate page

I recently added this to the page for vaccine. More complex plants such as tobacco, potato, tomato and banana, can have genes inserted that cause them to produce vaccines usable for humans. There is a seperate page for genetically modified tomatoes; should there be one for other fruits and vegetables?

1. Sala, F.; Manuela Rigano, M.; Barbante, A.; Basso, B.; Walmsley, AM; Castiglione, S (January 2003). "Vaccine antigen production in transgenic plants: strategies, gene constructs and perspectives". Vaccine. 21 (7–8): 803–8. PMID 23888738. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)

Can we add some information about experiment on GMO food fed to rats?

Can someone with native English language edit this section to add information that is missing and crucial for a non/biased article? Here is the study: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278691512005637 Here is a objective exlanation of why it has been retracted: http://www.corbettreport.com/genetic-fallacy-how-monsanto-silences-scientific-dissent/ I think this sentence "There is broad scientific consensus that food on the market derived from GM crops poses no greater risk than conventional food. No reports of ill effects have been documented in the human population from ingesting GM food." does not consider all the data available on the subject. Unmismoobjetivo (talk) 14:35, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

Hi. This article is focused on GMOs per se. It is not about all the controversies around them. Misplaced Pages has an article on each kind of GMO thing that actually explains what it is, how it is used, etc, which are linked at the top of the page. This is so people can actually understand the subject of the controversy (formerly, each article was smothered with the controversy itself and said nothing about the controverted thing itself) Each article, including this one, has a stub section on the controversies, with a link to the main controversies article. In the main controversies article there is a section on the Seralini series of studies, as well as others, here. Misplaced Pages also has an article on all the hoopla around that article and its retraction: Seralini affair. Content about that does not belong in this article, since that article is not about what a GMO is or how it is used. thanks! Jytdog (talk) 14:46, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

I agree with user Unmismoobjetivo (talk). The statements lack NPOV. There is no such "scientific consensus". Please see any of the below articles, which demonstrate both that there is no broad 'scientific consensus' on GMO safety -and- that GMO critics vigorously contest such a claim (neither of which is mentioned in the lede as it should for NPOV):

• ENSSR article: "Statement: No scientific consensus on GMO safety"
• Food & Water Watch Article: "The so-called scientific 'consensus': Why the debate on GMO safety is not over"
• GM Watch publishing excerpts from above above F&WW article immediately above.
• Beyond GMO article: "Who says GMOs are safe? (and who says they’re not)"
• This law review
• This published scientific Study, PubMed:18989835 "Health risks of genetically modified foods."

David Tornheim (talk) 14:11, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

I agree that the statement about negative effects on humans is misleading as it stands, given the references just cited above. In addition, the controversy needs to be covered at least in fair measure in this article. How is the reader to know about the articles Jytdog is referring to? I came to this article to find out about GMOs and the issue of their alleged dangers after reading an interview with Jeffrey Smith. This article is insufficient for me without a clarification of the scientific viewpoints. 76.126.195.34 (talk) 00:14, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Please see above. The various articles on GMOs are knit together using the concepts described in the guideline, WP:SUMMARY. Please read that. This article has a brief summary section on the controversies, with a link to the main article, as described in SUMMARY. You just follow the links. The statement of the scientific consensus is not misleading; it is accurate and has been supported by what we call in Misplaced Pages a "request for comment" (see WP:RFC) on whether the statement and its sources are OK under Misplaced Pages's polices and guidelines. You can read the RfC and its outcome here. Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 00:33, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

The controversy article is mentioned in this article. One click and you're there. That handles it for me. More, shorter, more focused articles are better than fewer, battleship-sized monsters. This is a huge topic. Further, the critics are having trouble getting their claims accepted by other scientists, which I think accounts for the paucity of secondary scientific sources that support them. If you find some, please send them our way. The sources cited above are not that kind of article. Lfstevens (talk) 00:47, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Controversy

I am a new user on wikipedia and this is my first post. I am trying to gain insight in the matter of GMOs and as I was researching the controversies section of this article and checked the references; I found them to be somewhat, lacking. I was going to post why I thought this but then read Jytdog's response that there is an entire page dedicated to the controversies surrounding GMOs. My thought now is, why even include the controversy section in this current article? This sentence, "There is broad scientific consensus that food on the market derived from GM crops poses no greater risk than conventional food. No reports of ill effects have been proven in the human population from ingesting GM food" seems to advocate for GM crops when this is supposed to be a neutral article. When looking at the references supporting this sentence, I found references directly linked to them stating the opposite. Although I found this part possibly misleading, this is just a suggestion, please do not take any offense. I fully appreciate everyone's hard work in giving us the background on GMOs. Thanks! OrphB (talk) 02:51, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Hi OrphB thanks coming and talking! Misplaced Pages stands very solidly with the scientific consensus on all things related to science. Please see the policy for editors, WP:NPOV, specifically this section WP:PSCI, and also the guideline that fleshes out that section, WP:FRINGE. There is a scientific consensus on these issues (although you wouldn't know that from websites you find out there). We need to include reference to the controversies, or this article would have a big whole in it. But we include this summary section, pointing folks to the main article, following the guideline called WP:SUMMARY. I know I just threw a lot of policy and guideline stuff at you, but if you think about it for a minute... this is "an encyclopedia that anyone can edit" and a real democracy, so over the years the editing community has build up a body of law as it were, to help us work together. Without that, this place would be a pretty ugly, wild west-like place. With it, things can be beautiful here. Thanks again. Jytdog (talk) 04:21, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

The "GMO controversy" might be replaced with a "problems" section listing the problems with GMOs. But that would require having to go through the bought-and-paid-for and selectively-consensed-here "science". The GMO pushers want you to think that their products and practices are infallible and can do no harm — a fact that is glaringly omitted from the entire section.

Monsanto's board members have worked for the EPA, advised the USDA, and served on President Obama's Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations.

Monsanto and other Biotech has a significant research agreement with South Dakota University, Arizona State's Biodesign Institue, Washington University in St. Louis, University of California at Berkeley's Plant and Microbiology, and UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

"…GM crops poses no greater risk than conventional food." Adding more references was not what was needed there. This so-called "GMO controversy" section is obviously not neutral. Xkit (talk) 19:23, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

This is not a forum for general discussion of the topic much less biotech companies in general. As explained above, the section GM Controversies section in this article is a WP:SUMMARY of the main article, Genetically modified food controversies. If you have concrete ideas about how to improve the article that comply with WP's policies and guidelines, it would be great to hear them.Jytdog (talk) 19:33, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

I agree with user OrphB (talk) that the article lacks NPOV for the reasons stated. I additionally provided RS showing that there is no such "scientific consensus" in an earlier section of this talk page. David Tornheim (talk) 14:16, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

None of the sources provided satisfy WP:RS in relation to the insanely broad scientific consensus that GM crops, et al, are not a health risk (i.e., ingesting randomly mutated dna happens everyday). — ArtifexMayhem (talk) 14:08, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Systemic Bias tag

Hello everyone, I added this tag to the article because I noticed the statement "There is broad scientific consensus that food on the market derived from GM crops poses no greater risk than conventional food" but this statement only reflects scientific consensus of some scientists in the United States, and not, for instance, the Russian scientific community. Should we rewrite this and related sentences to encompass more of a global perspective? Terms like "broad" are confusing at best and inaccurate at worst. LesVegas (talk) 17:43, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

At quick glance, we already have an EU source in the referenced content. I'm not aware of any legitimate regional dissention amongst the scientific community in this topic, so do you have reliable secondary sources from the scientific literature that states there are regional issues? WP:FRINGE definitely comes into play here, so we also need to be wary of that. One thing to remember is that we generally turn a blind eye to location when it comes to summarizing scientific consensus. We just summarize what the sources say regardless. Kingofaces43 (talk) 17:58, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Ah, I see the EU source. For now, I'll change the tag back to "Anglo-American" until we figure out what to do about those dern' Ruskies! Scientific consensus in Russia is that GMO's are problematic, and I don't see why fringe would apply to them. Again, I'm not arguing the position of possible fringe scientists in the US, but rather that, worldwide, there is no way we can say "broad scientific consensus". LesVegas (talk) 18:12, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

science does not vary around the world. That is a WP:FRINGE perspective. We don't tag WP articles based on FRINGE perspectives. Do not edit war over this. You need a valid basis for tagging an article. Jytdog (talk) 18:14, 14 October 2014 (UTC) per t:POV there needs to be a valid reason under NPOV, based on what the policy actually says, to tag an article. The idea that science varies around the world is a fringe perspective and per the WP:PSCI section of WP:NPOV we don't give weight to fringe perspectives (see the guideline that fleshes out PSCI, WP:FRINGE) Please establish a basis for problems with NPOV before tagging the article. Please do not edit war over this. Thanks Jytdog (talk) 18:14, 14 October 2014 (UTC) (reworded - doesn't change meaning Jytdog (talk) 18:26, 14 October 2014 (UTC))

this source would seem to disagree that there is a lot of regional variation about the safety of GMO. Yobol (talk) 18:24, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

yes, thanks! Jytdog (talk) 18:27, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

The Russian scientific community is a fringe view? I also said there are others. The Chinese scientific community has called GMO food safety into question and there is an active debate about it. On a worldwide scale, saying "other countries are fringe" is exactly the point of why this article demands a systemic bias tag. We cannot give preference to US scientists only. And we cannot say "broad consensus" when, globally, there is none. And, for the record, I'm not edit warring. I only reverted once when you were under the impression I wasn't intending to use the talk page. Anywho, perhaps we can go about this impasse by rewriting certain phrases instead of using a tag to pull in more editors. I strongly object to the wording "broad scientific consensus", so maybe that's a good starting point? LesVegas (talk) 19:34, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

did you look at the link provided by Yobol, and maybe notice the "chinese academy of sciences" there? (EU, several european countries including France, india, mexico, even the freaking pope. not to mention the WHO, the vatican of world health). so yes, global scientific consensus. and therefore, ... sources please for russia's and china's scientific consensus. thanks. plenty of folks before you have challenged the "broad scientific consensus" language and it even went through an RfC just about a year ago, where it was sustained. That discussion is here: Talk:Genetically_modified_food_controversies/Archive_6#Request_for_comment_on_.22broad_scientific_consensus.22 No new science has emerged since then that would change the scientific consensus. (that is what it would take to change it - some significant new scientific findings). Jytdog (talk) 19:41, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Russia’s National Association for Genetic Safety isn't the "Russian Scientific Community" and as Jytdog has pointer out, this point has already been discussed at length over at genetically modified food controversies which is the article that is summarised here. There are clearly strong sources which say that there is a broad consensus, so if you disagree, please provide sources that demonstrate this is incorrect and not just one source where an activist says that they are unsafe. SmartSE (talk) 19:55, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

thanks for the link, Smartse! yes there are fringe-y activist groups like that in the US too. consensus does not mean unanimity. not even broad consensus means unanimity. Jytdog (talk) 20:42, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

I agree with LesVegas (talk). There is no "scientific consensus" on the safety of GMO products. I provided WP:RS in a separate section of this talk page. David Tornheim (talk) 14:20, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

You did not provide sources that can be used to support your claims. — ArtifexMayhem (talk) 14:15, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

No so-called "scientific consensus"

As I have mentioned in the Genetically modified food controversy talk page here (and at least 3 users have noted), there is no "scientific consensus" that GMO's are as safe as conventional food, and I listed articles there and also above on this talk page proving it. It is little more than rhetoric originating from GMO Proponents. This sentence:

"There is broad scientific consensus that food on the market derived from GM crops poses no greater risk to human health than conventional food."

is little more than WP:OR, which is why so many citations are provided. I propose that either:

• The sentence is stricken
• The sentence is changed for NPOV to include the challenges to the "scientific consensus" claim.

David Tornheim (talk) 14:49, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for posting here. Your perspective on this is different from that of the community to date, as upheld by an RfC, which is here. But we should keep the current discussion in one place, as you linked to above: here. Jytdog (talk) 15:06, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Discussions on scientific consensus on GMO safety elsewhere

FYI. The claim of "scientific consensus" on GMO safety is being discussed here and was briefly discussed here. David Tornheim (talk) 05:11, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

In fiction

I don't know if this warrants a mention in the article, but GMO has been used incidentally and thematically in fiction, especially SF. One example is in James P. Hogan's novel Giant's Star, where the Ganymedes used it unsuccessfully. 76.126.195.34 (talk) 05:04, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps a separate article would be best for that. SarrCat ∑;3 18:31, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

That would be my first initial thought, but I'm not sure how we'd write a coherent article that's not simply a list of books or movies. Kingofaces43 (talk) 18:37, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

RfC of interest

Editors here might find this RfC of interest, Talk:March_Against_Monsanto#RfC_Is_including_a_quotation_which_describes_GM_food_as_.27poison.27_acceptable.

RfC on Sentence on “broad scientific consensus” of GMO food safety fails to achieve consensus: It is time to improve it.

The Request for Comment (RfC) here created by Jytdog for the purpose of reaffirming the findings of this previous RfC on the language and sourcing of the sentence of a “broad scientific consensus” of the safety of GMO food (found in numerous articles) has closed here . There is no longer a consensus supporting the sentence. The closer stated:

Should the sentence be removed? Or maybe modified (and if so, to what)? There is no clear consensus on any particular action....Some of the opposes in this discussion appear to agree with the substance of this section but feel that the wording of the one sentence is overly broad; they might support more nuanced statements. I recommend that someone propose an alternative wording

I would also like to note that the closer of the earlier RfC made a similar recommendation:

... it may be helpful to refer to to some of the literature reviews to represent alternative views on the matter with respect to due weight.

With these recommendations in mind, I have provided a new sentence in the article and for discussion at Talk:Genetically modified food that I believe is more WP:NPOV than the original that failed to achieve consensus at the recent RfC. Because the sentence occurs at numerous articles:

• Genetically modified food controversies (Talk)
• Genetically modified food (Talk)
• Genetically modified crops(Talk)
• Genetically modified organism(Talk)
• Regulation of the release of genetically modified organisms (Talk)
• March Against Monsanto (Talk)
• The Non-GMO Project(Talk)

I suggest we continue to consolidate talk at Talk:Genetically modified food. David Tornheim (talk) 23:29, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

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OR edits by Jytdog and KingofAces

See no consensus per RFC discussion, and WP:OR violation per synthesis. (Ping, Jytdog,Kingofaces43 -- prokaryotes (talk) 20:47, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

You'll need to get consensus for the specific replacement text. That's been ongoing at RfC,s etc., so please wait until that conversation has produced something. Kingofaces43 (talk) 21:59, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Stating that there is a consensus is wrong per RFC, it was changed at the article of Genetically modified food (by Jytdog) - thus can be done here too, and is synthesis per references (OR violation). prokaryotes (talk) 22:01, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

I said there was no consensus for a specific edit yet at that RfC that you linked to. If there was, all you would have needed to do was link to the specific diff or at least section. Looking at the article you just linked to this time, that section of the article is highly in flux. Give it a little time settle first. There is no WP:DEADLINE, and we usually don't dictate content from other articles unless we're talking about WP:SUMMARY. It's getting worked out over there though in this case, so let's wait until there's a stable consensus either through edit history or talk page consensus that can be specifically linked. Demonstrating either of those will cut down on unneeded edit warring in the future. Kingofaces43 (talk) 23:32, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Agree that we should update per the discussion over there. However, the revert by you discussed here is wrong, a revert back to a synthesis - to original research/not backed up by references. Thus, your actions are disruptive. prokaryotes (talk) 23:39, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

folks there is a tentative consensus on the "There is a general scientific agreement that food from genetically modified crops is not inherently riskier to human health than conventional food." language. It is the first ballpark acceptable language offered by anybody who opposed at the last RfC and I implemented it at the GM food article Jytdog (talk) 00:01, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Good to see that you finally begin to remove your copied synthesis statements. It just took over 2 years and several editors to correct it.prokaryotes (talk) 00:09, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

As mentioned before, actual reference to this would have been nice as Jytdog did. In the future, please avoid prickly drama by using the talk page and directly addressing points rather than edit warring. This could have been addressed extremely simply. Kingofaces43 (talk) 00:22, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

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