the insidious GMO threat (and it affects HFCS two ways ... )

The day we started selectively breeding cultivars they became GMO's. I don't see why we should draw an arbitrary line between selective breeding of new naturally occurring variants and directly manipulated genomes.

Herbicides have been used for a long time, and with non-GMO foods. If vaccines really were safe, why would there be an anti-vaccine craze?

Glyphosate resistance was first seen in wild populations, and they were able to find the gene responsible for the resistance in the wild populations. They took that gene from the wild populations and put it into the genomes of crop varieties.Since you don't incorporate the genes of your food into your genome, I don't need to worry about becoming resistant to Roundup.

Compared to what? The most significant impact that farming has is when the plow gets rid of the native ecosystem. Which herbicide you use after that point is a drop in the bucket. Roundup is actually one of the better herbicides.The real lashback has been the shady behavior of Monsanto, such as linking the gene to a lethal marker (I think?) so that you can't raise your own seed stock of Roundup Ready crops. You have to keep going back to them for the seeds, and they aren't cheap.On the "good" side, this GMO system works best if you rotate in Roundup sensitive crops so that the resistance doesn't build up in weed populations.

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I haven't heard this. In fact, what I have seen Monsanto do is sue farmers who save seed without paying Monsanto royalties on the basis that doing so infringes their patents.

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That's another example. People hear the fervor against the corporate practices of Monsanto and that can bias their opinion on how safe GMO foods are, even though the two issues are completely unrelated.

Why is there cause for concern to begin with?If glyphosate resistance had evolved in corn, would you say that it is safe? Glyphosate resistance did evolve naturally in other species, and those genes were moved to corn. Why do you think this poses a threat?

That was non-GMO tobacco, wasn't it?The risk of constantly inhaling a toxic smoke is quite obvious. I don't see the obvious risk with plants that we have been eating for generations. What in the world do you think plants and animals are made of? Happy thoughts and dreams? What toxins are you talking about?

How are GMO's any more of a threat than the plants themselves? How do we know that brocolli or brussel sprouts with their native genomes are safe? How do we know that naturally produced mutations that result in new phenotypes in cultivars are safe? How do we know if certain combinations of naturally occuring alleles are safe?Let's not forget that the gene responsible for Roundup resistance evolved naturally. All they did was take that naturally evolved gene from one plant and put it in another.

The very same thing could be said of naturally occuring mutations, and yet you aren't calling for anyone to test those. Why not?