Drug Making Genes Added To Corn Jump To Soya

Anonymous Cowdog writes "Google News turned up a scary item today: Apparently, genetically altered corn, designed not to repel pests or withstand bad weather, but rather to grow pharmecuticals (for diabetes and diarrhea) has been accidentally mixed with soy plants in the field, resulting in 500,000 bushels of contaminated soybeans being quarantined by the US FDA. Ooops. Here's the story, and here's another story about the same case. The company who brought us this nice event is called ProdiGene. Looks like they're also working on an edible AIDS vaccine (kinda makes sense, eat Tofu, enjoy free love!) Now, I was thinking, will our government protect us from doom-by-hand-me-down-genes? and on a hunch (honest!) I did this google search for keywords ProdiGene and "george w bush". Result? A not so reassuring article."

Comments

Typical FUD

[siskbc]

See, this is getting ridiculous. Posting process on slashdot:

1. Slashdotter finds distuirbing article.
2. Slashdotter doesn't read it closely.
3. Slashdotter makes gross oversimplifications, including specifically some sort of doomsday scenario.
4. Slashdotter assumes there must be some GW Bush conspiracy going on.


The sad thing is that there is potential for harm here, but the overstated claims and conspiracy theories really hurt the credibility of the posted story, which itself was good.

Made up problem

[Cpt_Kirks]

I grew up farming corn and beans. Soybeans are a broadleaf plant. Corn is a grass. Grass killer sprayed on soybeans will kill the corn plants that come up.

Also, corn grows about four feet taller than soybeans. Picking out the corn should be no problem.

Really though, GM stuff should be grown in totally separate fields and the fields kept separate.

Re:Made up problem

[Midnight Thunder]

GM fields should even be restricted to green-houses. This way you avoid the problem of a GM plant cross-pollinating to an 'organic' version of the crop.

Soybean + Corn = Plantiality?

[dlur]

Last I checked Corn and Soybean plants can't cross-pollinate. Nor do they have any other means to transfer their genes from one species to another.

I highly doubt that the Corn stalks were 'gettin it on' with the Soybean plants, spreading free love and pollen accross the species barrier. This would be like a pig mating with an elephant, and is thus merely the stuff of dreams and fantasies in a biologist's world.

It's highly likely that what actually happened was wrongly interpreted, and a totally misinformed journalist created a hyped up headline that didn't even begin to convey what actually happened. Most likely the farmers that grew the genetically altered corn used harvesting equipment (combines) which like nearly all combines are unable to be 100% effecient in gathering the crops, and as such allow some of the corn to fall back to the earth and become seed. Next year the farmer goes back in, tills up the land, plants his soybean crops in the same field, and soon enough a couple of corn stalks crop up. You'll see this in many soybean fields in the midwest, a couple of stalks of corn standing up in a vast field of what is otherwise soybeans. Even if there are few to no weeds, you'll still usually see some corn, because the herbicides are designed not to kill corn and soybeans, but everything else. When the soybeans were harvested, a couple of corn stalks were harvested along with it, even though a bean head on a combine is not designed to harvest corn, it usually is able to pull a few kernels off the cobb when plowing through the beans. Low and behold, some genetically altered 2nd generation corn gets into the soybeans. Big deal.

Yet they hide in shadows

[why-is-it]

If you think that scientists are just randomly changing genes in foods intended to be sold, you've lost your grip on reality. Experimentation happens, but no sane food/drug company would risk the impact of such a level of carelessness/unconcern.

While I tend to agree with that assessment, I am still troubled by the amount of resources these same food/drug companies spent in order to defeat bills that would have required mandatory labelling of any products containing GM products.

If GM foods are *so* safe, why do they not want us to know when they are being consumed? It's sad that the last line of defense is the threat of massive class-action lawsuits in the event that GM foods are not quite as safe as their purveyors would have us believe!

Re:Yet they hide in shadows

[aslagle]

If GM foods are *so* safe, why do they not want us to know when they are being consumed?

Maybe it's because people have a history of overhyping 'bad' products so that people have a fear of them out of proportion to the risks.

As an example, lets look at the demonization of the word 'nuclear'... it has been so villified by the press and other groups, that the simple mention of the word (or of it's twin, radiation) will cause people to avoid anything having to do with it, no matter the benefits.

That's why irradiated foods do so poorly. Even though they aren't radioactive, people avoid them because it's 'one 'a them "nukulur" things'...

Of course, the company's opposition of the bill couldn't have had anything to do with that - it has to be a conspiracy to foist poisonous food on us! They want to kill all of us customers off so they can clear the way for the alien invasion!.....

Re:Yet they hide in shadows

[elakazal]

The reason to the resistance towards labeling is that the public is so ill-informed (54% in a recent survey did not know that non-transgenic corn had genes all, for example). The food and pharmaceutical companies aren't afraid of the choice a well-informed public will make, they're afraid of the choice the actual public will make, which would likely cost them billions of dollars in research over what amounts to bad PR.

Do I trust Monsanto or Eli Lilly to tell me the truth about transgenics? No, of course not. Neither to I trust the "anti-GMO" activists who spout scare-mongering pseudo-science. The real research, done at universities by people with somewhat less of an axe to grind, indicates that the health risks of any transgenic crop which has actually made it to market are essentially nil. Environmental risks are something else, of course, but these too are being vastly overplayed.

I used to consider myself to be a very environmentally active person, and I often supported a variety of "environmental" groups. Yet in the past four years or so I've been so disgusted by the lies and half-truths coming out of these groups that I've virtually stopped funding all of them.

Read the literature...don't take my word or any one else's for it.

I'm torn, because in my heart I do support the idea that people should know what they are eating. But when you can count on those people to make bad decisions, decisions which harm both them and the economy, I can't really support doing it right now.

Re:No biological equivalent to chroot

[ThaReetLad]

Actually if you lived in europe you'd have heard plenty of screaming about GM food. Any food products containing GM material MUST (by law) say so, and many stores have stopped selling GM products at all because of consumer unease.

You say "no sane food/drug company would risk the impact of such a level of carelessness/unconcern", but many would say you were insane for making such a dangerous and naive assumption.

The big biotech companies have spent vast amounts of money on developing these new products. Do you really believe that they would be beyond "selecting" scientific data that supports claims that they are safe? All /.rs know about RIAA and their pet senators, but how many pet senators does Monsanto have and why do they need them if the food is so safe?

Well one reason they need the senators is obvious actually. They need them to force the US government to persuade the WTO, UN etc that GM food is safe, so that any country which blocks the sale of US food goods is in breach of WTO rules, and so is any country that refuses GM food aid.

Just another example of US corporate imperialism by proxy.

Re:Genetically altered FUD

[duffbeer703]

Please stop the FUD man.

When was the last time a farmer cross-pollinated a tomato with corn to stop insects?

Or when did cross-breeding allow corn to produce human proteins and drugs?

Their do NOT completely understand the consequences of their actions. Taking genetic sequences from a horse and inserting it into a dog is not analogus to cross-breeding a german shepard with a cocker spaniel.

The adverse reaction to genetically altered foods comes from a populace that has been repeatedly lied to by government and industry. "Harmless" nuclear tests in the Nevada desert are now estimated to have caused 70,000 cancer deaths. The use of "Harmless" PCB-contaminated waste oil donated by GE to tar roads in the Northeast has resulted in cancer rates 250% higher in towns that accepted it over the last 30 years. Cost cutting and consolidation in the meatpacking industry has resulted in hundreds of people being sickened or killed by contaminated meat.

Maybe bioengineered products should get a good, hard look in open tests before being let loose on the world.