Again, medicine for profit. While there may be a lot of value in specific treatments, the overall use of drugs and treatments generally results in more damage than good. My brother in law had cancer and he testifies it is worse to be cured than to die. he is taking 20 pills a day at about 1500 a month, mainly each one is to offset what another is causing. The vested interest in medical is to keep you alive long enough to go completely broke and then screw you with their government programs such as medicare. No thanks, I prefer the modern American company program of "run to fail". They do it for equipment, so I guess it will work for me, after all, all I am to anyone in a company or the government is a source of their wealth and a piece of equipment.

The ethanol scam is still being perpetrated on all of us. I remember the Tyson thing, there were several scams with them and the Clintoncrats. And yes, the whole ethanol thing did nothing but drive up food prices across the board, except in the "magical" cart they use for inflation estimates, that for some strange reason, never seems to go up. Yet Ribeyes went from 6.99lb to 12.99 lb in 4 years, hamburger up from 99 cents to 2.49. But no inflation here....except in taxes and government retirements for politicos...

Michael, W10 has only been out a year..10 years and you are at XP I think. But your point is valid.

Just how do you treat a cause without knowing the disease, say cancer? All treatments of cancer are to affect cancer cells which in many cases have the apoptosis mechanism turned off. Without knowing how to turn on the mechanism, the best that can be done in many cases is to treat the 'cancer' meaning finding what will kill the cell and preferably not harming nearby cells too much. You seem to think that the causes of diseases are mainly environmental causes which by magically adding or subtracting them will somehow prevent disease.
It might be good to put that 'allopathic medicine' thing to rest since it is just a pejorative term from long ago to disparage non-homeopathic medicine, i.e., modern medicine. If you have studied any biochemistry, you will find that things are not as simple as you may think they are.
In my case, I use aspirin and a platelet inhibitor, a beta blocker, and a statin which together statistically reduce the absolute chance of a repeat heart attack from about 3% to 1 1/2% in an individual male. That for a population would that would be a 50% relative decrease. Do I quit taking them because they are treating and causing some symptoms only reducing the absolute risk by 1 1/2 percentage points? My main problem is more with medicare which doctors seem to believe requires a $500+ wellness exam yearly to be paid by the taxpayers. I tried opting out, since the doctor had seen me several times during the year. He kept after me to have the exam, even threatening to no longer prescribe the heart medication. So I took the exam and he added a physical exam for another $300 which caused a new deductible payment. That was my second run in with medicare. Back in the 60s and early 70s I tried to opt out of medicare by not paying self employment tax. Got a nasty letter in large print threatening prison if I did not pay up back tax.
I will continue taking those 'allopathic' drugs because survival is somewhat better than without.

What you describe is linked to the same mindless set as progressivism. Allopathic medicine and treatments SUCK...they only "hope" to treat the symptom but NEVER the cause. Cancer is a Symptom not a cause!
The same goes for poison pesticides and herbicides and monsantocides.

Not on the level these folks have. They have started splicing frog DNA into plants and such. A lot of their stuff is not even remotely natural and is questionable as to impact, which they have conveniently never mentioned. I amno super eco nut, but mixing a menagerie of stuff together, and saying "looks like it works" and then selling it, in a rush to get money, with no idea what is the long term impact, is a repeat error we keep seeing. I do not trust a corporation or a government to care about my well being.

Yes, it is. They see it as a way to work around their legalized looting schemes, and constantly try to find ways to disable it.

Possibly true, however, I prefer to try to use something that has a specific purpose and is not engineered by the frail human mind, simply because I see all the commercials for pharmaceuticals "This will stop you farting" It may also cause blindness, cancer, heart attacks stroke and premature baldness" Then a happy person is seen walking down the road happily not farting. Too many times I have seen people take one pill for something only to get on a long chain of pills to fix the side effects. This is similar, in that no one really has enough data to say it is 100% safe, yet the market it, and take refuge behind lawyers when held to account. Then go bankrupt. And start over.

Seems to be that way to me, as well. I am not sure I would want to have a few mega corps controlling the food supply through exclusive seeds that are the only that will grow.

I do not necessarily agree. When you genetically modify a plant, to respond to a specific chemical, you create a special and unique relationship between them. That is fine, if it stays locked down. One point in the article is that when people spray their field, id carries over and contaminates others, that are not of that kind. The result of this engineering is to create a culture where "I will do what I want, and screw you" for the fallout damage. That is not fair, and I see it as part of the the attempt to secure and blackmail the entire agriculture community to pay a specific company to be able to grow something.

Responsibly researched natural products only pick your pocket by being scarce and therefore expensive...but many do the job with no harm (allowing or empowering the body to do for itself), whereas, pharmaceuticals might sometimes mimic nature but combine nature in an unnatural way, therefore does harm. (simply bypassing what the body could do for itself, by force)
I get your philosophical argument and it's semantics.
My point was that these bacteria are natural and have a natural beneficial effect whereas pesticides and herbicides might be made of natural constituents but nature would have never combined them in that way. It is clear, they do harm to the body...in my words as the author, are not natural.

Just remember that biologicals are no more natural than are so called artificial pesticides and herbicides. No where in nature do biologicals get 'placed' on fields other than artificially by mankind.
Whatever a human does is considered as artificial. Nothing that a human can do including creating new chemical compounds is outside of the natural. Humans are part of nature regardless of religious or philosophical beliefs.
You can try to get around nature in some way that is not natural but will get your irrational face slapped. Take the dandelion which many people hate. If I don't want to use some 'artificial' pesticide, I can hand dig them or just keep them and mow the lawn very short so that the dandelions only grow very close to the ground and not very noticeable as was stored in their DNA. What is the difference between the artificial fight with them than letting them be natural? As natural they are undesirable to many and as artificial they are loved by many. I usually just dose them with WeedBeGone when I am tired of playing with them.
It is forced in your vernacular if anything has the hand of man in it. Remember there is nothing that can exist that can not be a natural existent of existence. A separate creation in some so called Garden of Eden will not make humans into non-members of nature. So called natural methods have killed millions, one case in evidence is using more natural methods in preventing malaria has killed tens or hundreds of millions. Natural treatments of disease have resulted in millions of deaths.
Most more natural products are just another means of picking your pocket while making you feel good about it.

I dunno, but that's an interesting perspective.

It does seem that Monsanto has it's mitts deep in the pockets of the FDA. Monsanto is not alone in that game; often called crony capitalism. It's better called political corruption, and that's everywhere!

Just a comment on "no sales tax" Amazon. You might have noticed the pushing trend by States to increase their bounty by forcing intrastate vendors to collect taxes for them. It just never ends.

We've been screwing with DNA since we began domesticating plants and animals. We now have a better idea of what we are doing.

Takepart is a social justice activist site. They are owned by Participant Media who's own web page states they exist to inspire and compel social change. They will always point to the big bad corporation as the root of all evil.

"Super weeds" will eventually occur whenever any herbicide is used on any crop. This is simply a result of natural selection where any survivors will propagate and their offspring are more likely to have the same resistance.

Just because someone plants a bean that's inherently resistant to a herbicide doesn't mean that other plants (weeds) growing next to it will become resistant as well. That's just stupid.

It's the process of using a single herbicide over and over and over again that selectively breeds the stronger weed - Not the evil GMO ......

The forever battle of man versus nature. But, actually, it's nature versus nature. Man's nature versus the environment's nature. One of the chief differences between humans and all other species is that all other species adopt to their environment while mankind alters his environment so that it suits him. It is uniquely man's survival mode. Had humans not been able to use their minds to alter their surroundings, they would have become the same as the big lizards of yore. Mankind will likely win the battle but at the risk of losing the environment (see "Caves of Steel -- Asimov). The proper thing, as I see it, would be to convince companies like Monsanto, especially their competitors, to figure out a way to produce similar results that is environmentally friendly. The only thing standing in the way is the profit motive which is pretty powerful. But also, keep in mind that if Homo Sapiens ever stops altering his environment, civilization's progress stops at that point.