Vid about Colony Collapse

www.youtube.com/embed/Zgc5w-xyQa0


No mention of GMO pollen that kills bees though.

I never heard of GMO pollen killing bees.

Amedean Messan wrote:I never heard of GMO pollen killing bees.

I think it's reasonable to suspect that Bt-corn is not doing bees any favors. the lab studies I've seen haven't found significant negative impacts on foragers or larvae, but lab studies don't always accurately predict real-world consequences. as an addition to many other stressors, exposure to Bt toxin could be enough to do in a single bee or a colony even if it wouldn't cause any problems as a single stressor. this is certainly speculation, but I don't think it's baseless.

pretty decent primer. certainly left some things out, but fit a lot of info into a brief video.

It is reasonable to suspect and I am no fan of GMO but I also avoid the tendency to bias confirm anything negative regarding the things I don't like. I wont wait for a study to prove/disprove either because its better to be precautious and not volunteer myself a guinea pig. Out of safety I would avoid all GMO but for matters of integrity to compare and discuss, take the tomato which is toxic if you eat the plant itself excluding the fruit. I can assume that toxin is distributed equally in all parts of the plant but it may not be so especially for the case of the tomato.

Again not to endorse or defend GMO plants but there is a tendency to project ideas because they validate suspicions such as "GMO cotton t-shirts cause cancer" or other such statements.

Amedean Messan wrote:
Again not to endorse or defend GMO plants but there is a tendency to project ideas because they validate suspicions such as "GMO cotton t-shirts cause cancer" or other such statements.

sure. which is why I might add that it is not reasonable to claim with absolute certainty that Bt-corn is killing honey bees, whether alone or in combination with other factors. but then, I don't think it's often reasonable to claim anything at all with absolute certainty.

here's something I am pretty sure about: the world view of a person who is likely to plant vast fields of Bt-corn is more likely to be amenable to the idea of bees as simple mechanisms that can be manipulated at will with minimal risk than it would be to thinking of bees as creatures to coöperate with rather than exploit. that same worldview also seems unlikely to give much thought to externalities.

this is part of a much larger conversation, though, and one that I'm not sure is appropriate here. what do you say we agree to agree?