WalkAway: A Word From a Recovering Liberal

The Revolutionary Act ^ | 06/02/18

[longfellow]

I didn’t say you. The left forgot about elian.

[little jeremiah]

Yes, humans have been genetically engineering foods since prehistory without ill effect

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Oh really? People had microscopes and all the other tech stuff to genetically engineer plants hundreds and thousands of years ago? Do tell.

And vaccines is a mixed bag. I know you are a staunch defender of them, but they are a mixed bag. And I would not call them the most significant medical advance in history, but maybe you work in the field. Science, as many fields, is riddled with liars and hype and used for politics. It’s not pure.

[gogeo]

Very impressive.

"Paula," as it were.

[gogeo]

I was pretty liberal as a child and then I learned how to read and do math.

I remember the outrage at seeing my first paycheck.

[gogeo]

Excellent.

[exDemMom]

You do not need a microscope in order to genetically engineer food. In fact, even with today's highly accurate, specific, and technical genetic engineering, a microscope is not needed. One example I love to show of prehistoric genetic engineering is teosinte versus corn:

The teosinte is on the left in each panel. The three ears are teosinte, a corn/teosinte hybrid, and corn.

Basically, any plant or animal that does not look like its wild ancestor is genetically modified. That includes most, if not all, of the foods grown commercially.

What the advanced technology has provided is the means to genetically engineer organisms by targeting and modifying a single gene. Previous genetic engineering methods (hybridization, selective breeding, etc.) never allowed that degree of control; in order to get the one wanted genetic trait involved randomly changing many genes and screening hundreds or thousands of organisms to try to find those with the desired trait while minimizing those with undesirable traits.

As for the vaccines, I have been in medical research for over 20 years, and a large part of my career has been focused on fighting infectious disease. So when I say that vaccines are the most significant medical breakthrough ever, it is because I am very familiar with the various medical breakthroughs that have taken place. Countless millions of people are alive today because they received vaccines as children. In many third world countries, that may be the only medical intervention they ever receive. The problem in the US, and the reason that anti-vax hooey finds so many willing recipients, is that vaccines have been so successful that most young people--millennials, gen Xers, even some boomers--have never experienced or known anyone who has experienced the loss of a loved one from a vaccine-preventable disease. And so they think those diseases are gone, but have no understanding of why they are gone. I will continue to fight against this ignorance for as long as I am able.

[bert]

The Hopi have genetically engineered corn to thrive in their desert fields. The plants appear stunted but produce ears that are the real thing. They have been at in Arizona, Utah and New Mexico for at it least a thousand years. Hopi corn is derived from teosinte Their village of Oraibi is the longest occupied town in America. It was founded in 1100 AD or thereabouts. The Hopi corn can be seen growing at present

[exDemMom]

Wow, that ear of corn is really beautiful!

[babyfreep]

I get it. I was just “in a mood” last night.
Thanks

[little jeremiah]

Genetically engineered is not precisely the same is cross breeding to improve plants.

IOW, Monsanto creating Round up ready corn is not the same as cross breeing to create better varieites of corn.

But you, the One Who Knows It All, won’t admit that you are ever wrong.

I don’t give a crap who important and knowledgeable and experienced you are or tout yourself as being; you are not all knowing, and there are many people just as highly educated and experienced in the field as yourself, who disagree with your stand on vaccines as being the wonder magic of all times.

You want to use weasel words to conflate actual genetic engineering with normal, standard cross breeding.

[exDemMom]

Genetically engineered is not precisely the same is cross breeding to improve plants.

Actually, it is. They are methods to alter the genome of corn to be different than the wildtype ancestor. Modern methods of genetic engineering are much more refined than older methods, and result in less change to the genome.

The difference between cross breeding to change entire genomes and selective enzymatic gene modification to make specific, controlled changes is equivalent to the difference between using a bulldozer to knock down trees or using a saw to remove only the branches overhanging your driveway. Either way, you clear the driveway.

I don’t give a crap who important and knowledgeable and experienced you are or tout yourself as being; you are not all knowing, and there are many people just as highly educated and experienced in the field as yourself, who disagree with your stand on vaccines as being the wonder magic of all times.

Please, provide an example of a person who is highly educated (PhD level) in a life science, who understands the biology of viruses and bacteria and how the immune system reacts to them, yet who advocates against vaccines. A kook or two notwithstanding, you will not find people in my field who advocate against fighting deadly diseases using the tools at our disposal.

But you, the One Who Knows It All, won’t admit that you are ever wrong.

No, I won't ever "admit" to being wrong when I make sure that everything I post regarding science and health is backed up by voluminous scientific research. Science is an objective discipline; in the hard sciences, the opinion of the scientist is irrelevant to the outcome of the experiment or study.

[little jeremiah]

Adding genes to make corn and other plants immune to Roundup so it can sprayed and not die, adding genes from animals to plants, is just like what people did previously to make food plants stronger or better.

Yes, scientists like you have done so much good for the world.

[JustaCowgirl]

I agree. What changed her thinking? We are left to wonder. But she has a good point that people do change their viewpoint.

[Tammy8]

She has been a 1st Amendment lawyer but didn't know/understand the Constitution?

That is possible. Many lawyers only look for loopholes in the Constitution, or believe it is a living document and look for places to update it.

[TheNext]

Appeal to authority is still a fallacy.

You do not have to admit to being wrong, while still still being wrong.

That is 2 fallacies you have already committed. Only 1 single fallacy can cause human damage. If you were that precise, you would not be making these fallacies that can kill or cut life short.

If biologists understood vaccine effectivity and human illness, then biologists would simply take their own advice, and there would be little sick or overweight biologists, Doctors or nurses, compared to the norm. They would be the healthiest group of humans. Biologists would avoid heart disease, cancer and strokes, at the best levels in society.

The PhD micro biologist would not have a heart disease stent while others are healthy.
The biologist, Doctor or nurse know dangerously little about preventing illness, because it is also a science of psychology, economics and areas they understand little about.

The only stakeholder with a real incentive to remain healthy is the patient. The Doctor’s incentive is to sell harmful drugs. The Micro Biologist’s incentive is to create drugs.

Vaccines do not create long term immunity. Conversely, they create drug dependent, weaker descendents over the years, versus using true natural evolution for a healthy lineage.

And the desire for the last word is your third fallacy.

[exDemMom]

Your entire post is a mess of illogic and frankly bizarre thinking. Appeal to authority is still a fallacy.

Oh, my. Such a miscomprehension of the logical fallacy. Appeal to authority is only invalid when the authority does not actually support the viewpoint or subject of the appeal. In my case, I not only am the authority, but I have substantial factual and evidentiary support from a large body of medical research and personal discussions with many other experts. Therefore, I commit no logical fallacy by "appealing to authority."

If biologists understood vaccine effectivity and human illness, then biologists would simply take their own advice, and there would be little sick or overweight biologists, Doctors or nurses, compared to the norm. They would be the healthiest group of humans. Biologists would avoid heart disease, cancer and strokes, at the best levels in society.

That is as big of a logical non sequitur as I have ever seen. For one thing, you seem to conflate infectious disease with all disease. The fact that I understand fully, for example, the etiology of measles and how to prevent it in no way prevents me from developing osteoarthritis which causes me a considerable amount of constant pain. Should I also point out that I fully understand the etiology of osteoarthritis, as well?

Understanding the causes of diseases, whether they are infectious, genetic, environmental, etc., is just one step in a very long process. Figuring out how to prevent, manage, or cure the disease takes much, much longer than simply understanding it. Furthermore, PhD level life scientists, physicians, and other health care professionals are just as susceptible to physical ailments as anyone else. Because we are, you know, human. The difference between us and other people is that we devote our lives to studying and treating illnesses.

The biologist, Doctor or nurse know dangerously little about preventing illness, because it is also a science of psychology, economics and areas they understand little about.

Once again, you produce a complete non sequitur. We actually do understand the role of psychology in the etiology of certain illnesses. This is why there are psychologists and psychiatrists in the medical professions. Did you know that there is a whole field of research psychology? Economics, on the other hand, is not a cause of any disease. A person's economic status affects whether they have access to health care, but is not a causative factor in the development of disease. (I can stick in here an observation that if the anti-vaxxers and other "alternative" medicine quacks were correct, then the people who live in third world conditions without access to health care and who eat only "natural" and "organic" foods should be the healthiest people in the world. But they are not.)

Vaccines do not create long term immunity. Conversely, they create drug dependent, weaker descendents over the years, versus using true natural evolution for a healthy lineage.

The vaccine schedules are determined by groups of experts who consider, among many factors, the length of immunity conferred by each vaccine. So, as a matter of medical practice, people are recommended to get revaccinated on a regular basis in order to keep up immunity. I must also point out that each vaccine must be considered independently of the others in terms of duration of immunity: measles vaccine, for instance, induces permanent immunity. Because of this, my medical record says that I am exempt from measles vaccination because the two doses I have received, one while in college, the other when I joined the Army, have rendered me immune as determined through a blood test.

As for your assertion that vaccines cause drug dependency, that is such a leap of illogic that I am not even going to try to dissect it.

And the desire for the last word is your third fallacy.

Um, okay. I do not like to leave untruths unchallenged. When people internalize untruths regarding medical matters, they endanger their health. My goal is to provide proper information to refute the untruths, so that people will not mistakenly believe the untruths. While people like you are so enamored of untruths, hooey, and woo that it is probably impossible to reach you with any factual information, most of the people who might read my posts are not in the same situation. I've been doing this for around 20 years; I'm not going to stop because an aficionado of quackery doesn't like it.

One last thing: if you wish to refute someone, you could do a lot better than what you did in this post. Smushing unrelated subjects into a fruitcake-like conglomerate does little except illustrate that your own thinking is muddled and disordered. Likewise, with making prodigious leaps of illogic.

I always find it amusing when people who cannot refute me on the facts then resort to hiding behind claims of logical fallacies which they barely understand.