1. GM-crops: The battle between Science and Politics – an Analysis
Prof. Klaus Ammann, University of Bern, Switzerland
April 14, 2014

2. http://www. desicolours
Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason.

3. Free Fidenato Activists March 30, 2014, Friuli-Veneto-Giulia
They destroyed the wrong fields!! See

4. Free Fidenato Activists March 30, 2014, Friuli-Veneto-Giulia
They destroyed the wrong fields!!
See

5. Destruction of 30 years of field research in Italy
Prof. Eddo Ruggini Università di Tusca
“It can be seen as a demolition of a scientific cultural monument,
an act of legal vandalism”
says Klaus Ammann University of Bern.“
Meldolesi, A. (2012)
Destruction of transgenic olive field trial dubbed 'vandalism'. Nat Biotech, 30, 8, pp
Milan, November 2012

6. Tractor transformed into a tank, seized Wednesday April 2, from separatists from Casale di Scodososia, Venezia, Italy
Denver Nicks ( ), Italian Police: Venetian ‘Terrorists’ Planned Assault In Homemade Tank, in: TIME, pp. Time Magazines Europe Ltd (TMEL), AND

7. Gómez-Galera, S. , Twyman, R. M. , Sparrow, P. A. C
Gómez-Galera, S., Twyman, R.M., Sparrow, P.A.C., Van Droogenbroeck, B., Custers, R., Capell, T., & Christou, P. (2012)
Field trials and tribulations—making sense of the regulations for experimental field trials of transgenic crops in Europe. Plant Biotechnology Journal, 10, 5, pp
AND

8. Gómez-Galera, S. , Twyman, R. M. , Sparrow, P. A. C
Gómez-Galera, S., Twyman, R.M., Sparrow, P.A.C., Van Droogenbroeck, B., Custers, R., Capell, T., & Christou, P. (2012)
Field trials and tribulations—making sense of the regulations for experimental field trials of transgenic crops in Europe. Plant Biotechnology Journal, 10, 5, pp
AND

9. Forgot what we are protesting We are programmed in
millions of years of evolution to be
alarmed and
act accordingly
What helps:
Constant
framing
And moral self-
licensing
Merritt, A.C., Effron, D.A., & Monin, B. (2010)
Moral Self-Licensing: When Being Good Frees Us to Be Bad. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 4, 5, pp

10. They have lost the reasons
De Kervasdoue Jean (2014), Ils ont perdu la raison (French Edition) edn Robert Laffont (January 23, 2014), IS: ASIN: B00HWJHCMQ. pp. 225,

11. A list of reasons and behavior for the
anxiety of the population on GMOs
Moral self licensing, defence of the motherland
Power of protest and industrial corporates, conspiracy theories: Seed companies and revolving doors
Framing processes, including the Genomic Misconception
Tribal moral: Evolution strikes back: Survival instinct.
Science of Fear: Evil always fascinates, Goodness rarely entertains
Semiotic views about Nature: Leonardo da Vinci
Science, Ethics and Religion: Halal, Sharia, Vatican, Kosher Food, Amish Farmers
7. Professional discourse of the second Generation
8. Need for New World Visions

12. Genetic Engineering is fundamentally different from Natural Mutation
Urban Myth
Genetic Engineering is
fundamentally different from
Natural Mutation
Wrong:
Natural Mutation and Transgenesis are
identical on the molecular level
Ammann, K. ( )
Genomic Misconception: A fresh look at the biosafety of transgenic and conventional crops, a plea for a process agnostic regulation New Biotechnology, in press, pp 32

13. Gamma Field for Radiation Breeding
Radiation site for mutation breeding, Co-60 radioactivity source of 89 TBq in the center, Radius of 100m.
Gamma Field for Radiation Breeding
Was muss man sich darunter vorstellen?
89 TBq represents the 140-fold of all Radioactivity of material stored in the German
permanent storage site of Morsleben insgesamt eingelagerten Radioaktivität.
In this radiation field a human being would receive 3 deadly Sievers units
of radiation after the exposure times given below
60 min
3,5 min

14. FRANKENSTEIN Durum Wheat, Triticum durum: all major breeds
have gone though
massive and inprecise radiation breeding, but with
Important success
unnecessary fearmongering

15. Defense of the Motherland...
For the major crops, there is no indigenous
original center of landraces existing
Map of history of movement of crops around the globe
Defense of the Motherland...
Dubock, A.C. (2009)
Crop conundrum. Nutrition Reviews, 67, 1, pp
<Go to ISI>://WOS: AND

16. New flood of electronic journals
With superficial peer review systems, worse:
Predator Journals
Knigel and GMO-Skepti-Forum ( ), A Rough Guide to Spotting Bad Science, in: GMO-Skepti-Forum, pp. SKEPTI-FORUM, AND

17. Knigel and GMO-Skepti-Forum ( ), A Rough Guide to Spotting Bad Science, in: GMO-Skepti-Forum, pp. SKEPTI-FORUM, AND

18. Knigel and GMO-Skepti-Forum ( ), A Rough Guide to Spotting Bad Science, in: GMO-Skepti-Forum, pp. SKEPTI-FORUM, AND

19. Interpretation of results
Comparative safety assessment
Yes
Compare with variability in:
Comparator
Conventional crop varieties with HOSU
Literature values
Databases
OECD, USDA, NARO WHO, NRC, ILSI
New GM crop
composition data
Statistically different from comparator? No
As safe as conventional
Within range?
Yes No
If difference is biologically relevant, then
a logical scientific justification must be presented involving safety data, or
new safety data must be generated
B. Price, ILSI CCW 2012; P. Brune, IFBiC/OECD workshop 2013

20. Transgenic Plants for Food Security in the Context of Development
The participants represented the following scientific disciplines:
Theology, Philosophy, Law, Social Sciences, Development, Economy, Evolution, Ecology, Plant Sciences, Agronomy, Biotechnology, Molecular Biology, Biochemistry, Biosafety, Food safety, Regulation.
All participants agreed that there is no unusual risk from GMOs, that regulation must be changed, and hat there is a moral imperative to make the technology available, as efficiently as possible, to the poor in developing countries.
Potrykus, I. & Ammann, K., eds. (2010)
Transgenic Plants for Food Security in the Context of Development, Statement of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Vol. 27, open source, pp , M. Taussig, New Biotechnology Elsevier, Amsterdam, AND on Vatican Website < AND on Host ASK-FORCE: Press release

21. Pontifical Academy of Science, Vatican
Bishop Marcelo Sanchez – Sorondo, Secretary
Prof. Dr. Werner Arber, President
Nobel Laureate 1978

22. Amish farmers in biotech-debate: subsequent partial adoption
of transgenic crops: 1999, see:

23. This was 2000, one year after ‚proof-of-concept‘
This was 2000, one year after ‚proof-of-concept‘. Everybody expected Golden Rice to be with the farmers by It will be there by The ‚protesters‘ were a problem, but not a major one. There was, and is, one outstanding problem:
GMO-regulation.
Golden Rice and Beyond – challenges of a humanitarian GMO project.
TIME Magazine, July 31, 2000 23

25. Rice as major staple of 2.4 billion does not contain any provitamin A.
The consequences withholding Golden Rice
Most of the science is done
properly, despite of
Greenpeace stating the
contrary
Rice as major staple of 2.4 billion does not contain any provitamin A.
400 million rice-depending poor suffer from vitamin A-deficiency.
VAD impairs vision, epithelial integrity,immune response, haemopoiesis,skelettal growth, etc.
It is the major cause for blind children and two million death per year.
Sommer, A. & Vyas, K.S. (2012)
A global clinical view on vitamin A and carotenoids. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 96, 5, pp 1204S-1206S
Tang, G., Hu, Y., Yin, S.-a., Wang, Y., Dallal, G.E., Grusak, M.A., & Russell, R.M. (2012)
Beta-Carotene in Golden Rice is as good as beta-carotene in oil at providing vitamin A to children. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, pp
Tang, G., Qin, J., Dolnikowski, G.G., Russell, R.M., & Grusak, M.A. (2009)
Golden Rice is an effective source of vitamin A. Am J Clin Nutr, 89, 6, pp

26. Ingo Potrykus and Patrick Moore say this is a crime against humanity because they [Greenpeace] are preventing the curing of people who are dying by the hundreds of thousands every year due to vitamin A deficiency.
Moore, P. & Batra, K. ( )
Greenpeace Founder: Biotech Opposition is Crime Against Humanity. In Biotech Now, Farmer Gene. Bio

27. From Amelia Joran 2014: Some selected critique of Boehn et al. 2014
The authors claim that there are no pesticide monitoring programs in Canada, the EU, and the USA. This is a blatantly false statement, at least for the USA. There has been a pesticide food-monitoring
program run by the FDA and in cooperation with the EPA and the USDA for decades now.
The following excerpts from the paper highlight the largest problem with the study, the experimental design is deeply flawed and any data collected will be statistically useless. “Since different varieties of soy (different genetic backgrounds) from different fields (environments) grown using different agricultural practices were analyzed, we need to acknowledge that variation in composition will come from all three of these sources.”

28. Cattani, D. , V. L. de Liz Oliveira Cavalli, C. E. Heinz Rieg, J. T
Cattani, D., V. L. de Liz Oliveira Cavalli, C. E. Heinz Rieg, J. T. Domingues, T. Dal-Cim, C. I. Tasca, F. R. Mena Barreto Silva and A. Zamoner (2015), Mechanisms underlying the neurotoxicity induced by glyphosate-based herbicide in immature rat hippocampus: Involvement of glutamate excitotoxicity, Toxicology, 320, 0, pp , AND AND
Bøhn, T., M. Cuhra, T. Traavik, M. Sanden, J. Fagan and R. Primicerio (2013), Compositional differences in soybeans on the market: glyphosate accumulates in Roundup Ready GM soybeans, Food Chemistry, Accepted Manuscript, 0, pp. AND AND comments
Jordan Amelia ( ), A Critical Review of Compositional Differences in Soybeans on the Market: Glyphosate Accumulates in Roundup Ready GM soybeans (Bøhn, T., et al. 2013), in: Skepti-Forum, pp

29. Genepeace,
Not Greenpeace

30. We still have a lot to learn in Biology
Ni, P., R. C. Vaughan, B. Tragesser, H. Hoover and C. C. Kao (2014), The Plant Host Can Affect the Encapsidation of Brome Mosaic Virus (BMV) RNA: BMV Virions Are Surprisingly Heterogeneous, Journal of Molecular Biology, 426, 5, pp , AND

32. Sustainability is often abused by fundamentalists as a conservative argument
But actually the original definition of the Brundtland Report from Stockholm
is full of dynamic arguments, a plea for development and new technologies

33. 30. Yet in the end, sustainable development is not a fixed state of harmony, but rather a process of change in which the exploitation of resources, the direction of investments, the orientation of technological development, and institutional change
are made consistent with future as well as present needs.
We do not pretend that the process is easy or straightforward. Painful choices have to be made. Thus, in the final analysis, sustainable development must rest on political will.
Brundtland Gro Harlem NGO Committee on Education ( and ), Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future Transmitted to the General Assembly as an Annex to document A/42/427 - Development and International Co-operation: Environment, No. pp orig. and 223, Oslo, Norway, AND AND

34. A communications gap has kept environmental, population, and development assistance groups apart for too long, preventing us from being aware of our common interest and realizing our combined power. Fortunately, the gap is closing.
We now know that what unites us is vastly more important than what divides us.
We recognize that poverty, environmental degradation, and population growth are inextricably related and that none of these fundamental problems can be successfully addressed in isolation. We will succeed or fail together.
Arriving at a commonly accepted definition of 'sustainable development‘ remains a challenge for all the actors in the development process.
Brundtland Gro Harlem NGO Committee on Education ( and ), Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common FutureTransmitted to the General Assembly as an Annex to document A/42/427 - Development and International Co-operation: Environment, No. pp orig. and 223, Oslo, Norway, AND AND

35. All counter parties need to reshuffle their attitude by entering a more serious, professional discourse process of the second generation
respecting different kinds of knowledge scientific knowledge deontic knowledge traditional knowledge structural knowledge Instrumental knowledge

36. All counter parties need to go through the difficult process
of discourse group building (including zero hypothesis)
2. Zero Hypothesis: limit the periphery of the debate, allow for open end, active listening and realistic time lines.
Allow as many counter parties (with a genuine interest) as the debate needs, but exclude fundamentalists only interested in preaching, and there should only people participate which are part of the problem
Ammann Klaus ( ), Draft: Systems Approach Second Generation for a debate on the future of Agriculture. Rules for a successful Discourse and long term iterative Planning-Design, in: ASK-FORCE 17, K. Ammann. AF-17, pp. 21, ASK-FORCE, Neuchâtel,

37. If we couple universal education with the eradication of poverty and more, increasing affluence, we will, I believe, be doing the most promising thing as far as moral enhancement goes.
Harris, J. (2013), MORAL PROGRESS AND MORAL ENHANCEMENT, Bioethics, 27, 5, pp , AND

38. “The question is the devoutness of thinking.”
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  
What do we need as visionaries: Progress or Development? This is my question today, as I deal with the topic of Bio-Visionaries here in the Library of Alexandria. I ask this question because I am convinced that we need to build a new culture of questioning. We need a culture orienting itself by authentic questions.
If we cannot befriend these choice-questions with science, it will disengage from the questioners and will not be human science anymore. Thus we need a new humility of thinking – as it has been wonderfully defined by the
“The question is the devoutness of thinking.”
Dr. phil.
Biljana Papazov Ammann
Neuchâtel, Switzerland
Biovision, Alexandria 2010

39. Yashina, S. , S. Gubin, S. Maksimovich, A. Yashina, E. Gakhova and D
Yashina, S., S. Gubin, S. Maksimovich, A. Yashina, E. Gakhova and D. Gilichinsky (2012), Regeneration of whole fertile plants from 30,000-y-old fruit tissue buried in Siberian permafrost Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109, 10, pp , AND
30’000 years old seeds of a Silene regenerated, from a Siberian permafrost cave

40. Easter greetings with a smile from Allah
Attribution: Photo Courtesy of Faye Adams Copyright ©2010 Leona. All Rights Reserved