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Biotech and the Environment
John Holkeboer writes: "Is biotech all that bad? The scourge celebre of environmentalists is gaining supporters right and left for nothing less than its environmental soundness. Genetically engineered corn requires less pesticide spray and is a renewable resource that could replace petroleum. For example, Dupont is developing "Sonora"- a stretch resistant fiber that can compete with polyester but isn't 100% petroleum-based. As one industry chemist points out, "Clearly, for the chemical industry, sustainable development is the future."" The Village Voice also has a good biotech article this week, talking about the genetically engineered bollworms that we mentioned a few months ago.
I don't agree that commercial use is fine. There is also a concern of crossing of the engineered plants with natural plants. The problem is that once the new DNA is out in the environment it is very hard if not impossible to get it back. Thus crops grown for purely commercial purposes may have consequences on other plants that are not.
Roundup-ready soybeans, from those earth friendly softies at Dupont, leads to INCREASED usage of stuff. The genemod is intended to produce a plant that can survive a deluge of roundup, which is an herbicide. That's one of the major GM crops. Generally, GM has been a resounding dud for farmers. Lower yields, more expense, more inputs. Also more hype. THEN we have to worry about the relative scientific rigor of those with a vested interest in the use of a product.
My friends and I, staunch environmentalists all, have watched in terror as the movement has been inherited seemingly by the mentally deficient fear mongerers and general luddites.
There are real, significant, serious issues relating to biotech - chiefly issues of implementation and politics (re:corporate greed), *not* of theory/principles.
Real issues -
It's not the principle of altering the plant - it's the implementation without careful review of all consequences
Transfer of DNA between species, or even between plant and animals! Not a real issue! Flakes are screaming about mutant this and half-animal that, but so what?? It's frigging CODE, in the SAME language (DNA / GTCA). Animals and plant kingdoms are human labels - like 'races', they have little to do with reality, other than being a convenient way to classify organisms by their structure. They still share huge portions of thier DNA, though, since all life on Earth pretty much evolved from the same source code - heh heh but with lots of code forks....
Boy, what a rant...I think i even became semi-coherent for a bit...I just get worked up...sound environmental concerns are being drowned out by these damned idiots...if I hear one more ignorant granola-unit who hasn't bathed in a week say "frankenfood" I'm going to be very put out.
The worst moment I recall was trying to be patient and explain to some of these techno-phobes that science isn't bad or a 'tool of the oppressor'...as if corporations owned science. These twits had no ability to distinguish between concept/idea and implementation/practice. Yeah - corporations have implemented some scary shit. That doesn't mean the science is "evil", it means "evil" jerks are using the science to the ends that "evil" jerks will use anything...
aaaggghhhh why do i bother - i know i'm preaching to the choir here...
He wasn't talking about eating new foods. He was talking about old foods which have been changed.
Put yourself in your cousin's position -- you know you're allergic to cashews, but you eat wheat bread daily with no trouble. Then people start making varieties of wheat with genes from cashews which express the protein or whatever that you're allergic to.
If all the wheat on the market is these varieties, wheat just moved to the "don't eat" column. Yeah, it might only take one bad experience for you to learn. But you've been forced to make a major change in your diet.
Or say only 1%, or 0.1%, of the wheat has these genes. Now you either have to avoid wheat bread, even though almost all of it is OK, or you gamble every time you eat it. Unless, of course, the information is on the label, in which case it's only an inconvenience.
The flip side, though, is that we could probably make varieties of cashews without those key genes, and you could eat them. But the market probably isn't big enough to be worth it.
A little while back, the environmental activist industry was really up in arms about "BT" corn...
Regardless of whether the constitutive expression of Bt by bioengineered corn has had short-term effects (positive or negative) on any organism, it still stands as the most appalling idiotic, short-sighted, and forebodingly wrong decision ever made in the field of agriculture.
Bt is an excellent insecticide. It prevents the construction of chitin, which is used in insects' exoskeleton, including the digestive system. This causes the insects to die. Humans and mammals do not make chitin, and so Bt does not affect us. Since Bt application is perfectly safe, it is an important tool used by organic farmers to deal with insect infestations. Modern agriculture business isn't dominated by organic farming, though. It's a big corporation thing, with tight margins, too many acres, and not enough people to wander around and apply Bt just where the insects are. So instead, they decided to just have plants make Bt themselves, all the time. Sounds like a nice solution. No need for bad pesticides to be sprayed everywhere, but still no insects ruining the crop. Everything should be fine (and basically is, right now).
Except, we have plants cranking out Bt all the time now. And as it diffuses about, we get various Bt concentration gradients. Right in the middle of the crop field, there's a lot of Bt, and all the insects die. But get further away from the Bt spewing corn and you still find Bt, but in low concentrations. Here, most insects die, but some of them have screwy little mutations in some protein somewhere that helps fight off Bt. Perhaps it chews up Bt a bit, so it doesn't work quite as well. Maybe it results in a slightly different chitin anabolic pathway. Could be any number of little things that give that insect just a little bit of resistance. So the low concentrations hurt it, but don't kill it-- oh, and it gives them a huge advantage over all of its neighboring insects. So these little mutants increase in number, and new little mutations occur which make them even more resistant. Before you know it, Bt is nothing to them. They make chitin in a whole new way, and/or digest Bt to pieces before it can do anything.
Ok, so the insects were going to become Bt resistant in time, but anyone want to hazard a guess at one of the best things you can do to speed up the evolution of resistance? Try concentration gradients. It's like progressively harder video game levels. You suck on mission one, but it's easy, and you learn. By the time you're at mission twenty, you're a badass. If this Bt corn becomes widespread, Bt as an insecticide has only a few years of useful life. That seems like an awful waste of a wonderful tool. If only we were a tad more foresighted, we'd wait to deploy Bt genes in crops until we had a good expression trigger. For instance, if we spend a bit of time trying to find a nice chemical that announces the arrival of an insect infestation, and we tie Bt expression to that, then the plants does exactly what good organic farmers do now: use it only when needed. Doing that will stave off widespread resistant mutants for a long time (likely many decades or more). And it's within our reach within five or ten years. Instead, we opt for the quick buck, knowing that in five to ten years, we're going to be screwed again. Maybe, if we're lucky, we can design or discover a new compound that's as nice as Bt, but it will be much, much, much harder than rigging up a triggered expression system for Bt.
Scientists still do not know the outcome of all this testing, and like all things corporate, the goal is profits over everything else.
The Biotech industry already has an economic strangehold on countries like Argentina who now completely depend on genetically modified crops.
What you will not see in the news media (especially the U.S. corporate machine media) is that Thailand is considering bans on it. GMO seed has to be delivered in Singapore under armed guard. Thousands of farmers in 3rd world countries and in Europe are protesting, some even on the doorstep of Monsanto.
All of this is glossed over by the media or not mentioned at all, yet it's very real. Keep your eyes open. Check out alternative news media sites such as:
Independent Media Center
Organic Consumers Association
My wife and I buy organic whenever we can. The problem is, just because food is certified organic, doesn't mean it may have been contaminated by GMO crops nearby (pollen, etc..)
I find it horrifying that a bill requiring proper labelling of foods as genetically modified hasn't happened here in the U.S. yet. Companies like Monsanto don't want that to happen because of what happened in the UK. Foods were labelled as genetically modified and nobody bought them. Supermarkets like Tesco and Sainsbury's had to clear their shelves. This is where we can make a difference. Show Monsanto you do not support their shoddy research on GMO crops. Hit them in the wallet.
Fialar
One attempt is not a statistically valid sample set!!!
I've had hemp beer (passable). Cookies made from Hemp Flour (Excellent, although they could have used a better grinder). Hemp seeds as cereal (mmm.). Hemp oil for cooking (pretty good. Higher smoke point than olive oil, IIRC). I've heard that it makes a good salad too, but you then have to be careful you're dealing with a strain that produces little-to-no THC.
For the un-initiated: NOT ALL HEMP IS A DRUG. The active ingredient in pot is THC, and it is only produced in the flowers, and tends to collect on the surface of the flower and leaves. Seeds can be washed, and then have a zero-THC content. Hemp is easier to grow than soy, and has comparable fat and protien content, making it among the best food sources known to man! There are also strains bred for industrial applications that are good for cloth and rope, but would at best give you a head-ache if you smoke it!
I read somewhere of a study that showed that pot-heads were less-likely to get into car accidents than clean-and-sober people. I don't know how that works, and I wish I could refer people to the study, but I cannot.
This original poster is right and you're making the same mistake as other advocates for DNA manipulation. You're looking at a single part of the system in isolation. The corn field you speak of isn't floating in space on an asteroid. It's part of and interacts with everything around it. This kind of tunnel vision is apparent when people landscape with plants or place fish in an aquarium without regard on the environment that produced the particular species or how the species will interact. I guess humans are so adaptable we don't really consider context as all that important.
The original poster was also right when he says it's too late. The genie is out of the bottle. There will probably be many stories of wonderful successes with biotech and then one day we'll hear "Oops! We didn't think about that." and unfortunately all of humanity will pay the price for a few people's short term greed.
My analogy is that we're like curious children twiddling the knobs on a hifi audio system that we don't understand. And we're about to blow the speakers and give ourselves permanent hearing loss.
Well, I don't believe that biotech is all that bad but I don't believe that biotech will be all that it's cracked up to be. The question that no biotech scientist has ever truly answered about the products is the long term effects on somethings. Take a look at the corn that needs less pesticide to grow. What happens when nothing can kill the corn and it continues to grow and grow and take over all because it went from the lab to the enviroment and Mother Nature retweaked this little genetic gem into a weed like plant that can't be killed all because there isn't one scientist who can say that he/she knows exactly the outcome of certain changes.
Things my look great in the Lab (DDT) but sometimes it turns out differently in the enviroment (Cancer). BTW: I went the biotech conference here in San Diego and that was brought up. At least one panelist responded that biotech is 80% sure they know what will happen outside of the lab. That to me is a large enough gap to create the ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES!!!!!!
Save Pangaea!! Stop Continental Drift!!
"you don't eat genes." I guess you meant that we don't incorporate genes consumed wholesale into our bodies (eating bread doesn't turn us into wheat).
However, the genes spliced into biotech products can unintentionally create chemicals that are harmful to people. A company (don't have the name stored nearby) spliced some Brazil nut genes into soybeans to increase protein content. It was successful, except that people who have allergies to Brazil nuts were allergic to the new soybeans. It was caught during testing, but many anti-GMO folks fear that the testing is insufficient. The testing required by the FDA is no more rigorous for GMO foods than for other food products.
It is a terribly imperfect science. Many more genes are required to splice than just the one desired trait. In a test on mice, potatoes GMed to produce a protein somehow tended to stunt growth in mice, while potatoes with the protein injected straight into them did not. The results were in doubt, but that is not the only case. Researchers in Germany GMed petunias to be red and have antibiotic resistence, but they ended up also having more shoots and leaves, more resistence to fungi, and reduced fertility.
So, think about the "pleiotropy", that tendency to get more effects than those that were intended. We are genetically modifying our foods and getting these unexpected side effects, most of which are probably not discovered in testing. After the short testing, they are placed in the public food supply without even labeling for those who don't want to participate in the experiment.
Yes, a lot of people are starving out there, but GM foods are not going to save them, or at least not the ones developed so far. The crop modifications so far have been mostly related to pesticides, either adding pesticides (such as Bt) or adding resistence to pesticides. According to the companies, this will be cheaper for the farmer. However, in a survey of Ohio farmers, those that used GM soybeans instead of unmodified soybeans used less pesticide, but had to pay much more for seeds. Their net cost was almost equal ($144.50/acre instead of $145.75/acre).
The crushing of the small farmer is due to mechanization and competition from big growers. It happened in the US from the 1850s to early 1900s. Farmers without machinery couldn't compete with those with the machines that were ten times as labor-efficient or more. They had to buy the new equipment on credit. When they couldn't pay for the machines, the farms were lost to the bank, then sold off to the big growers, and the process continued.
And of course we do not say that the problem is too many people out there. World Hunger deals with that question. The world produes enough grain alone to provide every person with 3,500 calories a day, far more than any recommended amount. The problem is that people can't buy the products that are available.
For the future, non-GM processes are improving the efficiency of fields all the time, in the case of wheat by using traditional breeding methods to reduce stalk length so that more energy is spent on grain production. As long as the results aren't patented the way GM products have been so far, that would be a far better improvement in the poor farmer's problem, along with world hunger in the future as population increases.
As scientist are beginning to see, there are not enough individual genes to make up for the characteristics. The logical next step is a stacking of definitions. All of the sudden a minor change could have ramification FAR beyond those intended. Whether that be in the breeding or in standard maturation, the point is we don't know and if we count on the corporate mentality they will be making a profit selling to you and I LONG before any saftey study could be completed.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
of science. GM plants can grow in harsher conditions, with less water while producing greater yield.
The flip-side is ArcherDanielsMidland and seed that does not produce seed. They sell it MUCH cheaper to cash strapped farmers. The catch happens next season when the farmer is 'hooked' on buying seed.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Your case is correct but there's really no reason to get nasty simply because he misunderstood the direction of the argument. Sheesh.
Some of the genetically engineered plants that require less pesticide spray simply produce pesticides themselves. While that is no doubt very good for the workers who will not have to produce pesticides, the advantage for the environment seems much more dubious.
Also, plants are generally not sprayed with pesticide for some weeks before they are harvested, thereby ensuring that there will be little of it left when the plant reaches the consumer. If the plants produce the pesticide themselves, it is hard to make them stop at the appropriate time.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Really, I'm hardly convinced we know enough to think that these things are safe; there are a lot of people marketing this stuff, who profess to know everything about it -- and if we know anything, it's that someone who says they know everything -- knows a little and fakes the rest.
If you had spent that long, and that much cash, to develop these things, wouldn't you downplay the risks as well?
If a woodchuck could, would it be too lazy to?
i live in san diego too, and my old boss came down for the convention [he works for va bio tech institute]. i was really hoping to see more protestants [=cheap action]. i think they were expecting a couple thousands protestors, instead, the number of cops was almost exceeding the number of demonstrators. i feel jipped :)
--- d'oh
Who cares about feeding the poor around the world. It's the wail strains of canola in canada that matter.
Surfing the net and other cliches...
Surfing the net and other cliches...
(Who Meta-Meta-Moderates the Meta-Moderators?)
I don't see how you get off calling them intelligent.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
It pains me (no, really) that no biotech firm has yet genetically engineered grits. I'd love to be able to pour hot grits down my pants without the fear of burning my genitals.
Thank you.
That would be typhoons, not tsunamis. Tsunamis are generally caused by earthquakes. Although I suppose one could devise a scenario where the force generated by the butterfly's wings cascades through the ground, causing subtle changes in location and friction ultimately leading to an earthquake, the term Buttefly Effect is generally used to refer to the effects on meteorological conditions.
Veering even further offtopic, the original formulation of the idea apparently involved a sea gull!
--
But then again, I could be wrong.
And here I was thinking Chemical X gave living organisms super powers. Silly me.
--
But then again, I could be wrong.
One of the more common uses of genetic engineering in relation to crops seems to be to cause the plant to produce its own pesticides. It's not hard to imagine that those pesticides could have mutagenic or carcinogenic properties. Not that the difference between the plant making the pesticides itself or the plant absorbing the same pesticides sprayed onto it would necessarily be that great.
--
But then again, I could be wrong.
ARRRGHH...must...resist...
sigh.
Cashews technically aren't nuts, they're seeds. That's why you'll never find cashews sold in their shells.
At least I restrained myself from correcting your spelling of "halucinigenic".
--
But then again, I could be wrong.
The odds for success of any plan to prevent GM plants from spreading to the wild lie somewhere between those of my plan to keep my teens from experimenting with drugs and experimenting with sex.
A chance of success, but not good odds, and for many of the same reasons.
Hormones want to be free, like information.
Well, apparently, you only have to fool the majority of people for a little while.
All my argument requires is that it is theoretically possible that people are not making rational decisions about GM food. No where did I suggest that I had a means to determine if a given reason was rational or not.
My point is that we shouldn't give GM producers a death sentence until they are guilty beyond reasonable doubt.
But why would 57% of consumers avoid GM food? Isn't it at least possible that it's not for rational reasons? If so, then labelling GM food is helping insane people carry out their insanity! Producers of GM food need protection by the government until the freemarket forces permeate the debate. Otherwise they'll get boycotted and the world will never enjoy the benefits of genetic engineering.
Oh, yeah, tomatoes are a fruit. Get them out of the Vegetables Aisle!
I picked this up from another comment:
http://www.percyschmeiser.com/
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
*/Millions of blind kids in undeveloped countries would love to be able to choose to buy "natural" foods, but they can't afford it, and they wouldn't be able to read the label anyway because they're blind from Vitamin A deff. */
If they can't afford the stuff that's growing around them, they sure as heck can't afford something that has a per hectacre charge, not to mention administrative costs for field auditing and such. One of the major expenses for having a Microsoft house is the extensive "self-audits" you have to perform to ensure complaince. See Monsanto fiasco.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
With corporate sponsership of the education process (some slashdot story on that earlier last week, I think), it may be dificult to find your "gnu/corn".
:)
In the end, it's almost just like the debate of Linux/BSD vs. Microsoft. On one side, you have to work harder to get what you want out of it (diligence in the fields combating pests, weeds, drought, what not) and on the other side, ease of use with the problem of Lock In by the patent holder.
Just some other stuff to chew on..
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
http://www.percyschmeiser.com/
Just something to read through.
It's actually more like BSD and AT&T during the lawsuit years. You know the "that's our code and you can't freely distribute it!" and the whole rewrite process.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
Dupont is developing "Sonora"- a stretch resistant fiber that can compete with polyester but isn't 100% petroleum-based.
Oh good. That's JUST what the world needs - a way to make environmentally-friendly leisure suits.
ok, I understand the arguement that we might not know everything yet. that doesn't make playing w/ genetic modifications inherently evil. this is the way things are going folks and I would rather iron out some the of issues on relatively controlable and not morally charged living creatures like plants.
this is a very obvious extension of animal husbandry practices that nobody thinks twice about. there is little real difference except the new way is more precise.
I've read studies of a GM food test that showed them to be perfectly harmless...for adults. The test in question studied modifying potatoes to produce a natural fungicide: one produced by some weed or other. The same studies on pregnant females or developing organisms (the studies in question were all done on rats, thank god) revealed that the organisms fed on the GM food (potatoes, in this study) had a readically reduced development of brain and liver, compared to the test groups. Both test groups were fed potatoes from the same parent stock as the GM potatoes, one group unaltered and one group was fed potatoes that had been HEAVILY doped (by hand) with the fungicide that the GM potatoes had been engineered to produce in minute quantities.
The upshot: Something else completely unforseen, and still not completely understood utterly destroyed the food value of this crop. And most of the industry analysis missed it. We just have a bunch more to learn about the synergies at work here. DNA seems to be (to use a hack term) a "fractal-compression" representation of the organism. Changing one little bit changes other bits in ways we can't necessarily forsee.
I can't remember the name of the scientist who did the study I reference. I got it from the book "Trust Us, We're Experts", from the same fellows who brought you "Toxic Sludge Is Good For You." Unfortunately, my only copy is at home. If you want the ref, email me.
My name is dan, and I'm reachable at the machleid.com domain.
9:48pm up 426 day(s), 6:01, 16 users, load average: 220.60, 138.45, 63.50
In the pro column there's a strong case for decrease in the use pesticides. In the con column there's companies that would love to sell crop seed with super high yields that grow super fast that are infertile. This would trap farmers into buying one (patented) variety of seed in order to remain competitive, and force them to keep buying it. There's also a danger of engineering a crop that requires a certain specific fertilizer (they will sell you) to grow. The other only very real danger to people in mixing DNA is for people with food allergies. A few molecules of a food allergen can kill someone.
Ultimately, I hate to be the pestimist, but for all the ballyhoo over how great genetically modfied foods are, I think the knowedge and techiques will be abused by companies in order to make more money.
This grass is now taking over huge areas of underwater shorescapes and pushing out all natural life in certian areas. They are trying to contain it, but don't have much of a chance.
You're talking about Caulerpa taxifolia.
I used to live down in San Diego county, where this grass (actually an algae) is becoming a problem. You're right that it is an aquarium grass. You're right that people are flushing into the water system and that it's taking over the wetlands, doing huge amounts of ecological damage.
However, it's not a GE grass. It first started invading the Mediterranian in 1984, way before GE was possible. It IS a mutant (or hybrid, depending on how you look at it) strain. The natural variety only lives in tropical climes, but this mutant strain just grows and grows everywhere, annihilating everything around it.
Of course, there are no predators where it is spreading. As one article points out, sea urchins would prefer eating their own excement and pieces of plastic before eating Taxifolia. It's nasty stuff, but not every biological disaster has New Technology to blame. Just ask the australians.
I don't know about that. According to Snapple commercials, those fruits seem to be a decent crowd. They have all of the same feelings and experiences as humans. And, they even undergo routine drug screenings!
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Wo, there you pulled a fast one. The one natural mutation is only a slight modification to one gene (probably just one different amino acid in a protein). The two engineered changes you talk about are typically new genes, often from other organisms. Not that I disagree with you, but the engineered induced change is quite more substantial than the natural one. But, as you say, better controlled.
Presumably by a process that would prevent the development of the female parts of the plant, or block pollenation but not the production of pollen itself. Or through shoots resulting in new plants, like creosote bushes or aspen.
I agree that the fact that we are kind of fumbling around in the dark at this point is unnerving. However, the idea that we shouldn't proceed with this until we can be assured of doing it perfectly isn't particularly helpful, nor is waiting for perfection in any other area. Yes, we will poke and prod-- this is how learning, understanding, and optimization take place-- otherwise we will get nowhere at all. Besides, nature itself is far from bug-free-- evolution does not guarantee optimality, merely good-enough functioning.
By all means we must proceed with caution in this, perhaps even more so than we are now. However, there is nothing to gain from keeping the world a black box, and the potential gains of an entire area of studied unknown and unused.
---- I'm going to lead you kicking and screaming, giggling and laughing into the future.
The radical environmentalists, considering that strutting around in a corn suit appears to be the major highlight of their lives...
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
I would suggest then, that all modern food be labelled changed, because it's been evolving ever since they arose. Radical environmentalists who wish to be able to eat *something* are encouraged to dine on all-natural (and therefore Good For You!) mushrooms, belladonna, and grasses, secure in the knowledge that they're not directly hurting cute animals.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
This is bullshit. Not only was DDT very useful as pointed out in the previous reply, but the potatoes fed to mice produced a toxin from snowdrops not pesticide. The point of that experiment was that it was supposed to prove that GM's could be inherently harmful, and it didn't.
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
I cannot think of another subject (except possibly religion) about which so much crap is talked. There is nothing inately dangerous in genetic engineering. The fact that a crop is genetically engineered does not make it any more dangerous than the fact that your childs genes are a mix of yours and your partners.
Slightly more informed talk suggests that moving genes from one organism to another is in itself dangerous. Yet the mitochondria that are in every cell of your body (and carry DNA that is seperate to that in the cell nucleus and only inherited from your mother) are probably the remnants of a symbiotic relationship with a bacteria! A heap of genes present in humans and other animals have been shown to have originated in bacteria.
All plants already produce their own pesticides. For instance potatoes produce a toxin (a glycoalkaloid) that is as toxic as strychnine and arsenic. This is in every potato you eat.
The real question here is not that there is anything dangerous about genetic engineering per se but the possible effects of using it in individual situations. For instance, if you take a gene from corn that codes for vitamin C and then put it back in corn 400 times so that the corn produces twice as much vitamin C as normal, there is very little risk and with adequate testing of the crop I see no reason why it shouldn't be grown anywhere. But if you take a gene that codes for aflatoxin and put that in corn it could be dangerous. Testing of that crop would have to prove beyond any doubt that the aflatoxin was not produced in any part of the plant that could be eaten. Not to mention what would happen to the aflatoxin in plant residues etc. It would be difficult to prove that such a plant was safe.
Of course there is also a risk that genes would spread to surrounded (related) plants. However, there are many techniques that can prevent this. Furthermore, is it a real problem? Most mutations in plants (they occur constantly) are deletarious in one way or another. If a gene isn't useful to a plant then it won't be maintained in the wild. Even the overproduction of vitamin C may not be retained in wild plants. It could affect a plants water balance, or represent a drain on the plants carbon balance which mean that it is outcompeted in the wild.
This is a long post, but my point is that a blanket ban (or acceptance for that matter) of genetic engineering fails to understand the reality of what can be done, or is likely to happen. People may not like it, but all cases need to be looked at on an indiviual basis. Without testing you get no answers. Every day in every organism there is mutation occurring, genes moving from one organism to another, and new organisms appearing. Do you see any apocolapse?
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
Do you actually believe that the biotech companies have posters on the wall saying 'What natural system can we fuck up today?'
Exaggerations aside, it is truly naive to believe that the intention of creating genetically modified organisms is for 'feeding the poor'. The only feeding going on is that of the wealth of multinational agri-businesses. So called 'Golden Rice' is as far as I know the first entry in this big scam. Anyone can do the research and discover that in order to ingest the RDA of vitamin A, approximately 15 pounds of this pyrite must be eaten! In addition to that, absorption of vitamin A is dependant upon fat and protein in the diet, dependencies which I think may be lacking in the diet of the world's poor. The only way to begin to address starvation of the poor is to attack the root causes of their being poor. Genetically engineering special food only claims to correct the symptom and, in fact, worsens the actual illness.
An article in this months Mother Jones magazine (not available online yet, but check soon), "An Alternative to Progress", by Bill McKibben, mentions how vitamin A deficiency in "developing countries" is often a result of policies mandated by Western development organizations (like the World Bank). He visits a place in Bangladesh where they practice a form of organic subsistence farming, at odds with the policies the West is attempting to implement in Bangladesh.
The point of the article is that you only need crops like "golden rice" when you adopt conventional Western economic development policies. The area in Bangladesh that McKibben writes about is perfectly capable of providing its inhabitants with a balanced diets using the many crops they've grown for centuries. It's only by introducing Western-style monocultures (intended to create an export-dependent economy) that you end up with vitamin deficiencies.
Good reading. It certainly made me rethink the ideas I had about a country I've thought of in the past as one huge disaster area. I'm waiting for the letters to the editor over the next few months to see what other readers think of it.
Hehe Ain't The internet and freedom of speech grand thoe?
But if seed is blown into his property, as seed has blown across lands for millions of years, why should he have to pay a license for it? I believe he should be compensated by the company that made the roundup ready crop for contaminating his natural crops. how about that?
I hope this guy gets a clue...
For some dumb reason the US government lets anyone genetically modify a plant and patent the change. They now own the patent and rights to that crop. As was recently proven in canada with the roundup corn, Even if seed from another field blows onto your field and you cultivate, you can now own that company license fees. I personally have no desire to have my food owned before its planted by a large bio-tech firm.. Its really frightening..
`
And your Post #32... wait an hour and maybe some people here will have somthing interesting to say :)
Yes...it has. But not in GM crops. Thats the difference.
My blog: http://jkratz.dyndns.org/~jason/blog/
An easier and safer improvement to the ecosystem I've yet to hear of...
Buckets,
pompomtom
Buckets,
pompomtom
"There's an exception to every rule. Except for some rules"
Recommended bedtime reading.
An excerpt and review can be found at: Bookbrowse.com : Fear Nothing: Review.
-- Each tock of the Planck clock is a new world and here we are still life. --
You've missed the point: the expense isn't from changing the packaging. It's from keeping track of every single ingredient and whether or not it could have been contaminated with GMO products. Like the taco shells fiasco; some taco shell company had to recall a whole bunch of shells because they found out the corn used in them had been mixed, at the co-op's silo, with GMO corn, and so some GMO corn could have gotten into the product. So people threw a fit and they recalled the shells. The expense for tracking where every ingredient in a product came from is pretty prohibitive. If you want companies to guarantee whether or not they use GMO ingredients, you must be willing to pay extra.
---
"This message is composed of 100% recycled electrons."
"So it's stronger than cotton. Is it stronger than flax or jute or nylon and as soft as cotton? Because maybe that's why it's not in demand as a fiber." It is softer than cotton, or it can be made that way very easily. My girlfriend has a shirt made out of hemp, and jeans made out of hemp.
Malcolm solves his problems with a chainsaw,
Malcolm solves his problems with a chainsaw,
And he never has the same problem twice.
2: No, of course you dont get the same properties as silk, you get the same properties as cotton. Silk is not a plant fiber, it comes from caterpillars. take a look at http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=69533&toci d=0
3: I and my girlfriend are Canadian, so this is not a problem.
Malcolm solves his problems with a chainsaw,
Malcolm solves his problems with a chainsaw,
And he never has the same problem twice.
Get a grip, man. Yes, herbicides and pesticides are poisons, but only to herbs and pests. Ever taken an antibiotic? Something like penicillin? Quite deadly to the staph. aurreus, or what ever bactirium was bothering you. I'm sure if they had a voice, these eucaryotes would scream Poison!, yet you ingest this poison voluntarily. Why? You are not a eucayote, nor are you an herb or a pest (YMMV).
Yes, there are serious concerns about geneticaly modified crops, and you even raise a couple of relevent points in your post. However, your opening paragraph paints you as an ignorant individual whose complaints are not to be taken seriously. This may or not be true, but either way you hurt the cause.
Pick your battles. Know what it is you are fighting for.
If all DNA is the same, how did Mad Cow desease start? I thought it was a mutation caused by feeding beef to beef for a few generations.
but ere talking about bioengineering here, a previous poster mentioned making plants that can produce synthetics. This is where most of the research is going. If you can grow nylon, or a nylon equivalent in or ona plant, this would be a huge advantage. If you could grow silk that way, it would be even better. I know where silk comes from, I also know its labor intensive to produce said silk, if you could reduce that by producing a plant that grew it, youd have a huge advantage. Regardless, you cant make nylon or silk or synthetics out of hemp, doing so is one of the holy grails of biotech.
3: I and my girlfriend are Canadian, so this is not a problem.
good for you, but some slashdot readers are not, and for those who live in the US, they can get searched if they wear hemp clothes, and like it or not the perception of drug use, wether legitimate or not, will continue to be a barrier to hemp use
Increasingly, researchers can engineer crops so they carry the pesticide, dramatically reducing or even eliminating the need for spraying. Less spraying means less unintended destruction of noninvasive insects - a net plus for the environment, researchers say.
Data sez: yummy, life-form killing plants. Good thing my internals are made of metal & silicon, don't have to worry about pesty things like injesting pesticides.
but wait a sec, what am I, an inorganic android, eating plants for?
Genetically engineered corn requires less pesticide spray ...
thanks, but I'll pass on your pesticide tomatos & corn, and stick with my Organically engineered, pesticide free food products, thankyouverymuch. rah-rah, biotech for industry, just keep it off my plate!
---
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
A study on Cry9c (note, not Cry9p) was done after many people complained of an allergic reaction to the corn shells. The corn was developed by Aventis Crop Science USA LP and marketed under the name StarLink(tm). There was no correlation between the response and the protein --- that is to say, the tests did not show any specific binding between the Cry9c and the antibodies (IgM) in the serum of people claiming to have a reaction. For those of you who are interested, the test is known as an ELISA (Enzyme Linked Immuno-Sorbant Assay) and nice little dots show up if the test is positive. Of course, if you don't want to believe the government, there are certainly people willing to say they're full of ... well... something not so nice. See here
Also, when you say, "I'm not a scientist, I know nothing about the technical issues involved," don't you think that knowing might help you judge whether the problem with BSE has any bearing on GM crops? Especially given that you're postulating that genetic modifications could make it "a million times worse"?
(Hint: even though the mechanism of action of BSE was surprising, the fact that feeding animals to each other could assist the spread of diseases should not have been surprising.)
Until the government no longer has a vested interest in maintaining the appearance that it is fighting a "war" on drugs, hemp will remain illegal.
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
I think it's more complicated than that. The random mutations are also much less likely to have an effect on anything: maybe an unused gene got modified. Maybe it's just a really small change. At any rate, the random mutation in any one organism has nothing to do with the mutation in any other organism.
Genetic enginering on the other hand is about big (or bigger at any rate) changes on lots of organisms all in the same way.
As far as the dangers are concerned, natrual mutation is like taking baby-steps near a cliff in the middle of the night. Artificial mutations are like jumping around near the same cliff but with only a little light to see by(at least for now).
Of course, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be doing this. We should. But we need to be very careful.
Now w.r.t. the potential salmon problem and upon rewiew of the website video; firstly, the point was that Aqua Bounty appeared to be more interested in solving the problem of making fast-growing salmon than solving the problem of making eco-friendly-fast-growing salmon. Secondly, I think what I said at first is misleading, perhaps instead of "would die from lack of food" I should have said "would tend to die from lack of food." The model predicts that they do not all die at once, but within 38 generations. Lastly, not all of the fish are guaranteed to be sterile, though 100% are guaranteed to female and though not being an expert on salmon and thus I don't know how precise salmon are when finding a place to spawn, nor when that location is imprinted, I would imagine they are not always 100% accurate. How else would salmon tend to spread?
So, the possibility is probably very remote, but the consequence is dire:
If a super-salmon escapes into the wild and if that salmon is fertile and if that salmon manages to spawn and if the model predicts correctly, then Atlantic salmon become extinct.
That at least should be reson for inquiry.
Included in the discussion are such dangers as the spreading of GMO seeds through the wild, untested or barely-tested GMOs, and pesticide-ridden food. An excerpt:
One of the things we have to ask ourselves when we try to determine who is telling the truth, the biotech industry or the environmentalists, is: who has the most to gain by lying?
The answer is complexity. Life is a lot of barely understood reactions which, when taken together, produce something which at the moment we have no hope whatsoever of tracing.
If it was possible to give you a nice itemised list of the possible dangers then you'd have one provided by one of the groups on one side of the argument, as it is no list exists.
Maybe the chemical the strawberries produce to protect themselves from frost will end up changing slightly into something wonderously carcinogenic, maybe the plant will be too successful when introduced to the wild and suddenly corn is being choked by strawberry vines, maybe the strawberries themselves will prove too successful after a while and will leech all the nutrients from the soil.
I'm not a biologist, I'm a programmer, but I can see enough possible problems here to see that maybe it's not worth the risk to get a few out-of-season strawberries. Humanity has a good history of completely hammering ecosystems by moving species about, and I really don't think we've progressed enough to try pushing round species which are specially designed to be *stronger* than anything nature has so far produced. The dingo was strong in Australia, look how that one turned out.
This is something we can't undo, this is not reversible. I for one am glad GM companies are so far tending to stick to sterile varieties as in a darkly pragmatic way I'd 'prefer' the destruction of entire national food supplies to the destruction of an entire planetary ecosystem.
In this case I'm afraid 'We don't know' is a good enough answer for me. We didn't know the effects of DDT when we started to use it, but the risks of DDT were tiny compared to that of a virile strain of wheat.
Sorry this sounds very 'Anti-science', I actually approve of GM research but in *very* controlled conditions. The world is not a petri dish we can throw out.P>
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Also you have to bear in mind here that if the 'proprietary' corn is not sterile it becomes inavoidable.
Imagine suddenly waking up to find that you carefully-nutured KMail clients had suddenly become infected with Outlook Express, and the only way to remove it was to totally trash the lot and hope against odds that it didn't happen next time.
What a nice silly analogy. Happy dreams!
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This is like saying it doesn't matter what the recipe for chocolate cake says as we don't eat recipes.
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The 'debate' I'm talking about is just lasting for a few decades... wake up. BTW, regarding the one on slashdot, it is going to be an empty debate anyway (I've read down to pose #89 and disappointing is an euphemism).
How would a sterile plant pollinate or be pollinated? The term sterile implies that the plant is incapable of reproducing.
Every food I've ever seen has at least some group of people who are "incompatable" (i.e. allergic) to it. Sugar, Chocolate, Nuts (my personal curse), all can make people quite ill in the right situations.
:-)
Not to say that Humans have done any better. Look at that whole Olestra spectacle, and try to say we're good at this
Save a life. Eat more cheese
So there I was, juggling apples and small animals, when I accidentally bit into the wrong one...
It's a more difficult problem than anyone can answer with our current level of technology, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't concern ourselves with the future risks.
I/O Error G-17: Aborting Installation
- Why would anyone (who wasn't making money off releasing untested foodstuffs) think that testing them, and knowing when you're eating them, are bad ideas?
Because it causes paranoia. As well, our media tends to distort the truth so much that nobody ends up knowing what the real truth is, and thus they just avoid the problem entirely -- or in this case just refuse to buy the particular food.I/O Error G-17: Aborting Installation
The currently accepted theory about mad cow disease (and other transmissible spongiform encephalopathies like scrapie in sheep and kuru in humans) is that they don't involve DNA at all. They're transmitted by things called prions, which are a variant form of a naturally existing protein. The prion form of the protein causes the normal form to re-fold into the prion form, which keeps it from woring right and causes the condition to spread further. That means that the prion can be transmitted by eating the tissue from an infected organism. The prions are apparently somewhat resistant to transmission across species but much less so within a species. That's why the most famous form of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy in humans (kuru) was found in cannibals.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Testing these effects is left up to the public. So they can sell them, cause everyone to get cancer, and then have the public pay for this. Yet, they never asked us if we wanted it in the first place. Try buying Free Range Chickens, or non-hormone beef in the US (or many other countries now).
Ok, it's cheaper for larger farmers in the long run, to use these kinds of products. But, because of the initial expense, smaller farmers don't have a chance. This leads to what is known as the "Green Revolution", which inevitably forces out the smaller farmers (causing them and their families to then become a part of Free Trade, er umm, slave labor).
- it's imprecise
Our tools for manipulating genes are still fairly crude. Techniques for
manipluating genes often inadvertently change other, unrelated genes in
unpredictable ways. What's worse, we don't understand genetics well enough yet
to predict what kinds of systemic effects the changes we do intend will produce.
It's considered irresponsible to make even a fairly small local change to a
commercial software system without doing regression testing, yet we're happy to
make large and imprecise changes to systems orders of magnitude more complex
with only superficial testing and validation.
- mistakes can be impossible to fix
Once a new genotype is released into the global ecosystem, it's virtually
impossible to limit or contain it. Plans and animals reproduce and migrate at
will. Deadly or destructive genes can infect common species irretrievably.
Already organic farmers are struggling with contamination from pollen from gmo
strains borne by insects and wind. There are virtually no pure organic soybean
farms left in the U.S., for example.
- it's under the control of self-interested corporations
Genetic research is expensive and consequently mostly the domain of large
corporations like Monsanto. These corporations act primarily to enrich their
shareholders. It's clear that Monsanto's single-yield seeds are good for
Monsanto, but it's not at all clear that they're good for poor third-world
farmers that can't afford to pay for them each year. We don't allow Du Pont to
sell nuclear bombs, but somehow it's unreasonable to ask for controls on a new
technology that could prove just as destructive.
Some critics of genetic engineering act out of ignorance and fear, but many more of us simply feel that ge is an incredibly powerful technology that isn't sufficiently well understood. We don't advocate absolute bans on ge research, but we do feel it's a bit early to be releasing major variations of staple food crops into the wild. ge, like all technologies, isn't inherently good or evil and can be used wisely or unwisely.There are numerous and grave consequences if corporations control the food supply. As it stands, they already control a large part of the production. However, if the global seed supply falls under the dominion of a cartel of entities whose sole purpose is profit - we're all royally screwed. This is something which is going on right now mostly in third world countries which rely on terms set by the world bank.
I propose a reasonable compromise: no product meant for eventual human consumption can be patented.
That way, people are free to explore the science of growing crops for industrial purposes, such as stronger fibers for lighter materials, or growing drugs and keep their 'intellectual property.' At the same time, it will help slow down the corporate exploitation of the whole human population.
- You don't know how to maintain a station wagon either!
"I see worries in the fact that we have the power to manipulate genes in ways that would be improbable or impossible through conventional evolution. We should not be complacent in thinking that we can predict the results." - Colin Blakemore
"Once released into the environment, unlike a BSE epidemic or chemical spill, genetic engineering mistakes cannot be contained, recalled or cleaned up, but will be passed on to all future generations indefinitely." - Dr Michael Antoniou
"If we win the battle with nature we will find ourselves on the losing side." - EF Schumacher
--
mrBlond (I don't email from Malaysia)
CowboyNeal for president!
"Hit any user to continue."
Fyi, Bacteria are prokaryotes. Animals (and humans) are eukaryotes.
I think there would be a simple way to stop a lot of the complaining. That would be to simply disclose which foods are modified and which are not. I think people's suspicions are increased because the makers of modified food fight to prevent buyers from knowing which is which. If people felt sure they had a choice, to buy either modified or unmodified food, they would have little complaint.
Visit http://www.junkscience.com/ddtfaq.htm for full background and debunking of the "DDT Kills People" Myth.
Synopsis: DDT has saved infinitely more lives than it has ever cut short. Rachel Carson, the person who is single-most responsible for the outcry against DDT, based her books on faulty experiments. DDT was *not* proved to cause eggshell thinning for wild birds, and was *not* proved to cause cancer in mammals at rates 33,000 times higher than average exposure.
The banning of DDT was a political expedient not based on science; by not allowing its use today, we are condeming to malarial death any number of adults and children in developing nations. See the link above for an exhaustive, detailed debunking of the "DDT Kills" myth.
Try out Phorecast, open-source email, calendar,
The primary problem is stealth GMO's.
I want a choice! I want to know what I am eating or even using in other ways so that I can make an intelligent choice!
Why are the corporations involved in genetic engineering and there bought and paid for politicians so against labeling?
I do not like people withholding information that I want to make my decisions.
Question Reality
The plight of those farmers will not be solved by entrenching them in agribusiness, nor will it help their soil. The agribusiness model in teh 3rd world is hardly about conservation and help, it is about exploitation at all costs. Farmalnd in the Amazon is farmed until it cannot support plant life, then left. In Jamaica, the excellent Blue Mountain coffee crop is routinely degraded by foreing agrbusiness investors so create higher yields at cheaper prices. The result is coffee that tastes like Folgers or garbage water (the two are equivalent) but with the good Blue Mountain name.
Farmers may be able to benefit by biotech, but when was the last time you EVER came across big-business doing something to BENEFIT the general public welfare?
well, if I remember correctly, the FDA's stance is that all DNA is the same...therefore, genitically modified food is not going to hurt you. The main problems are what if the GM food overtakes the natural food in the wild, and if people develop allergies to some of the GM food. It's not going to cause people to start growing 4 arms or anything...
I think of genetic engineering... or Biotech.. as people attempting to change some binary code in a 600 MB file using a VAIO keyboard, their elbows... and no monitor.
;).. then MAYBE we are ready to start messing with vegetables.
When we are capable of programming something even as 'simple' as an Operating System and can be sure that it is relatively bug free... (to the point that one would be willing to eat it
Mind you... we are going to poke and prod and come up with new chemical reactions and genetic variants... Nothing as simple as logic, or a few lives, has stopped people in the past.
antidigerti.
I dated a hippy chick for a bit and she used hemp oil in food all the time. It is like chewing on hemp clothes rather unpleasant.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
And if they weren't, people would be complaining, "once they're released into the environment, they'll keep on breeding and then there's no way to stop them!"
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
BTW, this might have been on /. before, but it's still funny.
The problem with the arguments that plants can eventually replace nonrenewable resources, such as petroleum, is inherently flawed. I live in central Illinois, where corn farming is incredibly common, and have heard this general idea presented numerous times. State EPA officials, though, are starting to get worried. I've know several personally, and they're qquick to point out that the few inches of topsoil that makes farming so profitable is probably the state's most valuable resource, and by no means renewable. It's actually being used and wasted at a rate in many areas even faster than our oil and coal reserves. Even if genetically engineered plants are more healthy, productive, or even can hope to replace petroleum supplies, the topsoil the plants grow in will not last long enough for this to be an effective solution.
:Do you actually believe that the biotech companies have posters on the wall saying 'What natural system can we fuck up today?'
Dude, I work in biotech and I would kill to have a poster that says that on my wall! ThinkGeek pay attention!
i think that bioengineered stuffs is any company's perogative but if it's going into food supplies of ourselves or our animals then there may be a problem. there may not be also i can imagine that it may be possible to make foods healthier than what has managed to come out of nature alone, but i think that the industry may be more interested in foodstuffs that cost less through reduced pesticides and patents so every seed is licensed. an important point is that for testing of a food the biotech industry had some 30 rats eating their bioengineered stuff for 90 days (this is supposed to adequately guage if humans can live off of it) and they said that the rats came out fine so it was safe for humans. besides the inadequate test they also straight lied about the results as many of the male rats developed cancerous cysts. sorry i can't provide some more definite coverage but what should be obvious is that the FDA is not entirely in control of regulation of food..the biotech has lots of money and power and they've used it to prevent labeling to allow us to decide so they can use it to work the testing and approval how they want (as the meat industry has) and look at how they're putting these farms next to family farms that don't license their seeds and there is some seed spread from wind or whatever and they sue the family farmer for growing unlicensed seed..they've sued hundreds of farmers in the past 2 years and it's obvious that they want complete control of seeds..like no more non-genetically modified licensed seeds. that's just evil! and it's like the polluters getting paid for polluting. oi i wouldn't mind gm if it was really tested and safe and there was always a non-gm alternative everything clearly labeled.
Pusztai's science was, unfortunately, flawed.
That may be the case. I don't know enough about it. But from what I've read, it appears this issue is more political than scientific.
One thing I don't understand is why so many people assume it is safe until proven dangerous. I think it should be assumed dangerous until proven safe. We don't know what long term effects these GM foods will have, on us or the environment. Unpredictable.
I concur that Pusztai's science has room for error. That does not mean that his results are necessarily wrong! If his results WERE wrong, that does not mean that GMFs are safe.
So where are all the independent studies confirming the safety of GM food? All you've got is a bunch of salesmen hiring corporate friendly scientists to say nice things about their product.
Monsanto has been caught fudging their science in at least one case that I'm aware of. (regarding amount of herbicide used by farmers) And their claims that the 'infertile' GM canola won't spread has been proven wrong. (But farmers still have to pay monsanto if it turns up in their fields...)
Nevermind the environmental implications of, for example, a herbicide resistent rape seed run amok. Genetic pollution.
This issue deserves great care and scrutiny.
No, I don't trust corporations, politicians or any other kind of salesmen. Why should I?
How do we know that Pusztai is independent (intellectually)?
We don't. That's what science is for, to establish credibility by reproducing results. So where are all the independent researchers who are supposed to be trying to discredit Pusztais results scientifically?
At least we know that Pusztai wasn't on Monsantos payroll when he did the study. Monsanto likes to hire 'friendly' scientists who work in back rooms.
Also, note that if Pusztai turns out to be a renegade green who fudged his science, it means only one thing: That NO independent studies have been done to test the safety of GM foods. That doesn't mean they're safe.
More significantly, the original poster specifically said that he was ignoring the question of genetic modifications that produce a harmful substance.
I addressed that at the end of my post. I was replying mainly to a narrow statement.
Mr. Pusztai should release his data if he wants to be taken seriously.
:)
2 24&cid=323
For the time being you're going to trust the scientists that the salesmen hired to tell you about their product?
Doesn't it make you suspicious that Pusztais opportunity to publish in a peer reviewed journal was effectively sabotaged? Along with the other circumstantial details?
Your article is interesting. I'll eventually get around to researching the details. As an additional reply, I direct you to another part of this discussion: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=01/06/27/2222
Who cares about feeding the poor around the world. It's the wail strains of canola in canada that matter.
Do you believe that GM foods have anything to do with feeding the poor? I think that line has more to do with salesmenship: Public relations drivel. Just like the war on drugs is to protect children. Egad. The *war* on drugs has killed more kids than drugs have.
Also, introducing a franken-strain into the envrionment affects the WHOLE environment in unpredictable ways, since the rest of the environment must now adapt to the new info. It's a feedback loop.
Cheers,
James.
"Here's the thing: Mutated DNA is not going to screw you up if you eat it."
:)
... to refrain from any public comments." The prince refused and, following the release of the Royal Society review of Pusztai's work and the leak of the confidential memorandum, Charles published an article in the Daily Mail that asked: "Do existing laws protect us? Why are the rules for approving genetically modified foods so much less stringent than new medicines using the same technology? ... What sort of world do we want to live in? Are we going to allow the industrialization of life itself-redesigning the natural world for the sake of convenience?" Soon after that he met privately with Pusztai and observed that he had been "cruelly" treated.
o tatoes.html
Quite a sweeping statement. You have some basis for it I assume? Read about any
independent studies? Or just relying on common sense?
From reading some of the posts, you'd think that stomach acid could break down any material into its atomic components...
"...The story begins in August 1998, when Pusztai, a scientist at Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen, Scotland, appeared on the British television program The World in Action to report that transgenic foods (foods that are bioengineered to include a gene from another species) may be unsafe. His research indicated that rats fed transgenic potatoes suffered from damaged immune systems and stunted growth.
Pusztai fed the rats potatoes that had been genetically engineered to contain lectin from a snowdrop bulb to make them pest resistant. Lectins are sugar-binding proteins that can provide protection from insects, nematodes and some diseases. According to Pusztai, who is one of the world's foremost authorities on lectins, the rats who ate these hightech potatoes showed evidence of organ damage and poor brain development. This experiment was the first independent study-one not sponsored by a biotech corporation-to examine the effects of bioengineered food on mammals.
"We are assured that this is absolutely safe and that no harm can come to us from eating [genetically engineered food]. But if you gave me the choice now, I wouldn't eat it," he said on TV, warning that the food industry was treating the public like "unwitting guinea pigs."
In an attempt to quell the resulting public furor, Rowett Institute Director Philip James, who had approved Pusztai's TV appearance, said the research results didn't exist. He fired Pusztai, broke up his research team, halted the six other similar projects his team was then working on and seized his data. Pusztai, who under the terms of his contract was gagged, was unable to respond to his critics.
The biotech PR apparatus went into effect on both sides of the Atlantic. Val Giddings, of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) in Washington, applauded Pusztai's dismissal. Speaking to Biotechnology Newswatch, an industry journal, he damned the press for not being more skeptical of Pusztai's statements, pointing out that his results had never been published in a peer-reviewed journal. "This is a study that should never have seen the light of day," he said.
At Monsanto, the only corporation producing transgenic potatoes, spokesman Alyssa Hollier told Biotechnology Newswatch, "This really has nothing to do with us," adding that the company's transgenic potatoes, which are different than those used in the study, are "not approved in Europe right now." In February, however, it came out that the Rowett Institute had received a $224,000 grant from Monsanto prior to Pusztai's interview and subsequent firing.
In March, the Rowett Institute released an internal audit, which revealed that Pusztai actually had completed the research he referred to in his TV appearance. Apparently, the dispute over the August program was due to an inaccurate press release that the Rowett Institute-without Pusztai's approval-had issued prior to the program that referred to a completely different experiment.
That same month, the institute, in response to press criticism and an emerging House of Commons inquiry was in the offing, released Pusztai from the terms of his contract that had gagged him, and allowed him access to his research data.
The Royal Society, Britain's premier scientific body, entered the debate in May. Examining neither the material nor the research data submitted by Pusztai, a society review panel nonetheless deemed his work "flawed" and concluded:
"We found no convincing evidence of adverse effects from genetically engineered] potatoes."
In the wake of that review, the Independent reported that the Blair government had launched a "cynical public relations exercise" to "convince the public that it is determined to protect them, and the environment, against risks from genetically modified crops" while the government's "real intention is to buy time for industry to develop the crops." The Independent based its report on a confidential memo from the office of Jack Cunningham, the minister responsible for coordinating the nation's genetic engineering policy. The memo said in part, "The Office of Science and Technology is compiling a list of eminent scientists to be available for
broadcast interviews and to author articles. These individuals should be alerted and be prepared to offer comment." The memo goes on to say that the attacks on Pusztai by the Royal Society provide "a platform for them to trail the Government's Key Messages."
Pusztai pressed his case in the media. "I am in a situation I cannot get out of now," he told the Sunday Herald, a Scottish paper. "I am the only one with data that shows there are problems. I have a choice: apologize for being incorrect or keep going, and I know I am correct."
Then Prince Charles entered the fray. A longtime critic of bioengineering, in December 1998 he had questioned the safety of bioengineered food on his royal Web site. According to the Sunday Express, Blair, in a highly unusual move, phoned Buckingham Palace "to advise the Prince to withdraw the Web site comments [and
The controversy died down, only to blow up again this fall when The Lancet, the prestigious British medical journal, published a peer-reviewed paper Pusztai had co-authored. He reported that rats fed transgenic potatoes with the added snowdrop lectin experienced a thickening in their small intestines, which indicates an adverse reaction to the transgenic food. This change was not observed in two control groups, one of which was fed plain potatoes and the other potatoes mixed with the same lectin. Pusztai's study raised the possibility that this thickening was caused not by the added lectin but by the process of genetic-engineering itself.
Indeed, Pusztai suspects, though he has no proof since his research was halted, that the problems observed in rats fed the transgenic potatoes were caused not by the added snowdrop lectin, but by the genes that were used in transferring the snowdrop lectin to the potato. "All the presently used genetically modified material has been created by essentially the same technology," he told the Sunday Herald. "If there really is a problem, it won't just apply to the potatoes but probably to all other transgenes." The implications are enormous. In 1999, one-third of the corn and one-half of the soybeans planted in the United States were genetically engineered.
The condemnation from the pro-genetic engineering scientific establishment was immediate. The Royal Society accused The Lancet of being "breathtakingly arrogant" for publishing Pusztai's research. The Guardian reported that two days before the publication of the Pusztai paper, Lancet editor Richard Horton had been warned by a senior member of the Royal Society, British Academy of Medical Sciences President Richard Lachmann, that his job would be in jeopardy if he published Pusztai's research. Horton told the Guardian he was called "immoral" and told that publication of the paper would "have implications for his personal position as editor." Lachmann, who denies the charges, is on the scientific advisory board of the pharmaceutical corporation SmithKline Beecham, which is heavily invested in biotech ventures.
The most benign interpretation of Pusztai's research is that the problem could be specific to the experimental transgenic potatoes he studied. More ominously, the adverse effects on the rats could be caused by the cauliflower mosaic virus promoter, a marker widely used in genetic engineering. "The study that Pusztai did should be redone to tease out what exactly is going on with the potatoes," says Michael Hansen, a research associate at Consumers Union. "But for the folks that criticize it, his study is still a much better-designed study than the industry-sponsored feeding studies I have seen in peer-reviewed literature that deal with Round-Up Ready soybeans or BT corn. Pusztai's are the kinds of experiments that need to be done with engineered foods."
Yet no such independent, government-supported research into the effects of genetically engineered foods on mammals is now being carried out in either the United Kingdom or the United States, where they have been given a clean bill of health by the Food and Drug Administration. Responding to a letter to the editor from Lachmann in The Lancet, Pusztai writes, "Lachmann says the experiments need to be repeated. We would be happy to oblige. If our experiments are so poor why have they not been repeated in the past 16 months? It was not we who stopped the work."
Could it be that the biotech industry fears the results of independent research could erase its enormous investment in this untested technology ?
"We don't need genetically modified food in this country," Pusztai told the Sunday Herald. "But British politicians can only see profits. They want a share, and to hell with the consequences. It is a short-sighted policy. It happened with the BSE [Mad Cow] crisis, and make no mistake-it is happening again."
Emphasis was all mine. This was from http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Health/NoSmallP
I read about the story somewhere else, couldn't find the link, but found a similar story here.
This also made the list of the top 25 unreported news stories. (You mean the TV doesn't tell me everything I need to know?!)
I agree completely with your main point by the way.
Switching from a conventional strain of a plant to a GMO strain is a minor change compared to switching to a whole new species of plant.
Huh?! Switching to a genetic strain that doesn't exist anywhere on the planet and didn't evolve into its present form is a minor change?
Did you know that 'infertile' genetically modified canola is spreading everywhere and quickly becoming Canadas biggest pest weed? Do you realize that this will infect the wild strains? Genetic pollution.
Now, what if it's dangerous to eat after all?
Did you know that the only independent study that looked into this question found that it WAS dangerous to eat? Look it up.
(GM Potatoes (with pesticide genetically added) vs. regular potatoes (with same amount of pesticide manually added). One of these meals was found to be dangerous.)
My concerns:
Why aren't independent studies being done to validate the coporporate studies? The only study that WAS done found BIG problems. Why haven't you heard about it? Why haven't other researchers tried to duplicate the results?
Why is the 'infertile' herbicide resistent canola spreading like dandelions? How will this affect the wild strains? What about farmers who get it in their fields and have to pay monsanto because they own the patents?
"If there is a group out there with legitimate, researched, specific scientic concerns,..."
It's difficult to argue with Monsantos research when independent research ISN'T FUNDED.
Seems like an important issue to at least look at?
Does this make me a luddite?
"I trust the scientists hired by biotech companies at least as much (and generally more) as I trust those hired by the biotech scaremongers."
So people who want to see studies done that are financially independent of the big biotechs are 'scaremongers'?
Everyone has an agenda, everyone has bias, everyone is trying to sell something. The difference is that the Biotech companies actually have an interest in limiting their liability,
Another difference is that biotechs stand to make billions from being able to PATENT genetics. Not to mention the extra control you have when protecting your 'property'.
With that kind of money, you can limit your liability by a> hiring ten thousand lawyers and b> selling your shares before the shit hits the fan. (that's called timing) Think tobacco. They got caught hiding damaging results, but they're still here. And still pretty powerful.
Would you risk getting sued for a few billion dollars?
whereas the scaremongers, when shown to be wrong, will move on to the next scare,
Funny, the only people trying to prove that scaremongers are wrong are a> monsanto 'scientists' and b> corporate / gov PR campaigns. Where are all the independent studies by scientists who have a vested interest in doing GOOD science? I'd LOVE to see scaremongers proven wrong, but nobodys doin it! Why are big biotechs discouraging this sort of review? You'd think they'd welcome the opportunity to show how safe their product is. But instead they even keep most of their OWN findings under wrap, feeding the media sanitized 'summaries' that have on occasion found to be misleading at best.
Who's trying to verify that what Monsanto tells us is right?
Do you actually believe that the biotech companies have posters on the wall saying 'What natural system can we fuck up today?'
No, I don't think they give the environment a thought either way. (Thats a subject for PR firms.)
If concerns about *possible* environmental implications are standing between you and a few billion, I have some advice: stop having those concerns. Put it out of your mind. Don't think about it. Maybe convince yourself that nothing you could possibly do could ever hurt your habitat. Oh, and make sure to convince everyone else while your at it. Your paycheck depends on it.
Anyway, my point is that this subject could stand alot more scrutiny than its getting. Don't get me wrong, this scrutiny should apply to both scaremongers and corporate apologists alike. There's alot of good info out there that the biotechs don't respond to and the media doesn't report. You should check it out before commiting to one side of the debate.
Speaking of limiting liability...
>>>>
Genetically engineered canola has become an uncontrollable weed just months after Monsanto and other manufacturers of genetically engineered seeds claimed that this would not happen. And because the plant was engineered to resist herbicides, it's tough to kill. "The GM canola has, in fact, spread much more rapidly than we thought it would," says Martin Entz, a plant scientist at the University of Manitoba. "It's absolutely impossible to control."
Scientists suspect that the plants spread through cattle manure. After the seeds traveled through the animals' digestive tracts, they were deposited on the soil, where they germinated.
When Ottawa approved GM canola in 1996, the possibility that it could become a weed was never brought up. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency describes the current problem as "a nuisance" and has advised farmers to "use another chemical." However, this will not be an option for organic farmers who are invaded by the GM canola. Also, some of the chemicals used to eradicate the pests could also kill the crops the farmer is trying to grow.
Monsanto, which created one of the GM canola strains, says that if farmers call the company and complain, they'll send out a team to pull up the weeds manually. Martin Phillipson, a University of Saskatchewan law professor, says that Monsanto may be liable for damages if their GM canola continues to spread.
http://www.unknowncountry.com/news/?id=607
Forget the idea that we can live without biotech. We can't. There's not enough land.
2 24&cid=390 (article about canola spreading like a weed)
**Corporate media coverage: Gannett, 9/15/99, Dallas Morning News, 1/25/98 p. 35A, The Economist, 4/24/99, Lewiston Morning Tribune, p. 1A. Associated Press 6/5/00**
"...Though Cuba is organic by default because it has no means of acquiring pesticides and herbicides, the quality and quantity of crop yields have increased. This increase is occurring at a lower cost and with fewer health and environmental side effects than ever. There are 173 established 'vermicompost' centers across Cuba, which produce 93,000 tons of natural compost a year. The agricultural abundance that Cuba is beginning to experience is disproving the myth that organic farming on a grand scale is inefficient or impractical..."
Our style of agriculture has more to do with the coalescing of money and power than anything else. There's lots more material like this around.
Perhaps someday we'll reintroduce math as a subject in schools, and people will be able to intellegently analyze risk. When they get old enough to serve on juries, companies might make more information available. Until then, it would just be stupid.
My translation of the above: biotechs are withholding scientific information from the public because they don't trust the quality of conclusions people would draw from it.
This could be based on a fear of misinterpretation as you say, but I'll bet that it's because their research reveals facts which are contrary to their claims. For example, my comment posted at http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=01/06/27/2222
Most likely: we're both right. My feeling is that they would justify it like this: "Sure we were lying, but we had to so nobody got the wrong idea..." The right idea being synchronous with an increase in business.
Now, I agree that the education system has alot to do with the lack of skills and perspective to make sound judgements. In my opinion, if people had the capacity to make sound judgements, they would demand to examine the data, demand independent studies, and would judge any attempt to deny access to either as highly suspicious. A big red flag.
So in this sense, the publics ignorant apathy is working to Monsantos advantage.
---
Just read your latest post, and I agree with you on education reform; it's probably the best route.
Here are some (albeit radical) education links:
http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Gatto.html
If somebody came up with a GM cannibis breed that has all the THC of the finest bud, but grows to a maximum height of 2-3 feet and perhaps a yard wide (similar to a tomato plant's proportions), and has an accelerated growth curve, then none of these guys would be whining...
/., and in such, can support their brats' protest of the week)... As it goes, many of them are relying on junk science for their basis of information... These are the same people who are responsible for the energy crunch, by preventing every attempt at building nuclear power plants (before anyone whines, the technology is MUCH safer now)...
I mean come on folks, we've been genetically engineering livestock and agriculture for millenia, only recently have we decided to do it in a lab and leave less up to chance... GM foods have been researched and experimented on for close to 30 years, if not moreso... Since it's now big news (as biotech didn't become a proper catchphrase until the 1990's), only now they believe this is a "new" thing...
With all the whining, did any of these guys ever stop to think about what would be the alternatives to GM experimentations? Lets see... More animal testing on more species (due to the fact that some animals are genetically modified to actually develop human diseases)... Oh, and they'll have to kill off the first quagga born in 100+ years(primordial zebra species that was rendered extinct during the 1800's), which wouldn't exist today if *not* for genetic experimentation... In fact, we'll just have to throw up our hands and give up on the endangered species, due to the fact that so many of them are inbred to the point where extinction is inevitable, heavens forbid we learn the possible key gene variants to make the individual species capable of developing a healthy, non pathogenic stock...
That is the other side of GM research that many of the handwringers are ignoring(who's parents are probably richer than anyone who reads
These are the same people who are responsible for food products becoming more and more expensive so that people outside of 1st and 2nd world countries cannot afford it, and the same people who think that rioting in order to get a message across will actually do so...
This is the "Huh huh, anarchy's kewl" generation of activists... No focus, no direction, no sense, and no intelligence...
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Genetic engineering--as practiced by the Corporate Overloads--is the equivalent of greedy kids playing with matches--you just KNOW they're going to get burned. The sad part of this thing is that when these human Prometheuses screw up--and they WILL, if not out of incompentence, hubris, or greed, or all of the above, it's very likely their faux pas will take a great deal of innocent species down with it.
I suppose the only hope for Gaia at this point is that the Sons of Fort Detrick take their pratfall early in their alchemical pursuits, and wipe out the Virus That Walks Like a Man before too much more damage is done. Where's Agent Smith when you need him?
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, The Histories
One of the arguments against GE food is that it might get out of the controlled environments we think it is contained within. For example, killer bees were introduced in South America as part of a (poorly) controlled experiment. The result is now that local varieties of honey producing bees have been overtaken by the less productive and dangerous strain all through south America and into Texas.
More recently, a GE corn only approved for animal feed was found in TacoBell tortillas.
Lets face it: If we create it, we will evenutally end up eating it or getting impacted in some other unexpected way.
Get ready to eat some of that synthetic polyester replacement corn by accident some day.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~ the real world is much simpler ~~
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
Not the ones in those plants, no. Different things are poisonous to different animals. For example, chocolate is poisonous to your dog, while the active chemical in RAID (which kills bugs) is safe enough to spray on your food and then eat. Why? Because the receptors in your body deal with the molecules one way, while a dog and beetle use them another way. This is especially true in a lot of the 'natural' pesticides plants use. They've been evolved to destroy the plant's main predators (insects), not the relatively recent human ones. Simply telling a plant to produce more of these poisons won't matter, because humans are affected by them in the first place.... Just like eating more chocolate won't poison you. -Seraph
Actually, you should be excited about that possibility if you oppose genetically engineered plants. Think about it: once a given trait is out "in the wild", it is effectively FREE. Current GM plants are usually designed with an attempt to make them sterile so that the company producing them can charge you for new seeds EVERY YEAR. Without this market-assurance, most GM crops are not profitable. Consider how many seeds you'd have to sell to recoup 20 million dollars in R&D, plus the costs of getting the damned things approved for human consumption, advertizing, etc. So you should feel somewhat assured that: A) GM food developers are going to try their damnedest to make sure this doesn't occur. B) If it DOES occur, it may put a huge dent in the GM food industry, PLUS we'll be getting all these expensive, hand crafted (presumably desirable) traits for FREE from then on.
Unless a company deliberately inserts genes for known toxins, genetically modified corn is perfectly safe to eat! Most anti-GM sentiment amounts to simple hysterics over eating GM products, and that's a shame, because it's a side-issue. It's a distraction from the real problems with GM crops that not as many people are talking about.
First of all, you just can't trust these guys. Monsanto created corn with the "terminator" gene- so the corn grows and produces sterile seeds. The idea is to flood Third World markets with cheap seed for "terminator" corn. For a year or two. Then, when all the farmers have none of their own viable seeds left, because they've been planting Monsanto corn, UP GOES THE PRICE! HAHAHA! Welcome to the subscription business model, suckers! That stuff you're eating has our intellectual property in it!
They almost got away with that one but the public fury became too much for them and they withdrew from the terminator project. (It's a tactic that's similar to the stunt Nestle pulled- Nestle provided free baby formula to new mothers in the Third World. Except that the baby formula was free only for the first month! Once the mothers stopped lactating, the formula stopped being free, surprise surprise!)
The problem with GM pesticide is that they screw the organic farmers who use the same pesticides themselves. GM corn with pesticide genes represents an abuse of pesticide that would never be tolerated with normal corn. It breeds insects resistant to the pesticide. When they're all immune to it, Monsanto inserts some other pesticide into the corn and keeps chugging along. Meanwhile everyone else is screwed.
Hey come on folks! Let's use our noggin here! The human race survived for centuries without genetically modified anything. Why do we need it now? So large corporate agribusiness can sqeeze out a bit more profit? So that unripened produce travels better in trucks? Come on!
Any rational biologist will tell you that genetically modified plants and animals are a potentially huge threat to the natural ecosystem. Any short term benefit gained from this stuff is very likely to be wiped out by a long term disaster.
Let's get a clue here folks. Do we really need this stuff? Of course not.
One of the most troubling tendancies I see in the geek/tech community is this notion that because something can be done, it should be done. Pure bullshit.
Genetic engineering is incredibly dangerous and completely unecessary. We should do all we can to outlaw and erradicate it completely before it's too late. Sadly, it may already be too late.
http://rand.pratt.edu/~takemura/articles/1023991.h tml
This may be a little off topic but I remember that some doctors were using olestra to treat dioxin poisoning. You eat olestra, and the concentration gradient causes the fat soluble poison to leech out into your excrement.
That's what I call a good hack.
Actually you can now use a lot of non-biologically significant markers like Fluroescent Green Protein which makes things glow green under light. Safe to eat, and if the bacteria get a hold of it they'll just be easier to see.
You certainly are making progress today.
Anyone who says I've seen many of them, all bogus, and whatever the one you have in mind I know it and I checked it out. must be on the side of truth and open exchange.
I have "definitively follow(ed) a genetics course" and I have learned that there are genes which are only found in certain types of organisms. It is therefore quite proper to refer to a gene in terms of the animal in which it originated in many cases. Especially in the case where the effect hoped to be gained by the introduction of the gene is closely aligned with that organism.
Since you clearly have a superlative grasp of biology, ecology and human history, there is no need to point out that DDT, dioxins and thalidomide were thought safe by the people who stood to make millions by their quick introduction into our lives.
Do you really mean "full background"? A flurry of cites is nothing like a full background. It's designed to appear comprehensive and telling, without really being so.
The world is such that everyone must decide for themselves what to believe. If you want to believe that a Cato Institute mouthpiece has the last word on scientific research, that is your perogative. You might want to, however, investigate who funds and distributes Dr. Edwards work (who collected most of the citations on the junkscience page). Maybe if you looked at some of his other work you'd get a better feeling (pro or con) for his credibility and prejudices.
You might also wonder nearly all the citations about eggshell thinning are from the 60s and 70s. And why in his delineation of the "Junk Science Mob" he fails to include any mention of the major corporations which have proveably used their vast resources to buy and intimidate scientists in to publishing what would be economically good for the company.
You might wonder if that means anything.
To quote:
"The real strategy is to introduce so much genetic pollution in the food system that meeting the consumer demand for GM-Free is seen as not possible. The idea, quite simply, is to pollute faster than countries can legislate - then change the laws to fit the contamination.
A few reports from the front lines of this invisible war.
In April, Monsanto recalled about 10 percent of the GM canola seeds it had distributed in Canada because of reports that the seeds had been contaminated by another modified rape-seed variety, one not approved for export. The most well-known of these cases is StarLink corn. The genetically altered crop (meant for animals and deemed unfit for humans) made its way into much of the U.S. corn supply after the buffer zones surrounding the fields where it was grown proved wholly incapable of containing the wind-borne pollen. Aventis, which owns the StarLink patent, proposed a solution: instead of recalling the corn, why not approve its consumption for humans?"
I watched this NOVA about modified crops a few weeks ago. One section of the show depicted how this group of eco-terrorists burned down a lab working on a solution which could have helped third-world farmers.
There was some very informative footage of the affected piss-poor farmers planting a couple hundred sweet potatoes in soil that could barely support it. I cracked up at the irony of how college-educated eco-terrorists had enough calories to make a total ruckuss protesting outside of biotech corps and universities (not to mention to burn down labs).
Hey, sure, we could just say that there are too many people out there, that these crops are dangerous, and so on. But it is easy to say that when we get to eat a juicy hamburger for dinner every day. Go ahead and try living off of crops grown in your back yard from seeds you could barely afford, watered with hope.
No, not plants,but caterpillar specific viruses called baculoviruses. No, not scorpion venom, but an insect selective sodium channel toxin. So you have a virus that can only infect about thirty species of caterpillars expressing a toxin (only in those species) which only effects insect nervous systems. No non-target effects. None. No corporate ownership of the plant line since this would be sprayed on crops. Of course your totally ignorant knee jerk reaction will prevail for now. Face it, no amount of testing is going to convince you or the average misinformed activist of its safety. Science says no known safety issues. Activist says unknown safety issues. The difference is that the scientists (public and corporate) actually performed research and have evidence. Meanwhile, these technologies are sitting in freezers, waiting for the general population to come to grips with biotechnophobia. Appropriate tech is always adopted in the end.
First entomology, then virology, and finally bioinformatics systems. Bugs follow me wherever I go.
I can see the benefits to things like this. As someone else said, if they were able to guarantee that it wouldn't cross into the food that we eat (in the case of engineered food for industrial purposes) then it would be all good. But even when "safeguards" are taken, accidents happen.
Take a look at this article to see how easily modified corn (in this case, meant only for animal consumption) can contaminate the neighboring "human corn". I think they need to be more careful with this stuff and do more testing before deploying it into the wild.
iluvpr0n.
A very nifty type of bacteria is called a cyanobacteria. It is interesting in that it can use a photosynthetic like process to break down diatomic nitrogen gas into useful nitrate compounds.
For example, soybeans have a symbiotic bacteria which forms nodules on their roots. Because of this, planting soybeans causes the soil to become fertilized if the farmer plows under a field of green soybeans.
Now, if someone could bioengineer a vat of slime which would suck in air and make nitrates, we would have some serious energy to be reconed with. Anybody who has ever studied nitrogen chemistry should be familiar with some of its more popular variants; i.e. nitroglycerine, tetra-nitro-tolulene, hydrazine, etc. You can pack a $h!tload of energy into a beaker of nitro chemicals.
Unfortunately, as soon as the big companies figure this out, they will make this slime, and it will suck all the nitrogen out of our atmosphere, and we will die as our planet turns into a mars-like environment. Nothing will stop it. As long as they can make money from air they will suffocate with a fistfull of cash.
Or rather, imagine what happens when some of this bacteria accidentally gets dumped into the ocean...
Clickety Click
The non-seed producing crops are a short-term market owner. At the moment, you buy cheap gengeneered corn because you have to buy it every year. But in the short-term future (probably w/i the next few years, even) home-built hacks are going to appear. Selling genes is like selling code; it's basically just information.
This will be a huge party for the clever types who are willing to break laws to work around biotech-giant companies. If you think this is unlikely, look at this article from Utne Reader. Home biolabs are just around the corner. If someone wanted to tinker with a GM corn variety, all they would need to do is get one kernel of that corn, and they could pretty easily convince a crop to produce viable seeds.
The Utne article points out that animal biotech is virtually impossible at home, but that plant biotech is comparatively simple. Soon enough, we'll be seeing a host of patent violation lawsuits attacking websites that give step-by-step instructions on how to re-engineer your GM crops. The patented genes in those crops will soon enough look just a silly as the DMCA copyright stuff that we whine about so much.
Indeed, someone should get on producing a Slashdot icon for GM-hacking. Just to stay ahead of the curve
Everything above may well be poorly-thought out / spelled. Blame the beer, not me.
I just don't understand how in europe they can be in favour of exposing plants to high levels of radiation or mutagens (carcinogens) to produce random mutations but not like the precise insertion of specific KNOWN genes to get a GE plant. I don't see how the first is 'acceptable' and the second is wrong... Maybe i am seeing this wrong? dAVE
Enjoy your job, make lots of money, work within the law. Choose any two.
Normal cell spend a lot of resources maintaining their DNA's integrity and there are numerous bilogical mechanisms in place for this (for example redundancy in double helix, DNA repair proteins, prevention of cross-species fertilisation by various methods).
My point is that in order to GM a cell or organism, you first have to break the cellular DNA protection mechanisms. Once you've done that, the genetic structure of the cell may be less stable. I say may be because NO-ONE KNOWS. GM plants may well interbreed wildly with wild types, and spread whatever GM traits into weeds and such like, as well as other useful plants such as food crops and HEMP.
Sure, they'd like you to think that. Lets not forget about Odwala and E.coli.....
"be careful you're dealing with a strain that produces little-to-no THC" so thats what I did wrong. All in all I agree with you. Hell, in my opinion the THC producing strains are better then vodka as far as detrimental effects go. Its nothing I use myself (I also dont drink, smoke or eat pork rinds) but it seems to be rather harmless on the grand scale of things.
Refs re scorpion toxins:A tt itudes.html
h tm l) (and many many others)
http://www.biotech-info.net/gene_therapy.html
http://www.accessexcellence.com/AB/BA/European_
http://www.globalchange.com/designfo.htm
"Artificial" cross-breeding/selection mimic "natural" processes, they are not a new process (unlike biotech gene guns smashing germ plasms together), agree there is similar potential risk but likelihood of problems/non-self-erasing mutation seems much greater with point gene alteration, especially when introduced into a monoculture.
Agree re labelling - I just want to be able to choose.
Roundup (glyphosate) has been linked to cancer already, so anything that increases its use is probably not good
(http://www.biotech-info.net/glyphosate_cancer.
Invalid comparison re potty training as it is a socially/medically undesirable activity and hence probably genetically selective (cholera anyone?) - we should have a choice here, much as we have a choice in most supermarkets to buy organic food or free range eggs, I want to be able to select out this technology.
Disagree re tractor analogy as well, tractors don't modify my food.
Agree re monoculture, believe that organic food selection can reduce this as farmers must rotate/interleave to reduce the risk of widescale infestation.
**Vanuatu or bust**
I think this is scary stuff - kind of a "Do you feel lucky punk? Do you?" with nature. I read that one bright team had put the venom producing genes from scorpions into a plant....
What worries me is that there is no accountability to anyone here, no labelling of food (here in the good ole US of A) so you can't choose to avoid eating frankenfood.
The laboratory for this is typically a field so its going to be pretty hard bottling up a mistake.
And finally I understand that actually more pesticide is used, rather than less, as the cash crop is "resistant" so they can nuke weeds with a higher dose, more frequently and for longer in the growth cycle.
This has nothing to do with farming and everything to do with big agribusiness chemical companies.
Biotech is being forced upon us...at least Microsoft label their damn boxes....
**Vanuatu or bust**
No personal offence meant, but this argument is typical of the misinformation that surrounds this issue. Said farmer in Canada almost certainly knew perfectly damn well what was growing in his fields and chose to ignore a free and easily available option to have the company come and clean up the contaminated crops. He was trying to get something for nothing and got caught.
Pusztai's science was, unfortunately, flawed. For a start, his methodology was way off. He did the trial, didn't do the control and then went public. Very unethical. Second, he used potatoes engineered to express a toxin and then reported toxic effects. Well, duh. Third, and most seriously, his sample size was five. Five! Especially with effects as small as millimetric thickening in small intestine walls, that is far too small. As a general rule (so my stats tutor said) if the sample size is less than six, ignore it. This sort of science is very sloppy and doesn't deserve the name. Even people with PhDs make mistakes sometimes.
The biotech/pharming companies are rich for a reason. I reckon they're pretty sure that there investment will reap rewards. (although i do agree... hemp is a great solution - for certain occasions!)
we DO NOT have any long-term data as to their effects on humans.
Genetic engineering has been going on since the early 70s. Although most of the research has been conducted on bacteria/viruses/yeast (and has therefore not entered the "food-chain"... at least purposefully) - you may expect that any inherant "nasty suprises" with genetic modification would have already occured with such potential pathogens.
Furthermore, human civilisation was founded in the middle-east around 10,000 yrs ago - when we began farming - i.e. modifying the environment to suit ourselves. None of the crops or animals we currently produce & consume are strictly "natural".
Personally, my concern is the control of crop production by multinational pharming companies. Their concern will allways be profits and share holders, rather than health concerns etc. Furthermore, the use of technology such as "terminator seeds" makes sure farmers have to buy new seed every generation, rather than using the natural process of sex. This could allow biotech companies to hold 3rd world farmers to ransom where they required an engineered crop which, for example, survived in arid conditions.
Scientific progress should be for the good of the world, not the rich elite
Im not sure that any true slashdot fan could disagree with bio-technology advancement. it is important that before we judge we understand. i think that this is a key issue and deciding factor for which political figure i would support. as a recent attendee at Bio2001 i was disgusted with the protesters who overshadowed the true genius of some of the companies there. In our constant pursuit of debate we sometimes miss the key facts. that they dont just change food they change the way we live and often for the better
"You have the right to remain fabulous!" -Chief Clancy Wiggam
Then again, that solution did work.
There's nothing that I'd hate more than having BGA (Business Gene Alliance) knocking on my door threatening me with litigation because I'm growing enchanced peas (by IGM, Intl Gene Manipulation) in my backyard, without Open Shrubbery License, OSL.
Preserve old classics: copy your collection onto all hard drives.
I've never heard that analogy of chaos theory before. If the butterfly can create oceanic earthquakes, perhaps it can cause Microsoft to open their source?
Kind thoughts do not change the world
Everyone who cannot take this new biotech industry will eventually go the way of the Dinosaurs!
People who are against human cloning must be bitter they are not good enough to be cloned.
That's great! My father-in-law happens to raise cattle and all of his just feed on grass. $10/lb is about 10 times the going rate for beef. How many cows can I sign you up for?
Downsize DC Today!
The problem with this argument is that the farm on which the plants are growing is nothing like a natural ecosystem anymore.
The problem with THIS argument is that it attempts to justify one mistake by saying its no worse than another.
The "Western" (and esp. US) system of agriculture, based, as it is, on petrochemicals, monoculture, and pesticides, is seriously flawed in a number of ways, but adding GMOs as a way of combating some of its weaknesses is short-sighted in the extreme.
Far better would be to actually establish an agriculture based on something much more like natural ecosystems, with some actual biodiversity, and then some of the "good reasons" for introducing GMOs wouldn't look so shit-hot after all.
This kind of agriculture would really be a kind of "knowledge-based" agriculture. This is where IT could play a big role, in directly managing the farms, much moreso than these centralised biotech monopolies in their ivory towers playing with genes.
but the plant doesnt MAKE pesticides, they just genetically alter the plant so that it becomes stronger, more resistant, immune to certain epidemics and in some cases poisonous/inedible to certain pests.
The problem that environmentalists have is that: you don't know how this will affect you when you eat it, it's not the same thing as ordinary corn, how can you tell it won't make you sterile or something?
Another, bigger one is that this will change evolutionary patterns of the insects that USED to eat that corn - they learn how to eat the new kind, and those who can't, die out, and you're left with stronger pests, so you have to increase your pesticide, and the cycle goes on, getting worse each time.
You can Genetically engineer crops to produce MORE corn, so your point seems kind of silly, especially since I have a hard time believing that the plants are "making" pesticides, instead of having "pesticides" or resistances built into their genes.
The problem is how will this affect the world?
how will it affect the ecosystem?
how will it affect me?
how will we find out? and when?
it's like using creatine, you'll get big and muscular now, but what effect will it have on you later on?
-PYves
I think we lost sight of the fact that we're talking about genetically engineered plants, not hemp :]
THC-free hemp would be fine for commercial use. I think the poster you replied to meant that GMOs might cause problems with DNA transfer from a commercially produced GMO to a non GMO plant.
-J5K
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.
GE crops = increased yields.
A farmer individually wants to increase his/her yield to have more crops to sell.
Everyone using GE crops = oversupply.
Oversupply = low crop prices.
Low crop prices = bad for farmers.
-J5K
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.
Unfortuneately, there's increasing evidence that bacteria *do* incorporate random genes from whatever they encounter in their environments. And hey! guess what's in your guts!
Do you *really* want modified bacteria inside you without testing? How about if those bacteria aren't part of the normal, natural ecosystem that is your intestines? How about if the genes in question are for drug resistance?
You're right, the field itself is untested and our abilities and infrastructures to manage/test are both woefully unproven and possibly inadequate. On the testing side, perhaps computer models can project possible outcomes. I do know that lab research in the field is growing at a rapid pace (I spent two years in Grant & Contract Admin. at a research university), but even that kind of data collection cannot fully predict what happens when a GMO is released into the wild. However, biotech goes beyond that. Development of synthetic materials, etc. can be done with rather benign organisms in a controlled, lab environment. I think that to invalidate biotech as a new scientific path because of potentially harmful agricultural and animal hybrids would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. In regards to infrastructure to regulate and control biotech, it will only take time and effort to craft laws and form regulating commissions who can adequately monitor such efforts. The field of biotech law is as changing and understaffed as infotech law. Both fields have a large influx of law students (I'm beginning my 1L this fall...going the IT route), and I'm sure that in the next few years, we'll see more action towards this. I certainly don't think we should run headlong into a new field like this without the proper precautions. Doing so would be similar to early atomic research from the Manhattan Project and beyond.
"I do not regret the things I have done, but those that I did not do."
"It's not a war on drugs, it's a war on personal freedom. Keep that in mind at all times." Bill Hicks
Is everyone that blind that they don't see the forest through the genetically-altered trees? Sure the DNA changes made to the corn seem to make the corn more resistant to some pests but what about the trickle down effect? Pollen from genetically modified plants will be mingled with other plants and we have absolutely no idea how this will affect the balance of nature. Yeah, we're just setting ourselves up for a cheap Sci-Fi-like ending to the planet. Push the button Frank...
Biotech, such as electronic muscle replacements embedded in the human body, is good. Think the blind dude from ST:TNG.
The mainstream press can't seem to get the difference straight.
Fair enough argument, I agree with the principle but not the example. Spraying pesticides on a field has a similar effect on the wildlife population and in some ways is probably worse. Some pesticides kill pretty much everything they touch not just the offending pests. Farms by their very nature make dramatic changes to the natural ecosystem.
I do agree however that we don't know what long term effects GMOs will have on the environment. My suspicion is that we will see strange consequences that no one expected. For example if companies develop strains of corn that require less water then farmers who irrigate their fields will need less water which will increase the water levels on the water ways. Maybe the increased water levels mean more flooding in spring runoffs and then more dikes and water control systems or maybe increased water levels lead to a sharp increase in the mosquito population and an aggresive spraying plan by the government and so on.
Of course corn that is naturally resistant to pests could also mean less pesticides in our foods and long term reduced cancer rates. I have no idea what will come of all of this but I bet we are in for a few surprises.
IA(m)AB(iochemist) (well, B.S. anyway) and think ecosystem change is a very real concern. Yes, new species will rush in to fill a niche, but their idea of "rushing" isn't nearly fast enough to keep pace with the rate of change possible by human-caused tampering. Often one or two species will dominate the void (think purple loosestrife or zebra mussels) and occupy it, retarding the progress of other species. It often takes a long time for biodiversity to return to pre-affected levels.
Of course, we have been genetically engineering our environment for thousands of years, but the rapid development and sudden large-scale implementation of GM technology is too fast for either nature or science to cope with. I honestly hope that, in the future, our world will be greatly improved due to what GM technology has to offer us. But the internal combustion engine was a mixed bag, nuclear power was a mixed bag, TV was a mixed bag. Let's use some caution.
P.S. for some interesting research that isn't getting out the way it should, see http://projectcensored.org/c2001stories/7.html
Sure it would be nice if all foods came labeled with whether they contained genetically modified organisms, but this costs money. There is at least costs for labelling (probably pretty minor) and keeping food separate (I don't know how much this costs, but it seems that it might be significant).
Currently, companies can spend the money to label food as not genetically modified. However, it seems that few companies actually do this. This is conjecture, but I would guess that's because most of the consumers who say they want labelling are unwilling to pay for it.
Not mandating labeling seems to be the more free market way to go.
The problem for the Greens seems to be that the companies are like Microsoft in another way: Profit. Most GE crops are also rendered sterile, you can't get viable seed from them. If you clone, distribute, or take rootstock, they sue you to kingdom come (hmm.. does an organism's genetic sequence fall under the DMCA?). You are to buy, plant, harvest, then buy again. Captive market. With normal crops, you plan right, you have seed for next year. What happens if GE plant 4, upon which your entire country has converted into production under dubious sponsership by some multinational corporation (think Nike and the like), ends up being replaced by super GE plant 4 PLUS, at a premium cost, that the country/people are not willing to pay? "Tough shit, guy, we're not selling GE plant 4 anymore."
Then, you switch to a multinational corporation that can provide you with the seeds you need at a cost you can afford. These companies compete, damn it. In the worst case, you can get Gnu/Corn or Gnu/Rice, which would be a GPL-compatible corn or rice distribution that you are free to copy and redistribute, as long as you don't genetically engineer it into a propriety crop.
A local politician has driven her hemp fueled van around for a few occassions. I wonder what the exhaust smells like.
It's not as though we take on traits of something just because we ate it. We don't become more strawberry-like if we eat strawberries, do we?
Suppose you ate some corn that had a jellyfish protein in it. Wouldn't that be somewhat akin to eating corn with jellyfish on it?
There are legitimate concerns over what Monsanto/DuPont etc. do with their products and how they market them, but really, what is the concern here? I'm curious to know what the perceived health threats are. Cancer? How? From what?
"We don't know" isn't a good enough answer. I want specifics. I want to know in what possible ways a genetically engineered strawberry designed to resist frost can hurt me.
The system has failed you, don't fail yourself. --Billy Bragg
On the other hand, we have plants whose nuclei have had genes from completely different species shot into them. This does not happen in nature, aside from what viruses do, which again is something we've had experience with for a long time. I don't think we can safely say that the plants resulting from this kind of mutation are safe, just because the other kind is.
Actually, theres a case with bioengineered plants in Canada right now. Canolla plants that are highly resistant to chemicals are starting to infest other farm lands farm from the testing area. Real hard to get rid of as well. Science is Grand, Nay?
Concerns about insect resistance to Bt predate Bt crops. Insects resistant to the sprayed form of Bt have been found in the past, and there is evidence that the sprayed form of Bt might be more likely to induce resistance than Bt plants.
In fact, there is ample evidence to suggest that Bt plants may be a potent weapon in the fight against development of Bt resistance. The sprayed form of Bt contains a cocktail of different compounds made by the Bt bacteria, many of which are toxic to insects; each different compound is encoded by a different gene. Bt crops today express only one of these genes, producing only one of these compounds. If insects were to gain resistance because of exposure to a particular Bt toxin produced in a plant, it is likely that they would be resistant to that particular toxin only, and would still be susceptible to other Bt toxins.
Future versions of Bt crops will be even more effective at staving off resistence through the technology of "gene stacking," which involves putting multiple genes into a single plant variety. Although current versions of Bt crops produce only a single form of Bt toxin, future plants can be generated that produce two or more forms. To survive, insects would have to be resistant to each form of the toxin. The probability that insects with multiple resistance would arise in an insect population is extremely small.
And, to top it all off, preventing insect resistance is obviously in the interest of those companies producing Bt crops. If they use the technology in such a way as to speed up the inevitable resistance cycle (and it's inevitable, given enough time, in any pesticide application, genetically-modified or otherwise), they diminish the future profitability of their product.
Biotech is bad:
Corporate backers & investers are concerned with *ONE* thing - profits. Imagine if Microsoft made corn. For one, you'd know they'd service pack their seeds. The first crop of corn would be great, easy to plant & grow... but for some strange reason it would spoil at unexpected times.
*COMPANIES* developing crops which interact with other crops on a global basis has world-wide ramifications. *ONE* mistake could cause global famine... just because Microsoft wants to dominate corn too.
I made it up. A better term might be 'scourge of the moment'. Most activists have a "cause celebre", meaning - a cause that defines that group in the public eye. E.g. Elian Gonzalez was a "cause celebre" for many Cuban emigres. An object of a group of protestors' ire is commonly called a scourge. So loggers and ranchers, among many others, are the scourge of environmentalists. Put a scourge together with a cause that defines a group and you get (the somewhat clunky but posessing of a certain flair) 'scourge celebre'.
The people who object to biologically engineered foods seem to be missing the point. Bioengineered foods may or may not be unavoidably bad for you; that's just the technology, and it will eventually get better.
The problem is monocultures: a field of corn that all has the same DNA is insanely susceptible to the predations of ever-evolving parasites and pests. Monocultures caused the Great Potato Famine. And while the biotech companies can keep churning out new versions every time the bugs they're battling mutate, they're fighting a losing battle against hybrid stamina and natural selection. The farmers growing bioengineered plants and animals will have to keep upgrading to the next version to keep up with the bugs (this sounds familiar) and eventually the biotechnology companies will fall behind the parasites (which after all have nothing better to do with their time than breed new sorts of parasites) and have to declare defeat.
Genetic engineering *might* be directly dangerous, but from where I'm standing it just looks negligently stupid.
So? Using strict biological terms "fitness" can mean just about anything. Making sure your maize or tomato crop isn't damaged by weather or can recover from being trodden-upon or even ensuring that a higher percentage of the seeds sewn actually germinate is separate from protecting the plants from pests, fungi and weeds.
They should be Gm'ing the plant to be stronger, fitter, more productive and have better shelf life. They should use other organic methods of protecting the crop from pests, fungi and weeds - they can GM a lot of bugs this way. The problems is that they currently GM corn etc to be pesticide- and herbicide-resistant so they can dose the crop with more chemicals to kill more weeds and pests. Problem is that we then end up eating the crop that is saturated literally with poison. It's bad enough for veggies but meat products concentrate it even further! But, shit, I can't do without my steak and tatties.
Sounds to me like you are accusing the biotech companies of making a better product in an insidious attempt to lure those poor people into buying it.
If electricity is produced by electrons is morality produced by morons?
I'm a farmer in Western Washington. We grow organically, and we've found no need for pesticides (much less plants which self-generate pesticides), nor synthetic fertilizers. I'd very much rather see genetic experimentation invest in areas which actually need the help--cancer research, for instance. Maintaining soil health (known as "tilth"), crop rotation, and related cultural practices work *with* the [mb]illion-year-old ecosystem. When bugs get ahead of the crop, we figure out how to fix our participation in the system... we don't just aim to shoot the messenger.
The big concern with geneticly modified plants shouldn't be the environmental worries, which are mostly red herrings. The concern should be business ethics, or lack therof, on the part of those using these plants. Monsanto makes plants that are sterile so that farmers must buy seed from Monsanto each year instead of using seed from their previous year's crop. This seems perfectly reasonable at first, and it would be if it stopped there. But it doesn't. Just because these plants don't breed doesn't mean they don't "try". When one farmer plants these crops, his neighbor's crops start getting cross-pollenated with the sterile Monsanto crops. So if your neighbor plants Monsanto, and you don't, some of your crops don't produce viable seeds either. The solution? Just buy Monsanto seed for your own farm next year instead of trying to grow from your own seed...
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
No natural enemies?
BS.
Every plant on Earth has at least one thing that will munch on it. Even something as noxious as the Tabacco plant has a insect foe. And I'm sure there will be fungi that attack it (hemp).
I'm all for legalizing hemp for farm and industral use, but let's not blow smoke here.
I know it's common on the marijuana pages to talk about how perfect hemp is, but you take hemp out into the wild and start planting fields of it, you will get insect and weed problems. If you take a wheat field in say...the Dakotas, where alot of people want to legalize commercial hemp, if you are in a grasshopper year, you will instantly get a grasshopper problem, and then there will be weeds like Canada Thistle, Blue Mustard or Kochia. And without proper weed control it will get ugly fast, even for hardy plants like hemp.
I'm not blowing smoke.
I'm from a long line of farmers in north-central South Dakota, and in my 15 years on the farm, I have seen all kinds of claims about this crop or that crop that have few predators.
And no matter what (sunflower, safflower, canola, 8 kinds of spring wheat, 5 kinds of winter wheat, seed corn, flax) when the grasshoppers came around...they were eaten. No matter what was planted...the weeds grew in. Hell a few times aphids even got so bad we had to buy ladybugs to take care of them.
In southern South Dakota...down by Pine Ridge and Yankton Reservations...there is alot of wild hemp growing, and those areas with the hemp get the worst grasshopper infestations.
My research is based on review of USDA weed and pest information and 15 years of farming in an area that wants hemp as a commercial crop.
"On April 6, the government of Thailand issued a ban on all GE crops. On May 1, a similar ban came into effect in Sri Lanka. On March 19, a million farmers marched in New Delhi, calling for, among other things, an end to the World Trade Organization and a ban on genetic engineering and life form patents. In Japan and South Korea government inspectors have continued to test for StarLink and other unapproved varieties of GE foods, while importers are steadily turning away from the US and Canada to other suppliers such as Brazil, China, and Australia for GE-free corn, soybeans, and canola. On April 20 consumer groups in Japan called for a halt in all corn imports from the US. In the Philippines, a bitter debate has erupted over field-testing GE rice and corn varieties. Protests against GE cotton have erupted in Indonesia. Mandatory GE labeling laws begin coming into effect in New Zealand and Australia in July, while labeling laws are already being enforced in Japan and Korea. Labeling laws are under discussion in the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, as well as in the Philippines and Taiwan. Perhaps most significant of all was the announcement on April 18 that the government of China was banning the cultivation of GE rice, corn, soy, and wheat-out of fear of losing its major export markets. Monsanto and the biotechnology industry had previously held out hope that China would be the "promised land" for biotech expansion. Despite all the hoopla about how great biotech is doing, the same three countries most heavily promoting the technology, the US, Canada, and Argentina, are still producing almost 99% of all GE crops."
You can read more about it on the site.
Fialar
The plant expends its energies on making pesticides, and not corn. So the yeild drops. So you need to plant more corn, clear more land, use more water, more agrichemicals ...
If that's true, compare costs. Is it better to have more yield but having to dump synthetic pesticides or have a lesser yield of engineered plants?
In the comparison, mind not only dollars but also the cost of energy and not renewable resources that go in pesticide making.
__
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Same goes for ignorant eco-extremism. If you don't count the dead malaria victims in adding up what DDT costs the environment, it isn't an honest assesment.
I wrote parts of this stuff
most of the people who are against these foods are the same idiots that advocate all these 100% natural herbs that are untested, unproven and may have dangerous side effects. For example St John's wort is a joke and ephedra has been linked to several deaths. So what if it's 100% natural? Poison ivy and toadstools are also natural. Plus they don't tell you that organic vegetables are grown in feces. Can someone say E coli (100% natural too)? Hope everything was sterilized properly
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It may not surprise you that I am not a farmer, but I will assert that an agricultural boom in Cuba has more to do with economic incentives that with organic farming. I could be wrong.
In 1994, they allowed farms to sell above-quota agricultural production. (CIA world factbook).
I can't think of any subjects where it's a good idea to cite a communist country as positive example. Cuba is often cited as having excellent healthcare, which may be true, but doctors there are driving cabs and catering to tourists. Intrusive government leads to all sorts of absurdities, including here in the US.
Even if the world could use only organic farming to feed everyone, it would be a bad idea, for the same reason Linux is a good idea. Resources allocated to agriculture are not available to other other endeavors, just as the money paid to microsoft in licensing and auting expenses is not available to develop your business, pay your workers, or god forbit, pay your shareholders.
The cost may be marginal, but Microsoft has amassed tens of billions of dollars by sucking at the margins. Organic farmers are sucking at the margins to try to revive obsolete and inefficient ideologies about what farming should be. I have no problem with that. I do have a problem with using fear as a marketing tool.
I've enjoyed this discussion. It's hard to find someone who will disagree with me (without getting mad or name calling, etc) long enough to have an interesting discussion.
When the gov't fixes education (by getting out of it, I propose), I will stand beside you in calling for full disclosure by Monsanto, et al. As I always say, what you don't know can't hurt you, unless it contradicts what you do know.
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Yes, I believe that GM foods have something to do with feeding the poor.
Do you actually believe that the biotech companies have posters on the wall saying 'What natural system can we fuck up today?'
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I can't say I disagree with you on either issue. I'm oppossed to patents, and I'm opposed to public research. So we come to the same place with different paths.
Perhaps you meant to say no representation without taxation? That I can agree with. I would personally stop taxing corporations, though.
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I hearby license my motto under the General Evil License and donate the copyright to the Free Evil Foundation.
With apologies to RMS,
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I read that already.
I trust the scientists hired by biotech companies at least as much (and generally more) as I trust those hired by the biotech scaremongers. Everyone has an agenda, everyone has bias, everyone is trying to sell something. The difference is that the Biotech companies actually have an interest in limiting their liability, whereas the scaremongers, when shown to be wrong, will move on to the next scare, with no repercussions amongst the fanatics that support them.
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Mr. Pusztai should release his data if he wants to be taken seriously.
= /s tories/20010220/479847.html
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http://www.nationalpost.com/search/story.html?f
Arpad Pusztai's 150-second interview on British television two years ago left the biotechnology industry reeling.
The research scientist, now visting Canada, likened consumers to guinea pigs and said genetically modified (GM) food on supermarket shelves was not properly tested.
A media frenzy followed. Pusztai's work was widely condemned, and he was fired from the Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen, Scotland.
Last week, Pusztai, with his wife and colleague, Susan Bardocz, spoke about their research in Toronto, Guelph and Ottawa. They were hosted by Canada's anti-biotech triangle of power: Greenpeace, the Council of Canadians and Ann Clark, a Guelph professor and GM opponent.
"We would like to give an account of our actual research," said Pusztai, "not all that has been said about it."
But details of his experiments are hidden in a Catch-22. Pusztai won't use the Internet to show his work. "If something goes on a Web site, it will be difficult to publish [in a scientific journal]," he said.
When asked if he will ever publish his complete work, he said "that would be a very uphill job," partly because the Rowett institute's Web site briefly displayed it, "against our wishes."
"It is in the public domain," added Bardocz, "but no one has access to it."
Meanwhile, Pusztai and Bardocz are on a speaking tour, accusing biotech companies of keeping safety test results under lock and key.
"Where is the transparency?" he asked.
"We are feeling very concerned about GM foods on the market today," said Bardocz. Their concern grew out of research with GM potatoes that contain a lectin gene. Lectins are proteins naturally produced in plants that have insecticidal properties.
The effects of feeding these potatoes to rats were being studied, and a small part of the research was published in the British medical journal The Lancet.
Pusztai is most criticized for blaming the "construct" -- the extra bits of DNA put into the plant along with the lectin gene -- for causing cell proliferation in the rat intestine. That is not damage or disease in itself, but such proliferation is bad in toxicological terms.
The construct includes a "promoter": a switch to make the lectin gene work and a marker gene for antibiotic resistance.
The idea that this construct DNA could be toxic has been seized upon by anti-GM activists, because most GM crops now eaten were made with a similar construct. Many of Pusztai's colleagues found the idea laughable.
He admits his experiment lacked an important control. Potatoes containing only the construct DNA -- minus the lectin gene -- should have been fed to the rats. He said he planned such a test, but was fired before he could do it.
Where is the science to clarify Pusztai's findings?
The co-author of the Lancet article, Stanley Ewen, said last week there is no continuing research on the potatoes in question.
"That would have been the logical way to silence us," said Bardocz.
Other studies have emerged that mimic Pusztai's. A vice-president of Peking University, Zhang-Liang Chen, fed GM peppers and tomatoes to rats. Researchers at the Japanese Institute of Health Sciences fed GM soybeans to rats and mice. No adverse effects were found in either study.
Bardocz said two groups in Norway have funding to repeat Pusztai's experiments with GM corn and GM soya, but have been delayed. "The problem is getting the parent lines [for the potatoes into which the lectin gene had been put] from the biotech companies," she said. "The Norwegian government had to request the material."
Karen Dodds, director general of the Office of Biotechnology and Science at Health Canada, does not seem worried. On Feb. 4, the Royal Society of Canada issued a 263-page report after almost a year of work. It provides advice for making sure new food products being developed through biotechnology are safe.
The report offers many suggestions to improve Canada's regulatory system, but importantly, "they were clear they had no concerns about the GM foods that have been approved to date," said Dodds.
Interpretation of the Royal Society's report will continue as new research comes to light.
Pusztai is doubtless right on one count. "In the end this question should be decided by scientific methods," he said. "People can come up with other explanations than ours, but there has to be a debate."
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I'm no friend of the USPTO, but I think a lot of people here need to stop and think. These 'giant monoliths' are trying to make money by solving real problems. Millions of blind kids in undeveloped countries would love to be able to choose to buy "natural" foods, but they can't afford it, and they wouldn't be able to read the label anyway because they're blind from Vitamin A deff. Who's going to solve this problem so the next generation doesn't go blind? It's not going to be John Q. Organic Farmer. It's going to be a 'giant monolith' who wants to make money by solving real problems experienced by real people whose lives are just as valuable as yours.
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Nothing is safe, therefore nothing can be proven to be safe.
The dose makes the poison. Biotech foods have, much like natural foods, poisons in them. For every substance, there is an amount of that substance that, ingested, will kill you. Likewise there is an amount that will kill you if injected, there is an amount that will kill you if it falls on your head, and there is an amount that will kill you if inhaled.
Forget the idea that we can live without biotech. We can't. There's not enough land. Agricultural advances in the past century have been truely amazing, but they will be dwarfed by the advances of the next century.
Then think about what happens when even the tiniest risk is associated with a product. Suddenly, in the eyes of the courts, every instance of that problem is worth millions of dollars. In the first successful Phen-fen case, the plaintiffs cardiologist testified that her heart valve problems predated her use of Phen-fen. But she was awarded millions of dollars. Every day I see commercials with lawyers trolling for PPA cases, based on a miniscule theoretical risk.
Many people don't have the perspective or the skills necessary to make judgements on risk, especially small ones. This can be seen quite directly by observing the fact that there are cars in the parking lot at Fresh Fields.
Perhaps someday we'll reintroduce math as a subject in schools, and people will be able to intellegently analyze risk. When they get old enough to serve on juries, companies might make more information available. Until then, it would just be stupid.
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There are valid questions to ask about any new product, and they should be answered.
But there are huge disincintives toward admitting to risk. Someone will bring up the 'Precautionary Principle' and sink you no matter how theoretical the risk. You'll be sued by every nut with condition X that your product can theoretically cause. Your best bet is to get the product out and get people used to it, before it becomes known that it might cause an extra cancer per million people per year. That's not evil.
If you want to see honest scientific debate, start with tort reform so juries can't award absurd damages, education reform so people understand how to think about science, and political reform so that corporations don't have to buy off congress to stay in business.
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And the great irony of our times is that the prospect of the developing world approaching the standard of living of the developed world horrifies some people and delights others.
I would propose that international agribusiness, driven by making money, knows they have much to gain from a richer third world. Golden rice will not solve all the problems, but it will help solve some.
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I still think that you (and many, many others) are focussing on the Biotech Boogieman to such an extent that the actual problems you have brought up, none of which originate in Biotechnology, are being addressed!
Agree re labelling - I just want to be able to choose.Obviously a "policy" issue rather than a biotech issue. Also, as I mentioned above, the big, panicked push is to get "GMO" lables on food...which is not informative at all. Unfortunately, if screaming activists got their "GMO" lable, I suspect they'd be content with it, and we'd never get INFORMATIVE labelling (even if they WEREN'T content with it, after rushing the "GMO" label requirement through I'd bet it'd be difficult to get our overpaid legislators to do the work to put through a more informative labelling bill any time soon...). I hear "label genetically modified foods!" all the time. I never hear "Label the food as to it's origin and chemicals used on it!"
Roundup (glyphosate) has been linked to cancer already, so anything that increases its use is probably not goodWhile I wouldn't rule out the possibility (after all, to paraphrase the scientist who studied saccharin, "EVERYTHING causes cancer in sufficient quantities"), I'd want to see some followup studies before panicking. From the article you mention:
The findings are based on a population-based case-control study conducted in Sweden between 1987 - 1990. The necessary data was ascertained by a series of comprehensive questionnaires and follow-up telephone interviews. Dr. Hardell and Dr. Eriksson found that 'exposure to herbicides and fungicides resulted in significantly increased risks for NHL'.[emphasis added]
Without digging up the paper itself it's hard to tell, but questionnaires and phone interviews don't strike me as a real accurate way to measure exposure to a specific agricultural chemical. ("Question 1:Have you been exposed to at least 1 microgram of glyphosphate per kilogram of body weight from your food? Question 2: Did it give you Non-Hodgkins Lymphona?...".). I find it difficult to imagine such data even addressing exposure from FOOD accurately (though it might reveal problems from direct exposure, i.e. the guys actually SPRAYING the stuff.) Does the paper break down the risks they found in their sample in sweden 10 years ago by specific chemicals? The implication of the summary is that the conclusions apply to agricultural chemicals in general.
Finally, of course, the problem here isn't Biotech, it's the use (and possibly abuse) of agricultural chemicals. I hear "ban biotech!", but I don't hear "Reduce Glyphosphate Use!". The "Biotech Boogieman" is a distraction from the problem that actually needs to be addressed. (Studies have shown that violent video games and/or television may promote violent behavior. Should we ban them? Or should viewers/players be required to "label" themselves with a clearly displayed indication of their "Violent Media Exposure Index" or something, so that we can avoid these potentially dangerous individuals?)
(p.s. any pointers to other, more recent glyphosphate studies? You've got me curious now...)
but likelihood of problems/non-self-erasing mutation seems much greater with point gene alteration, especially when introduced into a monoculture.How so? Honestly, I feel a lot more comfortable with the controlled addition of a single gene which produces a well known and well characterized product, especially in a monoculture which is easily identified (PCR is our friend). Plus, since monocultures are generally more susceptible to problems, it's more likely to get itself wiped out or have the gene mutate into dormancy than to somehow produce something worrisome...
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You're not the only one. I'd just about KILL for Olestra Crunchy Cheetohs...
There are two, or possibly three ways to get digestive, uh, problems from Olestra. One is psychosomatics, as you say. The other is to eat an entire bag of the stuff all in one sitting and not eat anything else (Olestra IS, in effect, an "unabsorbed" oil-like substance ["sucrose polyester" - yum!], so if it's a major proportion of your food you might very well have a problem...but then, eating an entire bag of REGULAR chips in one sitting and nothing else might have a similar effect anyway...). There may or may not be the third case of just being susceptible to it, but I don't imagine that's a majority of the population by any means...
Unfortunately, the "Olestra causes explosive diarrhea" meme has been floating around so long people think it's an Absolute Truth...
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It's the same as the analogy of the ol' butterfly flapping its wings in SoCal and causing tsunamis in Japan.
I've heard this many times, but it's as ludicrous today as it was the first day I heard it. In general, a change in a system like the weather system will dissipate. If you run a computer simulation of the weather, and insert an extra butterfly, I guarantee you won't find a typhoon as a result. If you insert 200 butterflies, you still won't find a typhoon. It takes a good degree of coordinated energy to build up a sizeable structure, such as a typhoon. The second law of thermodynamics should tell you this. Entropy increases. If you put a butterfly in a closed box for a few minutes, have it flap its wings, and then take it out, the air in the box will settle to an equilibrium, it will not develop a whirlpool.
As for the ecosystem, it has survived for a hell of a long time. It won't be destroyed by a butterfly, or by a crop with a pesticide in it. The wonderful thing about life is its ability to adapt, so while we should take steps to make sure genetically modified food is precisely and only what we intend for it to be, there is no need to be fearful that a small change will blow itself out of proportion.
So, there are no adverse affects to humans from herbicides and pesticides at all? Is that your claim? If I look at a package of pesticide it won't have any warnings on it because it isn't toxic right? You should perhaps read up a little bit on the history of the industry. The current chemical-oriented focus in farming is actually a biproduct of the military buildup of WWII and after. Factories which had produced explosives for bombs during WWII converted to producing nitrogen-based fertilizer after the war. The compounds are remarkably similar. A lot of pesticides are related to chemical warfare compounds. Don't believe me? Here's a link documenting which pesticides the FBI belives to be most likely to be used by a terrorist in a chemical warfare attack: FBI contacts for suspicious pesticide/OP nerve gas incidents Or perhaps this article in which the Pentagon claims the level of sarin gas troops were exposed to in the Persian Gulf is safe because it's below the limit established for pesticide workers? Pentagon notifying 100,000 soldiers of possible nerve gas exposure? Or perhaps when CNN simply says Pesticide similar to nerve gas you will be convinced?
So, you can claim I am overreacting by calling herbicide and pesticdes poisons. But, in fact, it is you who is underreacting.
Giving the example of penicillin isn't the best either. After all, it is a controlled substance which you can only obtain upon the recommendation of an expert. And he can only give you permission to use it because it has been thru years of extensive testing to determine safe ways to use it. As soon as biotech firms sign up to have their GMO's tested as extensively as penicillin has been, I'll stop worrying so much about it.
Actually, one of the main uses of genetic engineering so far is to make plants produce poison. Or were you under the impression that herbicides and pesticides were not poisonous?
The current spin the biotech industry is just that: spin. They are trying as hard as they can to put a happy smiley face on bioengineered food. At the same time, they are fighting against all efforts at regulation, testing, and labeling. That's where the problem is. Not that the technology is used at all, but that they want to be able to produce these organisms, release them into the wild, and sell them as food without any regulatory oversight at all.
That's what really gets people upset. These companies will tell you how wonderful and necessary GMOs are, and then in the next breath tell you how it's just like selective breeding and hence should not be regulated. Then take a look at their patent portfolios, and how they require farmers to license the seeds instead of buying them. Go read the Rambus article just above this one, because the biotech industry is full of the same greed and duplicity. These people are a bunch of greedy liars and cannot be trusted with our food supply.
This will happen with GM plants as well. One of the more worrying aspects of this is that it has effects that extend beyond the farms planting GM crops. One of the few pesticides that is (sparingly) used by many organic farmers is called BT. Well, a gene to produce this chemical is one of the common genes that is commonly inserted into GM plants. The biotech companies doing this estimate that there will be insects that have become tolerant of this chemical within 20 years. This is not seen as a big deal to the biotech companies because they plan on introducing new varieties that will kill the new tolerant insects. But in the mean time they will have eliminated one of the only pesticides available to organic farmers.
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That would be called something like a toxic reflex. It still doesn't harm your DNA, just poisons you. :P
Personally, given the choice, I'm sticking with "natural" foods. I can wash any pesticide off the plant, it's generally cheap, and I know I'm not contributing to some giant monolith's goals of global domination (in evil voice).
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Nononono. Genetically engineered != selective breeding. It's cut and paste of genetic material from one organism into another.
As for affecting humans, AFAIK your stomach attempts to digest anything you throw at it, GE or not. We do not mutate from GE foods, nor do I see a way to (unless, of course, some viral properties are inadvertantly introduced into the specimen, etc etc).
The biggest concerns are replacement of native/natural foilage/plants/veggies/fruits/animals (you get the idea). If a plant is *too* successful, it can overtake and outgrow anything else. This is bad. Come on, apply the Evil Monopoly of Microsoft mentality. One Crop Bad. Mutliple Crops/breeds/variety Good.
The problem for the Greens seems to be that the companies are like Microsoft in another way: Profit. Most GE crops are also rendered sterile, you can't get viable seed from them. If you clone, distribute, or take rootstock, they sue you to kingdom come (hmm.. does an organism's genetic sequence fall under the DMCA?). You are to buy, plant, harvest, then buy again. Captive market. With normal crops, you plan right, you have seed for next year. What happens if GE plant 4, upon which your entire country has converted into production under dubious sponsership by some multinational corporation (think Nike and the like), ends up being replaced by super GE plant 4 PLUS, at a premium cost, that the country/people are not willing to pay? "Tough shit, guy, we're not selling GE plant 4 anymore." You've locked yourself into a perpetual upgrade->buy path. And because you've not been growing "natural" foods, you don't have stock to rebuild with and are at the mercy of said Multinational corporation. Not a pleasant thought.
If you're unwilling to allow one corporation to tell you what you can and can't run on your computer, why are many of you willing to allow one company to limit your choices at the supermarket? Why are you wiling to allow one company to dictate policy in another country?
Do you even know what's going on in other countries in the name of "commercialism" (not capitalism, although some may mistake it as such)? Those "loons" protesting the WTO and World Bank just might not be "loons" after all. Educate yourself, get your facts straight, then ask yourself if you feel comfortable the way things are.
As for myself, I say go for it. GE all you fucking want. But, from the consumer end, caveat emptor: sometimes you get what you pay for. At least be informed of the options.
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Think Open Source vs. Proprietary.
Open Source: the natural stuff. You can selectively breed it for certain traits, nurture it, store it, give it to your friends, etc.
Proprietary: "We modified the source code of the corn, you're forbidden to see the changes we made and god help you if you reverse engineer it. We own it, you buy it, shut the hell up and get back in line."
As long as Open Source is still a viable option, I don't mind Proprietary stuff.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
Nobody creating genetically modified crops is doing it to make the world a better place, they are doing it for $$$. This is _very_ important.
What does this mean :
Well, there might be less pesticide, but the field next door has a bunch of plants that allow the use of more herbicide.
As usual, the customer is scum, so the plants will be sterile so that you ALWAYS have to buy the seed from me (and patents let's me be a monopoly for 17+ years).
I'm going to do as little testing as I possibly can, because it's expensive. So you can rest assured if there is going to be a problem, you're not going to see it until I've released my GMO in large quantities.
I'm also going to come up with really neat products to end world hunger and they are going to go to the highest bidder. Naturally the people who need these products are the ones that can least afford them - tought sh*t.
If I do f$ck things up royally you're going to be left holding the bag because it's going to be loose and their is no way we're getting it back under control.
If you think about how badly we're f*cking up the planet with _simple_ things like coal and fertilizer, just wait until something goes wrong on the genetic side.
Absolute statements are never true
Right on. I love science and progress as much of the next guy, but you've outlined the precise reasons why GM should be kept in the lab for another 50 years at least. We are likely to screw it up, we can't fix it if we do, and the folks who are likely to screw it up have only their profit margins in mind. Bad scenario.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
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There was a recent PBS show on GMOs (I forget if it was Nova, or Viewpoint, whatever).
In general GMOs is a big can of worms that has potentially unknowable disastrous side effects if we don't keep it under the strictest of control. For instance, the new corn is great, but now it kills of a rare type of butterfly. Or how about that case where a farmer's GMO corn somehow crossbreed with a neighboring farmer's corn, and now the biotech company wants the second farmer to pay for the corn he is using. Also, farmers are off pesticides, but guess what? The same people who were selling them pesticides are now selling them corn which cannot reproduce, so they are again still beholding to that company, and will have to rebuy ("relicense"?) the right to grow that type of corn every year. How do we keep GMOs from interacting with other pure organisms? How can we know every possible outcome, for something nature has never encountered? We can't. Once the cat's out of the bag you can't put it back in.
On the other side though, and a side I can sympathize with, are poorer nations who *need* food. They *need* GMOs so they don't starve and die. Now that I understand (set aside a separate whole rant on globalization). So, as usual we have to strike a balance here. So those who really need GMOs can get them, and those who just think they're the latest greatest thing aren't using them recklessly (um, is anybody as annoyed as me about the whole "antibacterial" this and "antibacterial" that (can anybody say "resistence")? I can't even come up with a funny quip, because I'm sure the product already exists!).
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Actually as I understand it, the effect of BT bacteria (besides the vegitative growth; GM plants including BT toxin genes don't actually make the bacteria) is caused by the crystals of delta-endotoxin they produce, which when dissolved act by paralyzing the the digestive system and making the digestive membranes more porous. One of Bt toxins' most desirable characteristic is its selectivity; only certain insects are susceptible to the delta-endotoxin. Scientists have identified at least 29 different crystals and delta-endotoxins. Each is effective against specific insects. The bacteria, spores, and their products have been used for approximately 50 years. Little or no resistance has been reported to date.
Sorry. That wasn't a genetically modified grass at all. Just one that wasn't native to the area, actually, it could have been one of several types of aquarium plants this has happened with, but no one has bothered to genetically modify aquarium plants. Your example doesn't wash, no matter how many times you swear it is "true".
BT has been used for about 50 years with little or no apparent resistance developing.
As shown in actual testing, however, the monarch butterflies do better alongside those fields, because other pesticides aren't used, and not enough pollen ends up on the milkweed to be a toxic dose. The BT toxins that actually have effects are the ones in the leaves and stalks that the targeted destructive insects eat. FUD, pure and simple.
Think, if you can. How are the modified salmon going to pass on their modified genes when they instinctually return to the same penning area they were spawned and grown in, after having died in the wild from winter starvation, and being unable to spawn at all, because they're sterilized?Gasp! You terribly selfish, unthinking person! What if its pollen somehow got into the food supply? We could end up with - shudder - hypo-allergenic peanuts!
"Might promote cancer" isn't even a valid test, really. Doses of beta-carotine, a vitamin-A source, have been shown to cause cancer to grow faster. Well, so might many nutrients, right? So should we all stop growing/eating yellow veggies? Go back to the white carrots that were all that existed up until the last few hundred years, until the mutation/natural gene transfer from other plant took place, ban other carotene producing food plants, and accept the blindness from vitamin deficencies that would result? Simple fact is that most plants contain cancer-causing chemicals with much greater activity than the miniscule probabilities some people have conniptions over, probably in combination with other substances that balance the effect out.
Anyone else notice the resounding silence from those activists now that the actual effect has been found to be beneficial to the butterflies because fewer chemical insecticides are used on those fields?
Nevertheless, it would be a great promotional feature for hemp advocates that the large amount of pollen generated into the environment would make it difficult or impossible to grow cannabis which could be used for illegal drug purposes, at least outside. In fact, this could be true of hemp developed by ordinary plant breeding techniques without using genetic engineering.
I would expect that sincere advocates of hemp for industrial purposes instead of drug use will be highly positive about this advantage...
From the evidence provided by the genetic diversity of salmon from different spawning streams, and west coast salmon spawning streams where they've been wiped out and in which they haven't been known to return except by the release of salmon hatched and raised in the same waters, the anwser would seem to be "extremely slowly".
If a super-salmon escapes into the wild and if that salmon is fertile and if that salmon manages to spawn and if the model predicts correctly, then Atlantic salmon become extinct.
Unfortunately, that (Purdue University) model's hypothesis, as far as I can find using web resources, seems to be have been backed up only by an experiment using livebearing Japanese fish confined to aquaria,. The purported reason the fish would die out is based on a general unfitness that seems totally unrelated to seasonal starvation - that starvation, which would tend to eliminate the GM salmon, doesn't seem to have been included in the Purdue study, merely a hypothesized overall increase in adult size that hasn't been actually observed in the GM salmon - if they merely grow faster to return to fresh water to spawn somewhat earlier, but at the same size, they aren't going to receive the greatly preferential attention of the females needed to support the hypothesis. And I can't find any mention of the genetic barrier caused by Salmon homing instincts, porous or otherwise, in the accounts of the Purdue study at all!
So, what we are talking about is the possibility that over the century or so that many salmon generations would take, plus the extended peoriod that it would take for them to migrate into different breeding populations, that no one would bother to continue raising the hatchery born salmon that already make up a good portion of the population (much of the rest being already extinct), or that they would blindly use fish with the GM modification for the breeding stock. Given that premise there might be a real, though very long-term, risk, but not including it is like ignoring inconvenient-to-include realities to build a model that says that anyone on a railroad train might suffocate if it went over forty miles an hour. But that doesn't mean it it is necessarily going to happen, or even that there is a real "risk" of it.
With the obvious exception that it would dilute or eliminate the THC content of cannabis grown for illegal use. Is that what you are worried about?
Well, usually - I would personally be more worried about a crop disease that preyed on a particular GM or natural plant mutation wiping out a whole season of an important crop, should the advantage of that mutation to farmers make it nearly all of what is grown (a "monoculture"). Something like this happened to the corn crop in the USA back in 1970-1971 when the popular "Texas Male Sterile" (natural mutation) corn and its hybrids turned out to be very susceptable to a new strain of corn leaf blight, and 80-100% of some fields were lost - there was about a billion 1970 dollars of damage involved. There would be a similar danger that disease could hit a lot of the industrial hemp if it became a monoculture as well.
Usually the resulting plants are steril. That forces Farmers to always buy their seed from the company. This means if something were to happen to the company or the secret method of creating them was lost, then we'd be out of luck. If they produced crops that were not steril so people could keep some of the better producting one for next years seed, then I wouldn't mind. As always, it comes down to $$$$.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
Hey! Good point! Guess that explains why famines happen mostly in sparsely populated areas! Cuz I guess the earth just "knows" that there are too many people in China and so decides to take out a few million in a less important area like East Africa.
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It's a great thing, until something goes wrong. The problem is, when something goes wrong how do you handle it? Genetically Engineer a spider to catch the GE fly we swallowed?
For example, there is a GE form of sea grass that was made more robust for use in fish tanks. People change their tanks and flush the water. The sea grass flows out to sea.
This grass is now taking over huge areas of underwater shorescapes and pushing out all natural life in certian areas. They are trying to contain it, but don't have much of a chance.
(Sorry about the lack of details on that one, by the way, but it is true).
The only issue is really how do large US corporations get yet more of the worlds money. That's really "America's" only motivation to do anything any more...
1: because not everyone wants to wear hemp. If i want to wear something that feels like a burlap sack, i will, but most people dont like that.
2:hemp doesnt have the same properties as other materials. You dont get the same dyeability, look, feel etc as you might get with something else. No matter how hard you try, hemp is not going to have the same properties as silk. (unless it were bioengineered, ironically)
3: in most states, wearing something made of hemp is probable cause for an officer to search your person. Think about that the next time youre hiding your stash in your hemp pants.
Please read my comment BEFORE replying. This pesticides has been in use for 2000 years, that *IS* a pretty damn long term solution to me.
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Realistically, though, it's not that hard to figure out where the problems are likely to be. We are modifying organisms by modifying their DNA; it's not like this has never happened before. There are millions of different species (all with different DNA) containing quadrillions of individuals (all with different DNA) full of mutations, chromosomal rearrangements, gene transfer, and so on. Just by looking around at the world as it is now, we can get a pretty good idea of the parameters we're dealing with.
So, basically, most of the "Who knows what will happen!!" arguments are about as cogent as the "Linux is evil"-type FUD. Most people may not know what will happen, but experts in molecular biology, ecology, evolution, and so on, probably have a very good idea.
The real problem with GM crops isn't that we might accidentally create some world-conquering monster bug/plant/etc.. Evolution's tried that already. It generally doesn't work. So what are the problems?
One set of problems involves making resistant plants so you can blast everything else to death. It's the GM technology that makes this possible, but the GMness isn't the problem: it's the strategy of destroying everything but your-favorite-monoculture-crop. Related is releasing an organism in an inappropriate place to try to control a problem. This isn't at all a new problem to GM crops.
Another set of problems involves being really, really shortsighted, like with BT corn. BT is nice because it degrades rapidly and is only toxic to certain classes of insects. So we'll produce BT in all our crop plants and (through natural mechanisms) select for resistant insects. In five or ten years, BT will be utterly useless. Now doesn't that sound like a good idea!
I think allergies are really overblown as a problem. Yes, maybe a fish gene inserted into wheat might affect someone who, fantastically unluckily, happened to be allergic to just that gene product. But those people would quickly learn that they are allergic to fish and wheat and eat accordingly. No big deal. And perhaps some really common antigens (e.g. in peanuts) can be GMed out of the crops. That could be really helpful.
Also, fears of rampant spreading of unusual genes really confuses me. The reason we've got all these big fancy labs is that genes don't spread well outside of the organisms they are in. That's why we have to modify them in the first place! So how, exactly, would they escape?
Anyway, we should of course be careful, but between good background knowledge and some common sense, GM isn't that scary.
1) Bt-Corn affects in particular all species in the order Lepidoptera (moths,butterflys), not just ones that attack corn, hense the effect on the Monarch butterfly whose chief food source, milkweed, is found mostly in and around corn fields. And as alluded to earlier, when pollenating, the poison is released 24x7 making it both very effective but at the same time more likely to give rise to super-tolerant strains.
2) Other new crops in-test, planned, or already here include vitamin-A-containing (Golden) rice, aluminum-fixating corn, virus resistant sweet potatos, and hepititus-vaccine-carrying bannanas.
3) Although the US could opt not to use GM-foods, though at this point it would be problematic, and pay for food at an increased price, this is not viable for the 3rd world.
4) It appears that people are not concerned enough about the consequences if they mess up. In particular, there is this one company this wants to make a super-salmon. Their projections indicate that in the coming years, aquaculture will need to be 7 times more productive. They have modified salmon to not stop growing in the winter as normal salmon do. The result is salmon that are ready 4 times faster. But normal salmon don't grow in the winter because if they did, they would die from lack of food in the wild. Now take into account observation shows that salmon 25% larger are 400% more likely to mate. One mathematical model predicts that if enough of these super-salmon escape into the wild (many 1000's do every year), the potential is that all salmon could be wiped out. Sobering
I've been following all debates regarding biotechnologies and, whether for or against, I haven't seen any argument that isn't at best a sophism -- or at worst that is proving mankind is making progress at becoming more stupid everyday. Most of times only statistics are invoked, of course contradicting each other. All studies turn out having been financed by either part and are laughable. And, an argument for the pro side that somewhat discredits the cons, no real inconvenient being caused by biotechnologies' products were found, either on human health or on the environment (I've seen many of them, all bogus, and whatever the one you have in mind I know it and I checked it out). An example of misconception from the con side (they're the easiest to demolish) is about gene manipulations, being "unnatural" because of crossings between plants and animals, or between species. These idiots shall definitively follow a genetics course ; they would learn, for instance, that "finding a fish's gene in a cat" isn't at all uncommon and besides, the statement itself doesn't make any sense because there is nothing such as a "fish's gene" (that would be like calling each structure in a program a gene and matches between executables unnatural crossing, for instance ;).
As for the pro side, there is just too much money at sake even to listen to their absolute absence of arguments. The only thing that is worth paying attention on their side is, after all, the technological stuff (but don't tell me their first worry is to feed little hungry africans).
One issue I haven't seen mentioned that biologists worry about is something called "genetic diversity." If every major planting of, say, corn in the entire world was one of only a handful of genetically enhanced varieties, some individual strain of bacteria could wipe out massive portions of our food supply. That we have hundreds of different varieties of the world's major food crops gives us some measure of protection against disease and pests. Though this argument by no means says "genetic engineering is bad," it cautions us to worry about planting millions of acres of the latest higher-yield disease-resistant beautiful-flower-producing anything. The continued advances in agriculture over the centuries have already decreased the genetic diversity of our food supply (and have obviously proved a reasonable tradeoff), but genetic engineering has the potential to make the problem much worse.
I did a little research, and it seems only 5 white, rich men care about the civil rights that everyone deserves. On the other hand, there are all of those whiney minority "people" blathering on about civil rights. I suppose they think that if they had the same rights as the rest of us, they'd just have an easier time abusing the welfare system!
It has nothing to do with legalizing drugs. Hemp has been a valuable plant of many uses for hundreds of years. Skim The Emperor Wears No Clothes. It lists all of the accepted uses of Hemp prior to criminalization. It is still used extensively worldwide. Can you think of an argument against industrial hemp other than some company's profit margin?
The point is, hemp is a solution we have now, and have had for thousands of years. It's cheap, it's incredibly useful, it's been proven safe over and over again, and is available now. Can you think of one thing that is wrong with that? Or would you rather be eating more pesticidal residues, drinking water with more impurities, and breathing dirtier air?
If you're going to bring drugs into this, that would be a whole different bucket of fish. America is wasting it's money on fighting the "War on Drugs," achieving no real progress, and doing nothing but harming a lot of people who didn't commit any serious crime. 90% of all marijuana related arrests are for possession, not intent to sell or anything above that.
So it's stronger than cotton. Is it stronger than flax or jute or nylon and as soft as cotton? Because maybe that's why it's not in demand as a fiber. As-scrungy alternatives may exist.
It's stronger than flax and jute (I have no data re: nylon), and softer than cotton.
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Do some more research before you blow smoke yourself. While there is always something to munch on something else, hemp has very few predators (be them insect, fungus or animal) compared to most of the commercial crops we grow now, including corn (be it GM or not!).
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Hemp has no natural enemies, other than the DEA and the US government. It has no insect pests, and thus needs no pesticides. Not only that, hemp probably requires less resources (fertilizer and space) than corn, be it a biotech or non-biotech strain.
Let me remind/educate those that do not know: industrial hemp does not contain enough cannaboids to produce a high. So, no, people could not smoke their t-shirt.
Yet, the DEA itself as admitted that 94-97% of all Cannabis plants it has siezed since the 1960s were of wild or industrial strains that had no value as a recreational drug!
It's actually quite curious that it's DuPont coming forth with these "innovative" life forms, when they had something to do with the illegalization of industrial hemp, promoting it, to expand and support their own business.
I suggest those of you interested in truly sustainable food, fuel, building products, paper, and medicine have a look at Jack Herer's Book, The Emperor Wears No Clothes. The most relevant chapter in this context is Chapter 2.
So, biotech may not be "all that bad," as far as we know now. But why bother pouring so much money into problems where we already have a completely natural, safe, agriculturally, economically, and environmentally wise solution in Hemp? So companies like DuPont can make money. At the expense of both consumers and non-consumers. It's disgusting.
Hemp already can replace petroleum. Hemp is renewable. But as long as our minds see naught but the vision of totalitarian agriculture and capitalism, we will not utilize any truly renewable resources. Think of it like open source- with biotech crop crops, they own the rights to the plants, which often produce sterile seeds. It is against the license to distribute seeds. Whereas, with Hemp, it's basically open source- you grow a plant, reuse it's seed. It renews itself, and makes sure that we don't rely on one patent holding company who decides what and when to sell us.
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Industrial hemp as we know it now is almost THC free (useless for it's drug value, you'd have to smoke a tollbooth sized joint, but then the smoke would most likely suffocate you), is high yield, grows fast, and is 2 to 3 times stronger than cotton.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Uhh... Why does having an organism changed by a design employing incomplete knowledge seem so safe to you? Genetic engineering is a lot different than natural mutations. If only because it is controlled. The way we implement and practice genetic engineering is in a way that encourages and enforces monoculture. Meaning, that if there is something dangerous it effects all the more people, animals, and ecosystems. And... I know you love hemp... don't we all, you can build bridges out of it, cure cancer, establish lasting peace in the middle east... but, sorry, it doesn't work for everything ;) It is a plant. Plain and simple. Yes, it has some uses that have been neglected because of paranoia. But, sorry, it doesn't do everything. There are millions of species out there with admirable traits, and hemp is just one.
Do you think it's justified to spend billions of dollars to engineer an organism to solve problems that Hemp already does? Is it worth it? Add into the mix the fact that we don't know that these GMOs aren't safe? But we think they're probably safe, so that must be good enough, right?
No. At best, it's a waste of time. At worst, it could be a dangerous waste of time.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
First of all, trying something once isn't definitive. Anyone who has any semblence of rational or scientific thought in their head knows that. All FUD.
Aside that, Hempseed is one of the most complete foodstuffs known to humanity. From The Emperor Wears No Clothes, Chapter 2:
"Hempseed can be pressed for its highly nutritious vegetable oil, which contains the highest amount of essential fatty acids in trhe plant kingdom. These essential oils are responsible for our immune responses and clear the arteries of cholesterol and plaque. "
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
You just repeated what the parent post said. Congratulations, you added *nothing new* to the conversation []!
:)
;) )
In fact, you win the *grand prize* for completely skipping over the issues raised when adding *nothing new*. Tell him what he missed, Bob!
(announcer's voice):
He completely missed the fact that he's arguing against controlled fluctuations in genetics in favor of random fluctuation of genetics!
He completely missed the fact that seeds produced by different companies have competed with each other since commercialism in agriculture became common!
He completely missed the fact that there is almost no genetic variation between seeds produced commercially from an individual manufacturer already!
And, as a *Grand Prize*, he completely missed the fact that hemp *does not do everything* in the world!!!!
Congratulations, we are completely unenlightened by your post!!!!!
(oh, and in case you couldn't tell, I was being sarcastic
- Rei
"This may be presumptuous..." "That's my favorite kind of 'This'."
Actually, as a general rule, genetic modifications to an edible plant are from something else edible, such as the soybeans which contain a gene from brazil nuts. If the corn in question here is the corn I'm familiar with, it produces its own pesticide - but one found in a common soil bacteria - Bacillus thuringiensis. We've been eating that pesticide for quite a while already in "natural" foods - organic farmers apply the bacterium to the undersides of leaves to combat insects "naturally". Here's a page on it:
i nfo/pests/bt.html
http://www.ag.usask.ca/cofa/departments/hort/hort
- Rei
"This may be presumptuous..." "That's my favorite kind of 'This'."
According to this, the ideal average number of non-neutral mutations per "breeding" is just under one. This is due to the fact that perhaps 99.9% of mutations are harmful, so the population will degenerate if there is more than this; but, having too much less than that, and the population will fall behind in adapting to change. So, every time you breed a plant (typically once or more per growing season), you tend to change one gene in that plant - probably for the worse.
;)
With genetic engineering, however, you average one or two genes per change - about two breedings of a normal plant. But, these "breedings" have much, much higher odds of being beneficial. The plant is then treated as a normal "selective breeding" plant, in that it has to meet the standards of "outperforming all other similar plants". The same criterea are applied to it as are applied to non-GE plants to see if its better - health risks, disease-resistance, yield, taste (if applicable), etc. It has to exceed them, notably, or noone will buy it. It falls under the same "desirability" criteria that most plants do - however, it didn't require the massive numbers of iterative breedings to get the specific desired major beneficial mutation.
Regardless, all we're dealing with here, at the core, is "change". The genetics are changing. Not incredibly rapidly. As a general rule, a genetic modification does one thing: adds a new protien to a plant. Sure, the new protien will interact with other protiens, etc, and there will be some unpredictability - but it will be *far*, *far* more predictable than a random new protien.
- Rei
P.S. - that was a much better argued post than the last person who replied - I actually had to look up mutation rates for this one
"This may be presumptuous..." "That's my favorite kind of 'This'."
Your first paragraph was flawed by the basic tenet I've been trying to convey: The plants we've been eating for thousands of years - they're *not* the same plants we've been eating for thousands of years.
Have you ever seen the difference between our commercial crops and wild crops? Oh my god, have we ever distorted nature hideously! We produce 1-lb onions regularly - have you ever seen a wild onion? Everything, even berries (my grandfather has both domestic and wild blackberries in his yard, the domestics grew about 5 times larger with the same care - and that's nothing compared to most species we've bred), have become so changed from their original forms, considering them to be the same species oftentimes isn't even realistic (they're generally not considered the same subspecies). We get different "varieties" of seeds for sale each year, developed the previous year from the crops of two years ago. Those were developed from the crops 3 years ago, etc. So, no. The genes in commercial food crops have gone on a radically divergent tangent from wild genes, in one of the fastest, most artificially-imposed evolutionary systems, and are radically different, on the scale of thousands of genes difference - far more than the typical gene-or-two difference for most genetically engineered crops. And, in this case, we *know what protien the new gene produces*.
- Rei
"This may be presumptuous..." "That's my favorite kind of 'This'."
As I don't know you well enough to yet determine if you're a satyrist, I'll assume that you're not, so I have a reason to post ;)
;) It is a plant. Plain and simple. Yes, it has some uses that have been neglected because of paranoia. But, sorry, it doesn't do everything. There are millions of species out there with admirable traits, and hemp is just one.
Um, well, the real issue is... you know those plants you've been eating? we DO NOT (sorry, had to repeat the capitalization for fun ; ) have any long term data on what you've been eating does to humans. Why? Because genes change almost every generation. Its through the magic of these things called "mutations". Genetic engineering is no different than the random mutations we're seing here, except for one thing - *its controlled!*. We actually have a clue about what's going to happen, instead of just a random fluctuation. Please, think about these things before you have a knee-jerk reaction.
And... I know you love hemp... don't we all, you can build bridges out of it, cure cancer, establish lasting peace in the middle east... but, sorry, it doesn't work for everything
- Rei
"This may be presumptuous..." "That's my favorite kind of 'This'."
No, no, no... the wars that will begin are the ones started by the DARK APPLEPOLISHER, and they will be full of brightly colored bouncy balls. Haven't you ever played Koules?
- Rei
"This may be presumptuous..." "That's my favorite kind of 'This'."
Just label all products which are or derive from (in any way) GM plants with a big clear label and let the consumer decide it.
Given the choice between GM-including and GM-free products i will choose the later. Believers that GM stuff is safer can choose the GM-including products.
Then again, since this is not in the best interest of the Genetics companies, and i long ago stoped believing that legislation was done in the best interest of the majority of people (the consumers), i doubt this will ever happen ...
It's not me...you really are that drunk, right? I don't want to be gratuitously insulting, but not a lot of what you say makes sense. If I'm missing something, please explain it to me.
Carousel is a lie!
Heh! By GE plant, I take it you mean a Genetically Engineered Plant (of the fruit, vegetable, etc. variety) and not a General Electric Plant (of the Nuclear Power variety)...
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
I would contend that it is not for you to decide what is and is not reasonable for another to base his decision on.
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
I am soundly against for-profit genetic bioengineering. Here is the reason:0 1/06/21/gm_canola010621
0 1/06/21/gm_canola010621.
http://cbc.ca/cgi-bin/templates/view.cgi?/news/20
This is the inquiry I sent and replies I received in return from the two principles in the article, CFIA and monsanto.
To the CBC, Monsanto and CFIA I sent:
Please see the article filed by the CBC located at http://cbc.ca/cgi-bin/templates/view.cgi?/news/20
A quote by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), which is unaccredited in the article, says "advised farmers to "use another chemical." The CFIA is suggesting a protocol be followed, may I please have a copy? Can I have the name/number and/or email address of the agent of the CFIA that the quote should be accredited to, and/or someone who is familiar with the protocol.
In addition, the article says "Monsanto, which created one of the GM canola strains, says that if farmers' call the company, they'll send out a team to manually pull up the weeds. " Exactly which variety (brand name/part number) of Canola is being described in the article? What policy statement, press release or otherwise did the agent (who?) of Monsanto makes this statement. Who is the contact person for the program? What is the procedure to request Monsanto to have 'a team to manually pull up the weeds'?
If you are unable to provide this information, any constructive direction is appreciated. The staff member from CBC Online who filed the report would probably be very helpfull.
Thank you all for your help.
Best Regards, MEMEMEMEME xxx.xxx.xxxx Day xxx.xxx.xxxx Eve
CC: rfiset-Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Nepean, Ontario. bbilmer-Canadian Food Inspection Agency. Doug Kirkaldy-CBC, Senior Editor, CBC Online. Ken Wolff-CBC, Executive Producer, CBC Online, Toronto, Ontario. Lee Anne Murphy-PR, monsanto, Winnipeg, Manitoba. Trish Jordan-PR, monsanto, Winnipeg, Manitoba.
To which I received this reply from a Monsanto rep, after I had requested that the other (TJordan), whom I had spoke with on the phone, send me the details of the procedure to remove these rogue plants - she agreed, but did not fullfill her commitment:
Mr xxxx:
In reference to your questions concerning Monsanto, I would offer the following:
If you are a farm customer of Monsanto, I would encourage you to contact your local farm business representative for assistance.
For general information on the agronomy of canola, I would refer you to information available from provincial government extension personnel, or the Canola Council of Canada.
Dr LA Murphy
Director, Public and Industry Affairs
Monsanto Canada
Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada
R3T 4H8
Phone: 204-985-1011
Fax: 204-488-9599
Later I received this fairly disarming message from the CFIA:
Your e-mail to Bart Bilmer was passed onto me. I was interviewed by Kelly Crowe, CBC National TV News, last week, over the telephone, about reports of RoundUp-Ready canola volunteers cropping up in farmers fields. I explained that volunteers are a widespread phenomenon in farming, they are a nuisance and that there is not much new in this story. The only difference is that farmers cannot use RoundUp herbicide to get rid of these particular volunteers, but can deal with them through other agronomic practises, including using other herbicides. I discussed that the CFIA has more or less warned developers and growers of these sort of new crops that careful agronomic methods should be employed when cultivating them, to minimize the occurrance of multiple herbicide tolerant volunteers, that of course, would be trickier, to get rid of. I do not have any particular protocols at my fingertips - these issues are agronomic in nature and do not pose any significant increase in environmental risks.
I hope this is of some help in clarifying the background to this story. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you need further information/elaboration.
Stephen Yarrow, Ph.D.
National Manager
Plant Biosafety Office
CFIA
I am not wholly satisfied. Although this specific and distinct event does not pose any immediate and dire circumstance, the opportunity for this to get out of control (our reliance on few GMO-herbicide/pesticide varieties - forgoing all else) is obvious. Basically, the attitude from monsanto is "piss off" and the CFIA is "nothing to see here, move along".
If you notice above, you'll see I said "for profit" bio-engineering. When we see people motivated by selfishness and greed beholden to shareholders and *not* to citizens we have irresponsible decisions made. Monsanto does not ultimately care about farmers, food, environment, or people, really, in the end, their decisions are always tainted by myopic greed. We cannot entrust such a potentially explosive technology to capitalists - they *will* compromise safety (and whatever else) for profit. And the "whatever else" things are the only ones that are important! I would be willing to accept bioengineering from non-profits because I believe they can be trusted to be transparent, follow the scientific method and allow peer-review. Furthermore, I sincerely believe a non-profit would not be motivated to steer their work towards anything except food-supply and food-safety. Simple.
What I would like to do is get my hands on some of this canola and help it become a greater nuisance - and Invite Monsanto to come and pick it up.. bastards. How are ORGANIC farmers going to deal with these rogue-invasive canola plants? I hope monsanto has lots of people to do pulling...
I invite anyone concerned with this to contact Monsanto directly:
monsanto CANADA, WINNIPEG Manitoba (204)985-1000
lee anne murphy
lee.anne.murphy@monsanto.com
trish jordan, monsanto
trish.jordan@monsanto.com
I want a Hypo-Allergenic Cat!
sulli
RTFJ.
Most of the discussion I've seen so far has centered on what the harnfull health effects bio-engineered crops will have on people. No one has mentioned some of the other possibilities that GM crops introduce. For exmaple, imagine a great new strain of GM corn that grows in conditions normal corn can't. The corn is introduced into poor nation and helps the plight of the poor and hungry people. But wait, there's one condition. This new corn doesn't produce seeds. In fact, you can't plant the corn unless you by it from one of the huge agri-business corporations (and some of you think Microsoft in a monopoly... you should check out the agriculture business) and pay them royalties for the patented genes. Pretty soon these parts of the world beoome dependent on the huge multinational for the only crop the can withstand the draught/blight/pests/etc of the region...
Well, how much can we really say about how bad this stuff would be for us? We've been altering our environment for a very long time, even if not in ways quite like this.
I'd say many people are just overreacting without too much to worry about.
I spent a few years doing true GE work, so I know the difference all too well. Not near as sexy as they make it out to be in the movies. I'd argue the trivial bit too, but that is another conversation. Note to self - stay away from the keyboard while sobering up after a release celebration as well.... For me, its all about protein manufacturing. Right tool, right job....
As far as "artificial" - the only point I should have made is there is very little out there that might qualify as "natural". I switched into rant mode a bit too quick when I see folks dressing up as carrots preaching all mods are evil or residential construction halted because a bug adapted to a highly specialized ecosystem. A little to fast with the BFG9000... my bad... sorry...
Again, balance. I missed the mark in my first post when I tried to mention some of the real risks. Like you said,
That is one of the risk we have to weigh as GE moves forward. We should worry about it, but not so much that it paralyzes us. I believe there is much to be gained (aside from fat profits companies might make).... Just look at the clampdown on cloning research these days. So much good would come from being able to nudge a cell into specialization.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
I agree it can take a long time, if ever, that ecosystem hits its original equilibrium again. Is that really bad thing? An unnatural thing? One species blasting out another happens throughout nature. I'm tempted to say its Nature's prime directive.
Until the great cow revolution, Man appears (from our perspective) to be best at manipulating the space around them to improve their habitat. Course, people tend to be pretty stupid too. Nature's way of evening the score?
I agree caution is required - I'm with you on this one. I tend to fear the luddites and the politicians in their pockets more than those doing the GE research however.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
Insects will eventually adapt to any measures taken, but using pesticides in severely limited cases severely limits the yield gains.
To take your argument just one step further, if we don't *ever* use a pesticide for crops it will most likely remain effective at killing bugs in the laboratory forever. Of course, if you never use it, it's useless.
The mistake you're making is in your implicit assumption that the genetic modifications to produce pesticides are intended to be permanent solutions. They're not. Genetic modifications of this nature are just a one-upsmanship solution, intended to give crops an edge for the time-being. Sure, the bugs will evolve, then the engineers will make further modifications, etc.
The war goes on, but it doesn't mean we can't enjoy battle victories along the way.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
It's not eating the genes that's the problem, it's the proteins expressed by those genes. I have two issues with this (begin bijou rantette)
1. I'm dangerously allergic to nuts, tomatoes, apples, and a whole load of other inconevenient stuff. I have enough trouble buying suitable food already. Imagine me in the chocolate-chip cookie emporium down the road...
Me: Hi, does this have nuts in?
Purveyor of Chocolate Chip Cookies: 2 bucks for that, guy.
Me: Erm, no, does it have nuts in?
PoCCC: you want nuts? that one over there, guy.
Me: Erm, no, does _this one_ have nuts in?
PoCCC: Oh, right! Yeah, 2 bucks.
Me: was that yes no nuts or no not no nuts. or what?
PoCCC: Hey, I dunno.
Me: look, I eat nuts I die. Sucky.
PoCCC: dude, hey I didn't know. That chafes. I still dunno. 2 bucks.
and then in the supermarket, June 2004
Me: does this salmon have tomato genes in to make it more pinky-red and generally appetising looking?
PoAssortedFishstuffs: look, just fsck off, ok?
2. I remember reading about earlier GM experiments. When you splice a gene into your target organism, sometimes you need a way to check that it made it, or to screen for the daughter cells carrying the modification. So they splice in a marker as well - if you can see the marker then the likelihood is that the gene you wanted is in place too. Typically they might use a gene for antibiotic resistance as a marker. But once they've done the screening and weeded out the cells it didn't take in, the modified cells still carry the marker. And they pretty much always will, cos you can't take it out again. In these times of MRSA/multi drug resistant TB and so on this sounds like bad news to me. But there you go.
Personally, I would love to kill that Dole bill that helps privitize public research. I think if the fruits of public research are patented, the public (the Treasury) should own a proportion of the patent equal to the proportion of the reseources they provided. No taxation without representation; that includes corporations.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
The other side is the fact that genetically modified crops are not necessary. The problems they purport to answer are caused not by limitations of existing unmodified organisms but by unsustainable farming practices, the loss of arable farmland to development, and the general profligacy, insolent greed, and wastefulness of the the most priviledged people of this world.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
Hey, it's hard to spell halucinagenic, man!
Hey freaks: now you're ju
So you plant a row of supercorn, and a row of pesticide corn. Your overall yield is high as an elephant's eye. Organic farmers do this sort of thing with plants that are naturally repellent to insects already...plant a couple around your field here and there and you end up with corn that, while still bug eaten, is much less likely to be as the insect population is quickly reduced. The added benefit is that, since the pesticide plants often generate an abundance of nitrogen, you can keep a field growing a season or more longer without rotating it.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
When Monk Mengel fucked with his beans and created the modern sciences of botany and genetics, nobody said anything. Mankind had finally found a tool that would allow him to grow the plants HE wanted, not the ones nature liked. After all, that's what's important...nature has its zones in a modern society, and man has his. Neither should cross over into the other. What we've got here is a new way to convince plants to do what we like, to grow crops with less effort, with a greater yield with the same resources in the same area despite increasing temperatures to global warming.
Of course, one or two strains may unbalance an ecosystem...but it's science, man, and it's not as infallible or as deadly as anybody thinks. An awry atomic generator can kill a lot of people, but the power generated through atomic systems is far greater than any petroleum fuel -- and consider the number of people badly burned yearly because of petroleum explosions, and the ecosystems ruined by petroleum spills. In that case, the atoms, for all their half lives and hot water, win the race -- they're safer because there aren't as many of them and they're handled with greater care. So, too, are GE plants safer. If a GE plant starts to take over an ecosystem, its parent -- a powerful biotech conglomerate with a massive cash reserve -- can fix it without much problem, no matter what your environmentalist friend says. Hell, they have the money to pull every plant out of the ground and jump on them until they're just so much peat. But a standard crop, when released into a new environment, is totally uncontrolled. There's no rich company to stop it -- it may have been released by an immigrant farmer, as was the moss that now clogs the Watervliet Reservoir I swam in as a kid, or plant lover who didn't understand the ramifications of moving flora. GE is inherently less dangerous than any other research into the production of hybrid plants because GE has the time, money and knowledge to find out what the problem is and correct it.
If you want to hate and fear Frankenfoods, feel free...but personaly, I think they're less strange than the Tofu Pups I had for lunch. Hot dogs made from soy and bean curd that taste just like beef dogs? Now THAT'S fucked up!
Hey freaks: now you're ju
There are three basic types of genetic modification: conventional breeding (practiced for thousands of years, and yes this is a form of GM any way you look at it); GM by way of expression level modification (knocking out or modulating the expression of a pre-existing gene or genes, such as with the flavr-savr tomato); and by Horizontal Gene Transfer (HGT), whereby genes from one species are introduced into another. HGT can occur naturally in the rare hybridizations between species, or more frequently through viruses carrying DNA snips between them. And in the case of bacteria, it happens every which way. You may not realize it, but the classic definition of a species doesn't actually apply to bacteria because they transfer genetic material between species so readily.
HGT is by far the most controversial form of genetic engineering. Everyone is afraid it will cause some sort of damage or corruption. Very few people have considered how it benefits the natural environment by stimulating evolution. That's right, I say we should do MORE HGT. It increases genetic variety by introducing new traits into a species. And if it gets out into the wild, so much the better. Either it will die out or flourish - simple as that. Yes, it may cause some trouble in the meantime, but life will find a way like it always does.
cryptochrome
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Okay, it seems like a no-brainer, so I looked it up, and there are 5 states (IL, KY, 3 unnamed others) legislating "research" status for industrial hemp.
On the other hand, there are a zillion "head" websites touting the stuff. The question is why? The answer must be that they think getting drugless hemp legalized will somehow get them better access to Thai Stick or something.
But it's clear the "reasearch" status is specifically designed to ensure that you can't mix weed in with IH at any level. I suspect that one of the goals will be to ensure that the smoke of one won't smell like the other.
Otherwise, it'd be a great substitute for the tobacco economy, many times over since it has way more uses than just stuffing your paraphernalia and lighting it.
So it's stronger than cotton. Is it stronger than flax or jute or nylon and as soft as cotton? Because maybe that's why it's not in demand as a fiber. As-scrungy alternatives may exist.
--Blair
> why there's so much cash spent on bio-engineering new strains of plants when hemp is a perfectly good as-is solution!
Because genetically engineered, THC-free, high-yield, extra-strong hemp would kick its ass and be Pat. Pend. Archer Daniels Midland.
--Blair
If it's not about the War on Drugs, why write a lecture on the War on Drugs? You seem to have missed the keen aim of my point.
Let me put it this way:
The vast majority of sites online supporting hemp are sites (on up to large organizations like Mother Jones and High Times) that are also associated with outspoken support of marijuana.
Why does the head community spend so much energy on something that (you say) doesn't serve its primary interest one bit? (If the answer isn't associated with drugs, then the head community becomes less about heads and more about stubborn opposition to government).
If hemp is so valuable and so unlike marijuana, why isn't the mainstream also trying to right this bureaucratic, agricultural, textile, economic wrong and making it a slam-dunk? Why are only 10% of states in on taking a Q-T peek at it? The first one to legalize hemp is going to kick ass.
It's stronger than flax and jute (I have no data re: nylon), and softer than cotton.
Then the problem certainly isn't the War on Drugs. It's the Cotton Lobby. And whaddaya bet they have their fingers in the problem running all the way back? Form a Hemp Lobby, wink-wink-nudge-nudge the politicians into understanding they won't lose a nickel of their graft if they bail on Cotton, and Hemp will become the next Internet.
--Blair
Genetically modifying a plant that has natural predators will induce the predators to adapt or die.
First of all, you are so correct. I think the next step in agriculture technology will involve systems which isolate crops from the environment. Although more high-tech means are probably being developed, I envision crops surrounded by mesh, or ultra-thin glass.
I think the only thing that's really regretable about biotech is that it arrived before crop isolation technology (mesh). Many of the dangers the environmentalists fear could have been avoided through the use of enclosed crops. I'm sure we'll start seeing sealed crops in the future because the technology is already being developed by NASA for use on potential growth of plants on mars.
Biotechnology may thrive in the world of the future thanks to isolation agriculture and better public schools. (to teach people that eating altered food can't make you mutate)
Too busy staying alive... ~ R.A.
I am currently working on GE apples in summerland BC, we are creating strains of apples that have 'silenced' polyphenol oxidase (enzyme that causes browning when apple is cut) One day we hope to release a strain of apple that can be cut and placed in bags much the way baby carrots are sold. Futur plans also include producing a non-browning bt (kill off pests) strain to assist the growers. I hope i haven't given away too many company secrets ; ) dAVE
Enjoy your job, make lots of money, work within the law. Choose any two.
Sure it seems like a good idea now but just wait untill the supper intelligent fruit get their own presidential candidate in the white house. Then their hidden agenda of world domination will be pushed into the foreground and the great Salad Shooter wars will begin. If we don't stop them now it will soon be too late.
I've tried making Hemp bread. The results are not worth getting into. Sufice it to say that Hemp makes a poor food source.
Now now, those was vegetables. Granted one could have been fruit in disguise what with the governments history of "catsup is a vegetable".
If you only have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
If you only have hemp, every problem looks like an extra-large pizza with onions, green-pepper, italian sausage, black olives, oooh yeah, and Canadian bacon, and...
Now I'm not saying that there aren't risks and that we don't need to keep an eye on what's going on, but please, give biologists a bit of credit.
If you place the proper regulations and controls on biotechnolgy, then I don't see the big problem with it. If there is a way to eliminate the use of non-renewable resources (petroleum, etc.) in everyday life, then it would seem to be our obligation as a society to do so. As long as biotech agents are tested to be sure that their environmental impact is minimal or nil, then it seems to be a viable solution to the problems our planet's ecosystems face. The main worry, I would imagine, is the use of bioengineered plants that may have an adverse long-term impact on the ecosystem it is introduced to, and the chance that biotech would be used for malignant purposes. While these are very real concerns, they exist for most forms of new, largely unexplored technology.
"I do not regret the things I have done, but those that I did not do."
The problem is that we don't know understand the downsides very well. Are those genetically engineered crops going to kill useful insects? What is the effect of gene therapy that gets into the germ line? What happens to species diversity and genetic resources when a few "perfect" crops seem to satisfy all our needs--for now? What is the effect on farmers and developing nations when public domain crops are replaced with patented crops controlled by a few companies?
I think biotechnology research is good, as are medical applications of biotechnology. However, I strongly oppose the release of genetically modified crops or organisms into the environment at this time--the effects and risks are unpredictable, and the benefits dubious. The argument that existing breeding and agricultural techniques are no different is wrong: traditional genetic techniques produce a much more limited range of possible variations, and, furthermore, even such traditional techniques have already done grave harm to our ecology.
One thing we can say with near certainty is that biotechnology is not going to end world hunger or malnutrition. We have developed techniques to increase agricultural yields by orders of magnitude over the last few centuries, and in absolute numbers, hunger is worse than ever. Hunger and malnutrition are only going to be controlled through family planning, population policy, and economic development.
I am less worried about changing the ecosystem. Nature abhors a vacuum ? a species gets wiped out, something else ALWAYS takes its place.
Well, you should be worried. We don't even allow perfectly well understood natural species to be moved from one place to another because we know they can turn into pests. And now companies want to create fast growing, insect and pesticide resistant plants artificially and release them into the environment?
My wife is way against GM foods; I have my doubts. Part of me buys into the biotech rant that vitamin-enhanced rice could solve hunger problems for tens of thousands, but another part of me thinks - and this is kinda harsh - that famine is just our planet's way of saying "we've got too many people here." I say this, of course, full of dinner and sitting in front of a luxury that maybe a fifth of the world's people can enjoy.
Here in the US, it doesn't seem like many foods explicitly state "free of genetically modified ingredients". What's the situation in Europe and Asia?
I'm not so undecided about genetic modifications for industrial purposes, such as bioplastics. I think this stuff could be a Good Thing.
DoC
soon to be posting at less than +1...
Adding genes is not like adding options to a car. Genes often operate in combination with one another. Characteristics are often said to be a result of "gene combinations." If gene A is responsible for characteristic X in, say, gypsy moths, its a pretty fair bet it will provide that characteristic in the target organism, say, tomatoes. However, there is no telling what other bonus items will result when gene A is added to the tomato gene.
In one case, Showa Denko engineered bacteria to provide higher levels of L-tryptophan. (Makes you sleepy after turkey dinner.) Plan worked great. Lots of L-tryptophan. Unfortunately, also lots of another amino acid that had never been seen before. The new amino acid caused a new disease: eosinophilia-myalgia syndrome. EMS causes the bodies immune system to attack its own tissue, beginning with the nerves. So, 37 people who were looking for a good nights sleep, died. 1,500 are permanently disabled.
No one saw the new amino acid mostly because its tough to make a test for things that don't yet exist. But also because the new amino acid happens to look a lot like L-tryptophane.
Fortunately, Showa Denko labled their batches and the link was established fairly easily. Of course, it may just be a huge coincidence that the people with this new disease just happened to be people who were taking this new gift from biotech, but the product was banned in Japan and Europe, with the US banning all L-tryptophan. SD settled out of court (go figure.) Not a peep about the GE link on the evening news.
In a sense, and in reference to a post above, we don't know if we are making organisms which produce petro distillates. (Okay, probably not gasoline producing corn, but you get the idea.) Genes work in combination and, as most /. readers probably know, the math gets pretty hairy when your variables affect not only the outcome but each other.
Short version: It ain't been tested till its been tested.
Oh, and the "natural" pesticide is still in the corn when you harvest it. Bummer.
Vik :v)
The problems I have with GM (genetically modified) crops and other goodies is that it is impossible to put the genie back in the bottle once it is out. Market and managerial pressures to get a product to consumers do not take into account that nobody really knows what kind of long term effect these modications will have.
My girlfriend has been working as a biotechnician since she graduated last year. She follows this kind of stuff with a great deal of interest, because it is a new field, and changes in regulation can play havoc with the job market. Both at her own job, and in the field of biotech in general, she has been stunned at times by the lack of foresight and sense that have gone into some projects. GM corn that was supposed to be in controlled outdoor testing has already found its way into other farmers' fields and into the general grain crop for consumption. On a more serious note, there is also a doctor in NY who has altered the DNA of human eggs to "correct a fertility problem inherited from the mothers". Yeah, and he did this in a way that those 12 children will pass those "corrected markers" onto any children they have as well - too bad we don't understand what else those markers may do, or if they were engineered correctly. (both of these from New Scientist).
For those IT geeks out there who need some perspective on this, think of all those shops you have been in where people have come up with spaghetti code, kludged barely working packages together, built and implemented poorly conceived of network designs, all at the behest of management who wants their damned bonus at all costs, that big push Push PUSH to get something (anything) into production. Think of the folks you have worked with who graduated from 4, 6 or 8 years of training, only to do the minimum to get by at their desk. Most of the folks doing GM work are absolutely no different in this regard. Difference is, there will be no "version 2.1b" in the wilds out there. You let it out, the chance for any kind of revision is small.
So, great, GM corn and babies...think of them as first generation products that you can NEVER upgrade. Even better, realize that some of those "easter eggs" that people innocently put into code today might end up very deadly later on.
mrgoat
'Hail Eris, baby, hail Eris...pfffffffttt.' *cough* 'Yeah.'
Flame away, mod down, see if I give a rat's ass!
I live out in San Diego where the Bio2001 conference is being held. Anti-BioTech protesters were promising a scene on the scale of the Seattle WTO mess. Instead, all they got were a few hundred people dressed up as carrots and such spouting quotes along the lines of "Ummm... genetimicully engineered corn is bad, m'kay?" Now they're bitching that they authorities were so intimidating that no one showed up. Right.
Hey, I'm all for being concerned about the environment, but the people we've seen here in San Diego are pretty much a bunch of luddites that are opposed to anything more modern than living in teepees and hunting with spears, and people who enjoy being concerned about something trendy. If there is a group out there with legitimate, researched, specific scientic concerns, they don't seem to be represented (but please reply if you know of any; I'd like to hear what they have to say). And don't even start with Greenpeace - their big super-surprise media event was to go into a grocery store and slap a few demeaning stickers on genetically altered foodstuffs while having their pictures taken.
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
Sorry to post fast without reading a lot, but if it hasn't been mentioned yet, Greenpeace was apparently going around grocery stores in San Diego putting labels on foods that were using genetically altered soy and corn. A representative was grilled on a stupid talk show (okay, I was listening, but it was hard), and her points included the fact that genetically-engineered plants may mean MORE pesticides in some instances if you consider that some farmers are palavering over so-called 'RoundUp-Ready' crops that are engineered to survive severe applications of herbicide so that farmers can hose the land with green death and only the soy plants will remain. So there is that issue.
The thing that chafes my hide is that our government claims to be a free-market advocate, but tilts the playing field by not allowing consumers the choice between GE and non-GE food through proper labeling. For that matter, think if you were faced with a decision to buy meat from cannibal cows or meat from grain-only cows. NOW how much would you pay? I'd pay $10/lb for grain-only beef. My point is that proper labeling IS in the interests of a free market. Especially when you consider that 93% of all consumers (quoth the Greenpeacer on the show) prefer labelling of GE products, and 57% would not buy GE food if they could avoid it. In as much as the jury is still out on whether or not there are allergens associated with GE products, I think it would be prudent of our government to submit to the will of the people in this instance and require labelling.
I still prefer to get my milk at Trader Joe's where they proudly proclaim it to be rBST-free! That is the free market folks! Create an industry that is centered around providing healthier food by requiring the manipulators of food to 'fess up!
Gotta fly...
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You really don't get the point of the argument, do you?
It's an analogy about how, in chaos theory, small perturbations to a system can lead to great changes due to basic instabilities inherent within the system. No one is stupid enough to say that butterflies can ship up a whirlwind, that is just ludicrous.
I think you're taking it too literally. You must think about this. Introduction of rabbits into Australia started as a small thing; maybe a dozen rabbits... but in the absence of predators there was no balance to counteract their rapid reproduction rate. Now there's billions of rabbits in Australia. There are many many examples: kudzu, Africanized honeybees... I'm sure this isn't lost on you, now is it?
Now go back in the corner and color.
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
While I'm a strong advocate of biotech in fields like cancer research and ecologically sound fibers or other materials, I find the subject of biologically engineered foodstffs quite frightening. Not only because of the possible health problems which we cannot predict, but also because of the potential for big companies (Dupont, Monsanto) to use thir patents ON the food too ill ends. Already the engineered corn on the market needs MORE care, not less, than regular corn. Unfortunately for farmers, the chemicals needed to help the plants cannot be found...oh, wait, they can. The producing companies are more than happy to sell the farmers specialized fertilizer. My family is full of farmers. They used to be able to farm fresh cow pies and horse droppings (among other waste) an use it to help fertilize thier fields...and save money. That is no longer an option. Could they switch to old style corn? Sure. But then they would have a lower yield making it hard to compete because of the neccessary increase in price. Farmers become caught in a terrible trap, they either shell out loads of cash to biotech companies, or face losing their wherewithall to live comfortably. Then of course, there is the problem of engineered crops that do not produce viable seeds. Also, the fast growing crops take more nutrients from the top soil, adding to the catastrophic trend becomming apparent in places like California an the plains, in which soil that used to be rich and good for farming is rapidly becomming barren, forcing the farmers to use more chemical fertilizer that is absorbed into food. These problems persist in developed countries...they can only have more disastrous effects in the 3rd world where farmers are uneducated as to the dangers or engineered crops. I saw an ad the other day promoting biotech, saying that engineered rice ("golden rice") can help erase childhood blindness in under-developed countries. The children are going blind because of malnutrition caused by the corrupt global food supply chain...not because of an deficiencies in crops. Growing "golden rice" won't help the kids if they don't have access to it. Or will this magic rice also magically shirk the reigns or corporate agribusiness and become cheaply available to poor children? These kids can also be helped by feeding them...oh, what are those things called? Oh yeah, carrots. Let's not even mention the problem of biodiversity. "Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a homicidal maniac." --Einstein
Can someone please enlighten me as to what "scourge celebre" is?
IW(as)AB(iologist) before I made the jump into BioInformatics - but still, I spent a lot of time working with plant genetics. You drink beer? There is a very good chance it is one of a few barley variants out there breed specifically for brewing. Granted, most of it was old school statistical / cross-breeding work, but the same ideas apply. Way to many hours on my knees counting individual stalks before pounding the data on a Fortran boxen. Never go back...
Anyhow, one of the real risks here is the modified plant cross-pollinates with something out in the wild. Same idea as some of the bugs you can pick up in a hospital - resistant to things that should smack them normally.
I am less worried about changing the ecosystem. Nature abhors a vacuum - a species gets wiped out, something else ALWAYS takes its place. It may not be pretty, but that is the way things work in the real world. You cover an area with toxic sludge (like wood treatment use to do), and I'll be damned if you don't find some bacteria feeding off the stuff. Its not like we have a fixed set of genetic resources - {hum along} lose an owl and xxxx number of unique genetic structures on the wall. Something will adapt to fill the empty space - always.
That is not to say we should blacktop the forests, wipe yippy poodles, or otherwise horking with things just for the sake of screwing with them. There is a balance. Guess I am just trying to say the truth is somewhere between the two extremes. The long view is we need to be careful not to add us to the extinct list.
Where did I put that beer again...
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
Not particularly logical.
You say that testing of genetically engineered producs is unwarranted because we "don't eat genes" then you go on to point out the obvious flaw in that argument : we do eat what those genes express.
This is not an exact science we're talking about. No one can tell you that they know precisely 1. how an exogenous gene will express itself in a host and 2. the long-term effects of genetic changes on a wild population. They can't even tell you that they pretty much know. If someone says different, look at who's writing their checks.
The point is that the particular effects of genetic modifications on an organism cannot be accurately predicted, they must be discovered. I'd vastly prefer that they be discovered in some controlled test rather than on a supermarket shelf.
What I don't understand is the resistance to testing and labelling. Why would anyone (who wasn't making money off releasing untested foodstuffs) think that testing them, and knowing when you're eating them, are bad ideas?
See, you guys need to think more broadly. There are ways of geneticly engineering crops that don't involve turing them into biological toxin factories. Who ever decided that pestiside production was a beneficial trait for plants to have needs to have his head examined. At least as far as plants I'm planing on eating goes.
Now then, on to genetic engineering. First off let me point out that human beings have been geneticly engineering plants for something like 100,000 years. Of course, we didn't always do it with viruses and protein introduction. Example. Almonds. Ever eaten a handfull of wild almonds? I doubt it. Three wild almonds have enought cyanide to drop a 200lb man in less than an hour. Of course, almonds are available in little baggies in damn near ever supermarket. Why? Because humans have selected the almond trees that don't kill us, and planted and nurtured those trees. We've created a new strain of almond that dosn't produce deadly nerve toxins.
It's true of almost everything you eat. Oranges have thicker peals to keep them from bruising in shipping. Corn is a notable one. Did you know that corn, in it's natural state has an ear no longer than 2 inches? That it's almost inedible and typicaly has only one ear per stalk?
Genetic engineering is going to happen. We can't avoid it. Even our preferences as to what constitutes a "good" crop will result in genetic drift. The problem is that now that we're engineering these things more directly we're trying to build in more direct defences against the things that damage the crops. This is a mistake. The answer is passive defences. Don't have the corn produce pesticides, but make the husk harder for bugs to tunnel through. Make the stalk tougher.
Not that it really matters. We'll be living on blue green algae in a few more centuries anyway.
This has been another useless post from....
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
On the other hand, pesticides are a real problem. Whether they are hormone mimics or neurotoxins or what, they are always worrisome. Worse, the pests typically evolve defenses and move right along, creating a need for more, newer and better pesticides.
Having the plant grow its own pesticide is another dilemma. You can be sure that the stuff isn't going into the water and poisoning the fish, but you can't wash something off if it's part of the plant. Whatcha gonna do?
I suppose there are things with little or no downside. Golden rice engineered to add carotene is one of them. Unless it makes the crop more nutritionally complete for pests too (another nightmare!) I can't see how it could possibly hurt.
--
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
Intelligent fruit have already had their own presidential candidates. If I recall correctly, their names were "Bush" and "Gore".
Invisible Agent
Invisible Agent
This post is a mirror; when a monkey stares in, no hacker gazes out.
If you want to know the truth about GM food, read Trust Us, We're Experts. Monsanto spends 100's of millions of dollars on PR getting "scientists" to place articles in scholarly publications advocating the safety of their food. That said, GM food does NOT have a perfect safety record. A genetically modified bacteria used to manufacture a dietary supplement in large quantities introduced a new impurity when spliced incorrectly, introducing partial paralysis and death in close to 1000 people. If you want more details, read the book. Read about the mice who grew up eating pesticide-producing potatoes and developed abnormal organ growth.
GM foods are untested, experimental, and have killed before.
But the biggest argument against them is that causing them to produce organic pesticides causes the insect communities to develop a resistance to organic pesticides, making it impossible to organically farm, making all farmers dependent on pesticide manufacturers.
But don't listen to me. In fact, don't listen to any pontificating slashdot idiot. READ THE BOOK.
you'll end up buying organic. i do.
(well other than anti-drug hysteria, that is :)
The main worry I and many others have is the effect of bio-engineered foodstuffs: we DO NOT have any long-term data as to their effects on humans. For industrial usage? Hey, go for it, if you can ABSOLUTLEY MAKE SURE that the products will not make it into the foodstream, of either animals or humans. Until then proceed with extreme caution.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Essentially, the company who made the corn took a pesticide thats been in use for two centuries (It was discovered by the ancient chinese), and have robbed the "value" from it, because all these bugs the pesticide was effective against will develope a resistance, and the pesticide used for 2000 years will be worthless ...
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The problem with this argument is that the farm on which the plants are growing is nothing like a natural ecosystem anymore. We've already trashed the ecosystem by cutting down all of the plants and driving away most of the animals that would naturally live there and replacing them with a synthetic monoculture. Switching from a conventional strain of a plant to a GMO strain is a minor change compared to switching to a whole new species of plant. But people switch from growing, say, corn to sunflowers all the time without anyone bleating about how it's going to disrupt the fragile ecosystem.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Okay, IANAB(iologist), but neither side of the biotech debate seems to be getting things quite right. Reactionaries against GMOs use ignorant slogans like "Get your DNA out of my food". Biotech pushers use questionable logic like "Well, you've eaten it for this long, it can't be bad for you!" Here's the thing: Mutated DNA is not going to screw you up if you eat it. Short-term effects are negligable, unless you start introducting pesticide-producing capabilities, which we'll leave aside for the moment.
The problem with bio-engineering is this: The action of changing an organism in an ecosystem affects the entire ecosystem. It's the same as the analogy of the ol' butterfly flapping its wings in SoCal and causing tsunamis in Japan. Genetically modifying a plant that has natural predators will induce the predators to adapt or die. If they die, then their predators are forced to adapt or die, and so on.
In short (too late!), we must take the long view on this issue, not be afraid of the progress of science, nor over-confident in her abilities to predict the future.
She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue.