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From: TEDtalksDirector
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  • I also just quoted an 11yr old in one of my Masters research papers. GO BIRKE!!!!

    Ireland

  • I just quoted an 11 year old kid in my Masters thesis proposal. Way to go Birke Baehr. You are an Authority in my eyes. Hope you already know about Dr. Max Gerson and his work. One Love from Kenya

  • It's amazing how pervasive food is. Every second commercial is for food. Every second TV episode takes place around a meal. In the city, you can't go ten feet without seeing or smelling a restaurant. There are 20 foot high hamburgers up on billboards. I am acutely aware of food, and its omnipresence is astounding.

  • I would have liked this better if his mom gave the speech and then only had the kid give a small opinion about this.

    And he's obviously just a voicebox for his parental units.

  • THIS KID IS RIGHT!! I have several nutrition degrees and believe me HE IS ** RIGHT!! If you think not, you are (mis)formed by the media and other commercial companies making money out of you and they don't worry what they consists. Wake up

  • Why so much prejustice? I think this was a good talk and I think I could learn some things from him, it seems like people think he doesn't know what he is talking about just because he is young, I don't think that is true, and when this guy grows up he'll know even more.

  • Wrong kid people has been eating genetically engineered crops for thousands of years.

    There is no plant crop that is not genetically engineered there is no such thing as a non engineered food crop in this day and age. How so because when we came up with the idea of farming we took plant growth from nature and started engineering it to do what we want it to. corn bananas wheat onions broccoli lettuce non of it is natural. neither are cows pigs or chickens.

  • May be there's some hope in the future after all...

  • he sounds like one of the kids from little rascals lol

  • Birke is SOOOO right! I just agree with him for everything he said! Who ever posted something against this little boy is so ........... bad at thinking the positive way! Watch the video again and you will see the true side of the video. Birke, that was a awesome presentation!! Everyone remember to help the planet, think 'organically'!!!!! Awesome !!!!!!!!!!!!!! Who doesn't feel good eating organic food? I think he delivered a great message! Go, boy!

    Propianist1 (I don't only watch piano videos)

  • Sounds like he was force fed. No doubts in my mind. He's packing a decent message, but I'm not sure it's the right one. I feel better eating organically grown food over processed pseudofoods, but if you cannot grow it EVERYWHERE and make it readily available to everyone, then the corporation superfarms win.

  • i want to ask something - did this fabulous young man write this presentation? or did someone write it for him?

    either way.... finally our own children are beginning to realise the truth and are asking us important questions - questions such as "Daddy, when you first heard that intensive farming was destroying the planet, what did you do?"

    i suspect all the negative comments here are from people who dont like being asked those kind of questions, questions that require us to actually think

  • So, here the part where someone can demonstrate to me a situation in which complete proteins and genes are being taken up in the gastrointestinal tract...

    Also, what exactly is it about putting these fish genes in tomatoes that makes them dangerous... aren't they the exact same genes we'd ingest WHILE EATING THE FREAKING FISH IN THE FIRST PLACE?!!?!??!

    Eating genes from the north atlantic trout = perfectly safe

    Eating those same genes when they're incorporated into the genome of a tomato =

  • 1. A gene, that infers frost resistance, is spliced into the genome of a tomato.

    2. That gene, when coupled with a promoter, culminates in the production of a protein that results in frost resistance.

    3. A human ingest the protein and breaks down both this franken-gene, and the proteins it encodes for, into their component parts (nucleic acids and amino acids, respectively)

    3.5 ???????????????

    4. These individual amino and nucleic acids cause cancer...

  • First off, let me say I love this new youtube system where comments that are voted to the gain precedence over all the flaming cr* *.I may only have a BSc, so I can hardly consider myself an expert, but lets see if anyone can follow along here and find an obvious logical flaw in this whole 'GMOs can cause cancer" debacle.

  • Begin with; To MOMO THE BELLYDANCER...........start at the bottom and work you way to my last entry. Unless your too brain dead from your diet. By the way cancer makes people angry and act out just like you are doing. When the new blood test becomes available for cancer testing at your local doctors office I suggest you have yourself tested because I bet your diet will qualify you as a candidate for cancer. You certainly have it of the mouth.

  • @BlossomDog10

    "cancer makes people angry and act out just like you are doing"

    I have to say: this has one of the more original ad hominem attacks I have ever witnessed. Bravo!

  • To Momo.....Also it affects his attitude like MOMOTHE BELLYDANCER. If you were to change your diet yourself then maybe you wouldn't be such a nasty person and my guess is you are probably pretty rotten inside from your own diet because it really shows in your attitude about a kid from the same place I am from. Asheville, NC. One last thing when you die and they need to bury you or creamate you their will be a huge mess to clean up and where will they put it hopefully in a trash can.

  • To Momo........My sons 1st grade teacher suggested I have him tested because she couldn't get him to comply. I told her I wasn't going to drug my kid to make her job easier. Now with that said if I let my kid have high-fructose(corn by-product) or food with dye then he does get hyper and most of the kids in his class were overweight. Perhaps like MOMOTHE BELLYDANCER.

  • To MomotheBellyDancer.......I am shocked by how you have reacted to this kid. I too homeschool and one of the reason is because our stupid school system had a slushy machine in the cafeteria. My kid is 10 years old and you can't tell me that he wouldn't choose a high-fructose slushy for lunch then what else was provided. That is only one of the reason I home school. The other is because 85% of his class was on Adavan to suppress the kids and supposedly make them learn better.

  • @BlossomDog10

    ". I too homeschool"

    I really feel awfully sorry for your kid. I had some stupid teachers, for sure, but to have a stupid parent as a teacher must really fuck him up for life.

    "our stupid school system had a slushy machine in the cafeteria"

    So what? Make sure your kid enough exercise and he'll be fine. And if he ever overeats on slush puppies, you'll be sure he'll never do it again for quite a while.

  • yes the magic of genetically engineered food..(GMO'S), let's see the studies done that prove these GMO's are not toxic to humans and animals...ah that's right,.there are not any such peer reviews science papers, debate...nope nothing but monsanto's word that there is no problem... the problem is..is that there are studies done which prove that animals fed these magic GMO's develop cancers, kidney and liver disease...etc... if you want to feed the world..why not grow the crops for food not fuel

  • WTF.........

  • This kid got the information from Food Inc. and the World According to Monsanto... LOL, but still what a great advocate he is! :)

  • This kid got the information from Food Inc. and the World According to Monsanto... LOL, but still what a great advocate he is! :)

  • Regardless of whether this speech was prepared by someone else or whatnot, it's clear he's showing the awareness kids need nowadays in response to their environment and their world. Yeah the tomato fish could be bizarre and whatnot, but thats 1) the way he's learning things and applying concepts 2) exactly how bizarre GM can and will effectively go down the slippery slope.

  • omfg genetically engineered food is GOOD Thing

  • First I thought you guys were to hard on this kid, but damn you are right. And agree with one of the highest rated comments - TED used to be something, but now.....

    The first TED talk I heard was about brain engineering, and I seriously had a jaw-fall. But this?

  • Can't make kids aware soon enough. Impressive kid. :-)

  • this is so fake lmfao .. kid get real, stop vomiting words you memorized..

    try to emphasize more the natural speak.

    THIS IS FAKE, ALL MEMORIZED, WRITTEN PREVIOUSLY BY HIS FATHER OR W/E!

  • Looks like a 'gossip column' by looking at the dislikes. Obviously, albeit the minority, the food industry complex is present here.

    That could boil down to the 75% of them paid as lil' as $6. an hour ~ for the furtive NWO/Lobbyist's/CIA job of mixing it up with all us grassroots who've clicked "Like". Others of them (25%) have honest integrity to the fact that technology & nature will meld synergistically if technology (conscious life) is to survive .

    user/neothinksociety#p/u/18/u LJoz0HFRRE

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  • hey guys, lay off....

    this kid said things he was told to... he memorized the speech very well, performed in front of a huge audience and didn't make a fool of him self.

    GIVE HIM SOME PROPS )

    you all are right: organic food can't feed everybody on this planet and he doesn't know the what's true hunger is, he probably doesn't even know how babies come to this earth.....so what? he is 11 for god sake... GOOD JOB BOY!

    good luck at school, screw the dislikes and keep the good job!!! =)

  • All food you eat is already genetically modified through thousands of years of selective breeding.

    It's very easy to be against this stuff when you are reading this with a full stomach.

    Embrace science.

  • So he is against GM foods and industrial farms... or his parents are.

    I say send this kid to Africa to experience and witness true hunger and suffering. He's still to young to understand the amount of people this planet has to feed. Organic farming is no longer able to feed everyone.

    He will watch this 10 years from now and be ashamed.

  • Wow, a picture of a fish-tomato, this talk must be full of substance. Fuck this talk.

  • Like this comment if you don't like Momothebellydancers or Gatorades... This kid is awesome, has it right on and give him a break, he is 11 for !!"¤!" sake!

  • "Greenpeace presents Citizen's Initiative on GMO's"

    /watch?v=B8S2KS0kdXQ&feature=s­ub

  • Agenda or not, script or not, the kid makes valid points. I don't want my food to be branded/patented by the corporations (i.e. Monsanto). Cut him some slack and try to see the big picture.

    While you're all griping about a child giving a TEDTalk he will be working toward making a positive impact in the world. If you have a better idea about what to eat, tell us. If not, please devote your energies to a another productive and positive cause. Thanks in advance for making the world a better place.

  • I'm not sure if genetically engineered food is bad for your health or has many negative consequences, but he does have a point about the way we produce our food today, and how we actually don't know what's going on. We should treat our food (especially meat) with more respect.

    And please people, don't hate this kid for being smarter and more successful than you are.

  • @TomK2602

    "And please people, don't hate this kid for being smarter and more successful than you are."

    Being brainwashed into an agenda does not equal being smarter and more successful.

    Your bullshit sensor should have gone off when he said "...trying to make it do things not intended by nature!" and made the argument "I like fish and tomatoes, but together?! YUCK!" That's not an argument. If you think it is, I question your ability to evaluate this talk.

  • This whole video made me dumber I think.

  • You are sick people!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! There is one kid, clever than you and you give him 428 minus???? Eat your Macdonalds, stupid nation and shut the f...ck up!!! You want to live this life, you want genetic engineered crops, you like to be slaves on the system, so I or any normal person should ever take care of you? Why I have to live in city with millions of cars and smoke,when I can live somewhere where there are more electric cars and clean air, why I'm writing this comment to zombies?

  • hope his paid good

  • Home-schooled? Poor kid... it's a nice message, but all this just sounds: FAAAAAAAAAAAAKE.

    Kids eating vegetables because "they know more about it"?

    Sugar is what we all like - period.

  • An 8 year old boy giving this speech, on this topic, really only made me think of one thing. What we eat from the day we are born is meant to be natural. Breastfeeding is proven better than formula. I know not all mothers can, or are willing for various reasons. All that Gerber baby food is pureed normal foods you start your children on. I bought a grinder ($6.00) and made my own, it was much cheaper, easier, and you have a larger variety of foods to offer them that way

  • There is not a shortage of anything in this world except sharing!

  • Monster Salmon And Butterflies - 52min Documentary

    "/watch?v=W4LJ2iBJnhw&feature=­sub"

  • "Kids are attracted by colorful packaging and plastic toys. I must admit, I used to be one of them." I used to enjoy the simple pleasures of childhood and innocence. Now, I'm a jaded eco-freak who obsesses over things like CAFOs and "frankenfoods". Thanks mom and dad!

  • This kid is a tool at worst and a useful idiot at best (or vice versa, not sure which would actually be worse). I wouldn't be surprised if his parents force-fed him this psudo-science, anti-corporation crap and helped to trot him out there on stage because they thought it was "cute" or "inspirational".

    Frankly it's sickening when kids are fed lines by *any* cause because I seriously doubt that this kid has developed the critical thinking skills necessary to make a sound argument.

  • They got to him early, didn't they? Many people don't become misinformed alarmists until college.

  • I have an idea.  Let's let an eight-year-old give a TED talk against Vaccines and modern medicine while we're at it.

  • WTF do 11-old on TED talk?

  • This kid indirectly supports deforestation via promoting his idealist fantasy of farms... the world is a harsh reality, he needs man up and think of a solutions instead of bagging and promoting a negative movement against the smart people who actually did something good for this planet in ways much more complex than what he may yet not understand.

  • OMG! Why on earth is TED letting some kid tarnish its reputation by touting pseudo-science? The input of a fish's gene was just an experiment that is NOT in every Safeway tomato. Irradiation = bad?! Pay the farmer or pay the hospital... yeah, Albertson's fruits and vegetables are just killing me...

  • love the irony of the IBM add at the end

    I agree with him been a good speaker and very motivated

    but how does any kind of fanatism belongs to TED ?

    actually I get the importance of such controversy buy it personally really bothers me

  • Agh! Putting fish DNA into a tomato does not make that tomato part fish!

  • Not another stupid kid.

  • I eat pure organic food and i can't remember when I was last sick!!!

    GO ORGANIC FOOD!!!

  • @ds5221 Mwell... I eat whatever food I come across and I can't remember when I was last sick. GO ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE!!!

  • OK, so the tomatofish thing is silly. There's valid debate to be had about genetically-modified foods. (Do we need 'em to feed the billions of people on Earth or are they too risky?)

    Everything else isn't really debatable: Factory farming is bad for the environment, bad for public health, and bad for the animals themselves. Kids getting hooked on sugary cereal is bad.

    If you criticize organic farming and won't consider changing your diet because the tomatofish is silly you're not helping.

  • What the fuck is an 11-year old doing at Ted Talks? He should grow up, finish school and then form his own opinion about things, instead of rattling off a script.

    This, my friends, is the end of Ted Talks. The decline started with all these religious nutcases and authors of dime-a-dozen shitty novels spouting their ignorant crap, and it culminates in this toe-curling yapping of an overly nervous kid. Bye bye. It has been fun, as long as it was still any good.

  • @MomoTheBellyDancer

    I agree that there are some pretty sketchy talks. It's also clear that sometimes they have inexperienced speakers who aren't experts, you know, just for fun. They only give those speakers five minutes. I'm OK with that.

  • @MomoTheBellyDancer pay attention to the start it said "recorded at TEDxnextgeneration... were you this well spoken at 11?

  • @alackofoxygen89

    "you have no friends"

    I used to have friends, but got rid of them since all they did was drink all the beer from my fridge.

  • @MomoTheBellyDancer The speaker is of no significance, whats being said is.

  • @MomoTheBellyDancer You should never judge by someone's age, but by content. I mean, if you read a book that blew you away, would you be moved less once you learned it was written by a young person? Even if he is basically quoting, if he is quoting truth, then a kudos is in order. Peace!

  • @jerami101

    "You should never judge by someone's age, but by content."

    I do.The content is rubbish. By the time this boy grows up, he will very likely be SO embarrassed by the total crap they made him say. Tomato-fish, for sure.

  • @MomoTheBellyDancer Well, shit-for-brains, your moronic opinions/projections about "the end of TedTalks" is about as correct/appealing as your GMO'd face.

    Since when did a scumbag like you become the gatekeeper for the rest of us; well maggot face?

    Confirmed here is that the only "ignorant crap" is what spews from that talmudic face of yours; you haven't fooled anyone...nice try ASSHOLE!

    The only thing that is "nervous" are one-world zionist pisdrinkers like you.

    Understood puke?

  • @EscapeHatchery

    "well maggot face?"

    Yes, personal insults are always the proper way to base your arguments on.

    "talmudic face"

    What does that even mean? Please try to be at least somewhat coherent when you hurl insults at someone.

  • @MomoTheBellyDancer If nothing else you could keep in mind that the E in TED is for Entertainment and look at it that way.

  • Some hippie bullshitter parents think their snot nosed little shit is so cute that I'll drop everything and pay out of the ass for flaky fucking vegetables just because you pushed him onstage with a script and a promise of an extra sack of sprouts this Christmas? Fuck you into a cocked hat, ted. WTF?

  • @DoctorRandomercam

    I have some sympathy for people who want but really can't afford sustainably-grown food. But there are plenty of people who can afford to but don't improve their diets just because crappy food is cheaper. Of course it's cheaper! It's crappy!

    If you spend less that 15% of your income

  • Norman Borlaug, the man who saved more than an estimated one billion lives through the invention of genetically engineered crops, once said, "organic farming is only capable of feeding 4 billion people." There are 7 billion people in this world. Now who wants to be part of the 3 billion that has to suffer?

  • @gatoradesux1 Not true, mankind is hardly using technology to actually improve their lives. There are ways to feed the whole world, only problem is money. Humans have know-how and even resources but no money to pay for that kind of technology. I think if people want to improve and actually reach to actual human potential then they have to realise that there are some problems that have to be fixed first. These problems are like church back in the days, total anti progression right there.

  • @gatoradesux1 False dichotomy. The alternative to inorganic farming is not 3 billion suffering people. Much of our land is wasted. Most people's front and backyards could be used to grow crops instead of hosting unproductive lawns.

  • @gatoradesux1 GMO foods have caused more harm than good - they cause mass disease - if GMO's were actually being used to feed the hungry why then do we have stockpiles of corn sitting around in the USA that are not being used? Why do these GMO companies spend money trying to find new uses for corn? corn derived plastics? that dosnt feed starving people....HFCS corn made into suger? that dosnt feed people (we already had sugar) they could have easily taken all that corn and givin it to starving

  • @gatoradesux1 GMO farming is useless for trying to feed the world - if that is your true goal then you would never grow mono cultured fields of crops - you get more yield per acre when growing crops together - example - 4 corn stalks with beens growing at its base using the corn stalk as a post to grow up and squash at the base of the corn to shade out any unwanted plants growth - thats just one example - and the beans put nitrogen into the soil as they grown which in turn helps make more food

  • @gatoradesux1 notice he said organic farming is only capable of feeding so many - thats false in so many ways its disgusting - and of corse he would say that hes trying to make money off his seeds - just as all gmo companies say we want to feed hunger and do nothing about it really - your comment is for foolish people who dont know the entire truth - and just take one simple statement as absolute truth - your post is the perfect example of human ignorance

  • When scale is reduced and nutrients are cycled, farms are more productive. They are also more diverse, which by industrial standards is a form of inefficiency. Mono-cropping is the result of perverse incentives.

    The problem is being framed incorrectly to only include large scale farming operations (including industrial organic). These monoculture farms are more materially wasteful, but they are centralized and thus easier to industrialize, streamline and make secondary and tertiary profits on.

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  • @gatoradesux1 People will starve anyway, not because there is no food, but because they have no money to buy food. If you have money, there's plenty of food available.

  • @gatoradesux1

    So you think we should let all 7 billion become obiece, sick, fat, lazy and stupid on the genitically engineerd foods in stead of keeping food healthy and try to work something out with all the resources which - according to most unbiased science - are purely capable of supporting the world's population if distributed fairly?

    Where's your source that what Borlaug say is true, btw?

  • @gatoradesux1 The food system debate in the US (and abroad) isn't that simple, and I'm not sure we should take the word of a guy who makes his living from the status quo. The world already produces enough calories for everyone, but 1B people get more than their bodies know what to do with while another 1B don't get enough, and both groups are physically sick b/c of it. Besides, organic farming itself has become industrialized.

  • @gatoradesux1 Not going against this, but who estimated these one billion lives? Just curious about the expertise or background of who said this

  • @TEMPproductions that is the reason he won the nobel peace prize.

    "One of the greatest threats to mankind today is that the world may be choked by an explosively pervading but well camouflaged bureaucracy."

  • @gatoradesux1 I think that statement would have more weight if there weren't so many people in the world already starving.

  • @gatoradesux1 Do we honestly need more humans crowding our planet? I'd be perfectly happy with a 4 billion cap.

  • @Nyanoko Yeah i agree with you, its amazing that the 2 most "liked" comments are against this video

  • @danielmartinex Yeah, that is so sad. They are just troll accounts too.

  • This kid is absolutely right.

    @gatoradesux1 organic farming can support 7 billion of us (hydroponics is a viable solution), what it can't support is the billions of cattle heads that are being fed with much more input energy than they are outputting when served as meat.

    Eat organic and vegetarian and you'll be doing your share.

  • Whoever wrote this kid's speech is a dumbass. GM food is not harmful in the slightest.

    ... It's also annoying, barely audible and reeks of a hidden agenda.

    Come on TED! You do this to appeal to the "awww" in your viewers but you forget the audience for these TED talks is slightly smarter than for typical youtube viral crap.

  • @Aslapacrosstheface Couldn't agree more sir.

  • Last time I heard, organic farming wasn't capable of feeding the world?

  • God this kid is annoying. That's clearly not his speech.  I don't watch TED for this crap.

  • This is kinda sad. The little guy doesn't really know what he's talking about. He learned the speech by heart (which was written by anyone but him) and clearly wants to get it over with. It's sad because he's actually old enough to think for himself. He could have come up with his own speech. Instead, he just repeats somebody's agenda. That's not what TED is about.

  • Genetically spliced food is going to save the planet though. They aren't just randomly splicing killer tomatoes. those crops are gonna save the planets. We have no idea what causes cancer. those links he brings up are corelated, perhaps, but they are probably symptoms of a larger cause.

    Kid has a point about overfarming and animal production though

  • That's great!

    Just what do you do about the Food Safety Bill written by big agro to supress small farmers?

    To all the cynics at least it's nice to hear propaganda from the other side for a change. You can keep your GMO, TV / State Brain Washed, Corn Syrup Diabetic, Vaccinated kids. Put simply, Monsanto is Evil.

  • Comment removed

  • WOW! This is an intelligent kid! This is a very informative 5 minutes!

  • Yeah, he's a smart and funny little kid. When he grows up though, he'll realize how awfully inefficient organics are. He obviously has no idea why genetic engineering is essential to continue feeding the world. Ugh, fish genes wouldn't cause cancer, so they wouldn't in tomatoes. That's oversimplified, but if you actually read studies, you'd see the results. Ugh, organics disgust me.

  • Comment removed

  • I was wondering what a kid was doing on TED, and then he started commenting on genetically engineered crops and used a "frankenfood" image tomato-fish.

    Then I started wondering why the fuck anyone bothered to listen to this moron, and why anyone thought it was a good idea to feature him on TED?

    "Did you know that rats who ate... etc."

    No, I didn't know, and that's because you're blowing it out of your ass.

    He should learn to cite and actually read before giving a presentation.

  • 366 thumbs down, 366 jelous children.

  • This kid makes me want to have kids so they can be fucking brilliant too :D

  • @0Krusnik0 BTW, brilliance = actually being aware of the world around them

  • read Denialism by Michael Specter. It explains exactly why this irrational fear of industrial and ge foods belongs with 11 year olds.

  • @ThatsSouTrik

    Watch "The World According To Monsanto". It shows why many of the fears of invasive hegemonic agribusiness corporations are well founded and why leftists defending them while thinking they're defending pure scientific inquiry is laughable.

  • This rings of indoctrinated youth.

    The big issue is government steps to control all resource and food supply- even what you grow on your own property. If some want to live 'organic" good for them. If others want to increase yields of crops good for them. Just don't let the agribusiness crowd via legislation constrain resources and monopolize markets.

    I would be interested in data on what type of foods those who work in the GMO food industry buy for their OWN consumption. That would be telling.

  • i wonder how would these "enlighted" ppl resolve world hunger when we would suddenly stopped all these evil farms which produce much more than those happy little bio farms

  • What's the point in using pictures like the "tomaofish". Did he and Kirk Cameron work together on that one?

    Also, the greatest humanitarian hero the world has ever seen, Norman Borlaug, supported ge crops. What more needs to be said really?

  • This kid is friggin' awesome. Not to mention he made me realize that in reality, I mostly wasted about a day of my life reading "In Defense of Food" - it's all here! (No offense Michael Pollan)

  • 11 WOW!!! Nice one! :)

  • He is 11 years old. No offense but he just can't understand the complete impact of all these things. Sure, I agree with what he's saying in part but in the end genetically engineered food might be the only thing to solve world hunger. I believe the stats are that 1 child dies every 5 seconds due to starvation and malnutrition. He just is lucky to have been born in a place where he's not one of those statistics. American food does need an overhaul though.

  • I agree with what he stands for, but it would have been better if he was actually educated into WHY there is something wrong with the system instead of abusing emotionally driven rhetorics.

    The tone of the talk sounded more like a political or religious rally geared to play on gut feelings.

    Just because he is a kid that can talk like an adult does not make him smart or wise. His (typical) American arrogance doesn't help him much either IMHO.

  • Genetic Modification is a process not a product and the issues associated with it shouldn't wrong be attributed to the science, they are predominantly ethical and political factors. Lets not slate something that feeds millions of people and this GM food is preventing health issues arising from vitamin and mineral deficiencies.

  • ted today you have chainge my thinking on wich side of the fence you sit , 

  • He has a heart in the right place, but he still needs lot more education...

  • Ugh, what silly nonsense. Genetically modifying foods allows us to feed billions. Humans have been genetically modifying foods for thousands of years. Corn from maize, cows from aurochs, and wheat from grasses. Somehow doing it in a lab is going to lead to a tomato with fish scales. This topic is about as mature as the 11 year old giving it, sadly, adults believe this tripe as well.

    Please: Go google Norman Borlaug. The man fed BILLIONS by modifying staple crops.

  • @majinspy

    I'm not really buying that path. It's much more sustainable to feed billions by not wasting so much food for livestock feed and distributing it according to need rather than profit, than just produce more and at the same time consume more resources. Even the perfect crops wouldn't help world hunger when most of it would go to waste.

  • @Esrhan So you're going to redistribute food by need alone and move the world towards a vegetarian diet? That isn't going to happen. Sorry, capitalism is more or less here to stay.

  • @majinspy

    To your questions: no and no. Capitalism on the other hand will eventually become obsolete when it simply can't sustain itself any longer.

  • @Esrhan Capitalism is more resilient than you give it credit for. As things get more scarce, they will naturally readjust. If suddenly the starving / hungry of the world can find some way to compete within capitalism and demand food with their money, that will rise prices. Then, you will see more people move towards less meat and cheaper foods.

    As long as the hungry of this world have nothing to offer but need and want, they will not get anything other than scraps. This is just fact.

  • @majinspy

    I'd hardly call it naturally readjusting since most scarcity in a capitalistic society is artificial to begin with.

    I get the facts though. I really just don't like them and try to do my part to become the change I want to see.

  • @Esrhan Even when am not able to fully grasp your concept, I found it to be very interesting. There's anyhow you can e-mail some information on this?

  • who are the morons who didn`t like this?

  • The kid strikes me a bit as weird, not because he's so passionate about a topic that most kids don't care about yet, but somehow he strikes me as a bit brainwashed and false. His comment about being homeschooled didn't help either. Usually I associate that with wacko Christians. :D I wouldn't be surprised if his parents trained him to deliver speeches about this topic.

  • @ReignbowSmite sure, it should be obvious crossing horses and donkeys, crossing birds, crossing wine grapes, etc were just more crude than doing so in the lab.

    Selective breeding is of course constrained by the ability to the two specimens to produce an offspring, so they needed more commonality back then. But that is why farmers in the previous centuries would expose their crops to radiation, knowling or not to experiment with mutations. Now, /that/ is scary.

  • if anyone is interested in learning more about Joel Salatin, i highly recommend seeing the film "Food Inc"

  • @ReignbowSmite hee. can't you even tell when you're being mocked?

  • I.. oogh. Okay, this kid is just too much. He's a good talker for someone so young but he's just... Come on. He doesn't address artificial selection vs genetic engineering, which is really just the next logical step from the other.

    This really is a complicated subject. Maybe while he's being home schooled, his parents can stop with the holier-then-thou nonsense and read up on what a straw man argument is.

  • Thanks for helping to spread to word young Baehr. Great speech

  • Guh I can't listen to this child. I just hate the sound of childrens' voices.

  • Not bad, but an 11 year old, even a child prodigy, is still an 11 year old.

  • I hope this kid watches this after he becomes a biologist.

    OMG.. Such ignorance.

  • @ReignbowSmite I'm not sure, what the wording was, of that you responded to, but I have been a critique of this tedtalk, so I think it does concern me. What matters at ted.com is the ideas, not who tells them... or at least it used to be so. The problem is, that the kid missed the mark completely, and didn't make a cohesive argument. Now, I'm all for giving kids opportunity to speak, but if they are going on a stage, where so many great thinkers has stood, they should have their facts straight!

  • NATURALISTIC FALLACY -- IT BURNS

  • Lets be realistic, nobody wants to hear about issues from a kid... you want to hear it from somebody who has much more experience with the world and more education. You could convince this kid to say anything. Nothing against him... he's just a kid...

    I can't watch this, too fucking annoying.

  • @ReignbowSmite thats the problem nowadays.. we need identification systems for people who communicate online, maybe with anonymous zones... just so people realise the size of their own boots

  • This kid is awesome!

  • No one likes this kid for some reason...

  • the hostility on this board toward this kid is spurred by a belief that he is espousing anti-science rhetoric, which he isn't. it's against invasive agribusiness that is, as usual, trying to destroy competition. if anything this is more "small business against big business.

    the hostility is bordering on the irrational. And most are left-wing, which makes their support of international agribusiness sublimely contradictory.

  • Awww, he is so cute. I don't want to patronize him... but I want to pinch his cheeks!

  • @bosyeux2 I meant more like "topics of discussion" instead of "points."

    Regardless of what you are discussing, tossing out a few statements without sufficient evidence is no way to gain support for your cause, even if it may be important.

    I personally share many of his views, but that's only because I've done my own research on the subject.

    If this were my first exposure to these issues, I wouldn't take it seriously at all.

    Bad TED, bad!

  • Quite the straw man this kid portrays of genetically modified food. it has the potential to fix a lot of our food problems.

  • @Mystile33

    Do you think Monsanto will help "fix" these "problems"?

  • @Mystile33 But people abuse it. We all know that even if genetically altered food has some good to it, most of the time, the chemical crap we do to our food doesn't help us.

  • 11Y.O. > conventional wisdom

  • I like this kid... But unfortunately with all the meat we love eating in the Western World not all of it can come from a nice little farm.