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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."
See, this is why a lot of people are cautious about genetically altered foods.
The potential hazards combined with the legal tanglements of a company being
able to hold a patent on seeds, so far, hasn't been worth it. Perhaps now, the
na-sayers who derided the decision of the leader of that African country to
refuse genetically altered foodstuffs have some "food for thought". Sorry, pun
intended.
SealBeater
-- Its survival of the fittest...and we got the fucking guns!!!
The headline on this story seems misleading - the genes did not jump to soybeans from the corn, the genetically-modified corn was accidentally added to some unmodified soybeans.
AFAIK, genes don't have the ability to do an inter-species jump like that...
0x0D 0x0A
It sounds like there are whole corn plants in the soybean fields (which presumably the automatic harvesting grabs together), rather than cross-species gene jumping. Still worrying but not unexpected when the US has such a cavalier attitude to segregation of GM/non-GM crops. It might also be worrying if you were allergic to normal corn (if they still grow that in the USA) (and found it in your soy food).
How is it practically possible to completely isolate these new genetically "enhanced" strains anyway? Surely as long a they're being grown in the big wide world, the genetic changes will crep into the food chain anyway...?
Of course, I speak as a complete idjit when it comes to all things biological...
sig:- (wit >= sarcasm)
Off course I didn't RTFA, but I guess it says that Bush ate a lot of genetically altered corn. That sure explains a lot
"Son, in a sporting event, it's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get" - Homer J. Simpson
The bio-corn - which is grown to produce trypsin and another compound to treat diarrhea - has not been approved for human or livestock feed.
Trypsin is a primary digestive enzyme in stomachs. I wonder what could possible go wrong with ingesting more trypsin, even if it was from another species. This other compound used to treat diarrhea couldn't be that bad either. I don't see what the real problem here is besides the small potential that someone might be allergic to this protein. I know that the FDA has to be conservative but there is no real need for a scare.
Sorry for replying as an Anonymous Coward
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.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Gene swapping is common among strains of bacteria (and several other microscopic buggers that undergo asexual reproduction), but not in eukaryotic or multicellular critters. Here's a brief discussion of the process
Whatever happened to 'amber mutations' for this sort of genetically engineered 'drugs factory'? An amber mutation is one which will not kill the plant/animal with it, provided it gets some substance not commonly available in the environment. But if the susbtance is not provided then the organism simply dies.
It was originally used with lab and sealed-vat based organisms to protect against accidental releases, but it could easilly be applied to farm based plants. Since the kind of farming that uses genetically modified organisms also tends to use a significant quantity of pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers it would be simple to add one more non-toxic chemical to the mix, without which the plants would simply die (or fail to reproduce). You could then deal with any problems by withdrawing the supplement, and any escapees would quickly die. There would still be a slight risk of genetic 'contamination' of nearby crops, but it would be much lower than at present.
If I were a cynical type I would suspect that biotechnology companies are counting on accidental contamination to make it impossible to ever go back to a 'GMO free' state, thus safeguarding their business. Another (cynical) alternative is that to build in a safeguard is tantamount to admitting that you *need* a safeguard, which would adversly affect their sales.
Sometimes it's hard not to be a cynic.
Gene hacking is not the same as the gradual breeding proceses that have gone on for millenia. In the latter, each step is relatively stable, in the former, large potentially disruptive leaps can be made more or less overnight. Unfortunately, unlike with computers you don't have the comfort of chroot and/or virtual machines.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Maybe you are right, but the study on cross polinisation make a lot of people kinda warry in EU, and a lot of people there says that definitly 3 or 4 years was not enough to study the complete "life" cycle and possible jump a gene might make between plants, and the possible bad results of , say, a gene resisting desherbant into a wild specy.
And when such SLOPYNESS comes to light, I can certainly give reason to people asking for more study of impact.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
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.
Maybe I'm dense, but I don't understand the huge fear about genetically altered food. Sure it would be bad if say, a large number of plants were altered to take in oxygen and release CO2, but why can't I eat such a plant? It's not like my body is going to absorb their DNA, actually my enzymes and acids will break the food down and absorb the nutrients, then get rid of the waste. As long as a company can show that any genetic alterations do not make the plant produce poisons, what's the big deal? I've been wondering this for a while, and help would be appreciated.
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.
Duris MUD - The best pkill MUD. Ever.
I meant to say, Another example...
Read farther down in the posts. Some leftover GM corn kernels were allowed to mature in fields which had been replanted with non-GM soybeans. The resulting harvest had soybean seeds mixed with a tiny amount of GM corn kernels.
The soybeans did not acquire genetic material from the corn.
It is my (possibly flawed) understanding that such a transfer might, might, conceivably (we're talking one in several million odds or so) happen with a viral vector, but such a virus would be considerably more likely to glom onto a completely different corn gene and transpose it. Even if the modified gene did jump, the virus carying the gene would have to infect one of the soybean's sex cells to be present in the end food product, or to be passed on.
Get off my virtual lawn, you damned virtual kids!
Wake up. Most plants and animals associated with agriculture are
- not native to the region in which they are grown
- heavily inbred and hardly recognizable
- displacing the "natural" biota
- a huge source of pesticides, fertilizers, and waste products
- heavily dependent on fossil fuel
Modified crops can and will turn sunlight into complex molecules for industry and medicine. There is already an addressed need to monitor our food supply for chemicals and pathogens. So new tests and controls are now necessary. So what?First entomology, then virology, and finally bioinformatics systems. Bugs follow me wherever I go.
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!
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
You think this is bad? Is the thought of a few modified genes leaping into another crop scarry to you? How about the hundreds of thousands of experiments where people modified hundreds, even thousands of genes at once, with no idea of the outcome or its impact on other species?
Well, that's called traditional cross-breeding, and it's been practiced by humans intentionally and unintentionally pretty much since the day when we started building mud huts and stopped following animals around.
The reaction to genetically altered foods in this country (and Europe), espcially the reaction of people of reason, is baffling to me.
When these "big bad" bio companies modify plant genes in an effort to create products, they're doing it with a kind of specificity that was unthinkable 10 years ago. They modify a handful of genes, and they know the exact outcome of that modification.
Is it possible some of these modified genes will "jump" to another plant species? Yes. In fact, it's likely, especially if the plants are grown outdoors rather than in a greenhouse. Is that bad? Maybe. But probably not, and it most cases, it's no more dangerous than the situation created when plants are cross-bred in the "traditional" (read: random) way to produce desireable traits.
Bioengineering faces a lot of hurdles, but one hurdle it should not have to face is educated people rising up in terror against the benefits it could provide.
The headline isn't just misleading, it's just plain wrong. The story is less than an hour old and there are already a fistful of comments pointing this out.
If any of the editors are reading this thread, the headline needs to be corrected!
BTW, I reread the summary a few times, and it seems that the person who submitted the story got it right. The poster makes no mention of any sort of horizontal gene transfer between the corn and soy, but only claims the crops were "accidentally mixed", which is what happened. It's Hemos who fscked this one up.
"Although unwanted corn often sprouts in soybean fields, ProdiGene failed to pull out its bio-corn in Nebraska and removed it too late in Iowa, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department. ... As a result, ProdiGene was ordered to destroy 155 acres of corn in Iowa and may have to buy 500,000 bushels of soybeans quarantined in Nebraska because of possible contamination."
And the other one,
"The USDA quarantined the soybeans in Nebraska after discovering the possible contamination during harvest last month. Investigators suspect the contamination occurred when a small amount of ProdiGene's corn plants mixed in with soybeans subsequently grown on the same field and adjacent fields. In Iowa, the company was ordered to destroy 155 acres (63 hectares) of corn in September because windborne pollen from its bio-corn may have contaminated nearby fields."
No gene transfer, no mutations, no animated Frankencorn coming for your children. Just some self-catch corn plants in a soyabean field which were either not removed before harvest (unlikely) or were removed at a time later decided by some dickhead bureaucrat to be the wrong time (very likely).
In Iowa we have a case of definite burocratitis, where one guy officially blessed the planting and another guy said "NONONO!!!" later on, after the corn was in the ground. No evidence of actual contamination in Iowa was found in the articles, just potential for it.
So what we actually have here is the politically motivated attempt by the agriculture bureaucrats to bankrupt a perfectly reasonable company, one which is following all the rules.
So all you Greenie boys and girls need to read the friggin article, and possibly go read up on gene transfer technology.
The genes did not jump from corn to soybeans.
Genetically-modified corn was planted in a small field. Soybeans were planted in that field the next growing cycle. Volunteer corn from the previous crop sprung up with the soybeans. The company did not weed out the volunteer corn, and at harvest time a small amount of corn was gathered with the soybeans and eventually mixed with 500 tons of soybeans in a silo.
The modified genes being detected are in the corn kernels, not the soybeans.
We must be alert to the danger that public policy could become captive to a scientific-technological elite. - Eisenhower
I grew up on a farm and I know how hard it is to make a profit nowadays. With the price of a new John Deere Combine running around half a million dollars (NOT KIDDING!!), farmers will embrace any new technology that could improve profits (the price of wheat per bushel 3 years ago was less that its worth in the 1950's, NOT KIDDING EITHER!). When Monsanto, among others, started releasing GMO corn and soybeans, those product significantly lowered the cost required to spray and maintain fields for insects and weeds. Instead of spray costing around $75 an acre, it now costs around $20 an acre. Unfortunately, no one wants to buy these anymore because they are "dangerous" or, whatever.
Additionally, for those people who are horrified by the idea of eating GMO's, I'd like to tell you a little secret that has been withheld from you. VIRTUALLY EVERYTHING YOU EAT TODAY HAS BEEN GENETICALLY MODIFIED BY HUMANS. For example, give me one example of a wild cabbage plant, (if you can find this, then you will realize what else was created from its ancestor). Or, since we are on the subject, has anyone seen a real wild corn plant or Soybean plant? The reason we have them today, is because long ago selective breeding made them what they are. The only difference with Genetically Modifying an organism is that it can accomplish a variety of plant in a much smaller amount of time. Additionally, while GMO's synthetically splice new DNA, which in turn creates new organic compounds, selective breeding HAS THE SAME EFFECT ON PLANTS.
anyways, I'm stepping off the soapbox now
First there weren't any genes jumping. The farmer raised the pharmaceutical corn last year for Prodigene. This year he planted soybeans into the field. Some of the corn seed from last year grew in the field this year as a weed. The farmers call it volunteer corn. The farmer received warnings from Prodigene's representative and the government that the volunteer corn must be eradicated. The last warning was less than a week before harvest. By the time the government checked back and learned the farmer wasn't in compliance the soybeans were at the elevator. The 500 bushels (3000 lbs) of soybeans were contaminated with 60 grams of corn stalks. Unfortunately they got mixed into a 500,000 bushel bin at the elevator. What we learned is that the government (believe it or not) actually did a good job of protecting our interests. Prodigene will buy the soybeans and they will be destroyed. Current use of biotech corn has reduced farmers use of insecticides by million of pounds. Pharmaceutical corn has the potential to greatly lower drug costs for seniors. Here's a URL from the Omaha Herald Here and another from the BIO organization Here Man Holmes
While it's becoming clear that the headline is misleading and that we're actually talking about harvested crop mixing and not gene jumping, jumping is still a problem. I don't know about intra-species jumping, but two corn fields seperated by miles of Illinois flatland can definetly cross polinate. There are supposed to be "buffer zones" of soybeans or other plants around "special" corn, but those only work about 90% of the time. There is a definte chance for long distance cross-polination.
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
What part of 'science' includes a title like 'Drug Making Genes Added To Corn Jump To Soya' when referring to a story about a logistical mistake?
Here we have one crop, untested and whose long-term effects have never been fully studied, growing accidentially side-by-side with seed currently undergoing testing of the crop's potential long term effects.
It's these kinds of tactics that hide the weak underpinnings of the anti-GM rabble-rousing, which is not to be confused with informed debate. Posting this story in this fashion is as ethically valid as fighting corporatism by smashing a row of small shops. Such attempts to raise people's awareness of the problems undermines the very attempt to educate by clouding the issue with baseless accusations.
#-#
Ad Astra Per Aspera
A rough road leads to the stars
OK, Just to clear this up a little bit.
/. editors put in a little addendum correcting the article submission a bit on that score. Its not that there's not legitimate cause for concern, but lets make sure that we've got the right concerns before we go off half-cocked. /.ers rightly complain about FUD coming from Wintel supporters. We should be equally careful not to spread unwarranted FUD regarding other subjects.
Cross-pollenation occurs between plants of the same species. Cross-pollentation is where the pollen of two different corn plants of two different lineages are intentionally introduced to each other. This is the same idea as people marrying somebody from the next town over, rather than their cousin.
The pollen of a corn plant, cannot, under any circumstances, land on a soybean flower and create a seed. Two different species cannot create viable offspring unless they are very closely related (where they produce a cross-species hybrid, such as a mule), and even then these offspring are always infertile.
Genetic Modification still has to follow the laws of biology. No matter what the source of the genes, you can't just put two species in close proximity and have genes cross from one to the other. You really do have to have all that spiffy lab equipment and clever people with test-tubes and droppers and microscopes and so forth.
The genes of the corn plants did not contaminate the soy.
So what's the fuss about? Well, those corn plants were producing diabetes and diahorrea drugs. These drugs are probably not something that you really want healthy people taking, as it could possibly have adverse effects. The soy was planted in feilds that contained the GM corn previously. A few of the seeds left over from the previous planting sprouted when the soy was planted. Now it is entirely possible that these corn plants could still be producing these drugs. This is relatively harmless in the wild where they won't be coming into contact with people, but when they're growing in the middle of food-plants, its possible the soy could absorb some of the drugs, simply due to their proximity. This is a legitimate concern, not becuase of some possible 'genetic contamination', but the more mundane but infinitely more plausible pharmecuetical contamination. You won't get soybeans that produce the chemicals themselves, but they might pick up the chemicals from the nearby corn.
The reason that the food manufacturers are upset about using food-plants for pharmaceuticals is that you don't want people eating corn that's been producing diabetes drugs. Eating a tortilla which messes with your insulin levels would be a Bad Thing. There's no reason these drugs couldn't be produced in, say, millet, which nobody on this continent eats as a food. Therefore, nobody accidentally takes drug-millet and makes cornbread from it, becuase nobody eats it anyway. You still wouldn't want to grow soy in that field the next season, though, for the reasons put forth above.
I'd kinda like to see the
if ($it != $onething) {$it = $another;}
You can do a number if interesting things. Trees that produce more than one kind of fruit. Potato plants that sprout tomatoes. Curious cacti.
The technique has more than novelty value. In the late nineteenth century, a louse (phylloxera) was inadvertantly imported to Europe, and it loved to feast on the roots of the wine grape plant (vitis vinifera). We wouldn't have wines from France, or Germany, or Italy, if the viticulturalists of the day hadn't grafted some of the vinifera stalks on to roots of more phylloxera-resistant species. That's right--your glass of Pinot Noir is Frankenfood.
Grafting can go awry, however. There was an incident in Tennessee a number of years ago involving a farmer who wanted his tomatoes to better cope with early fall frosts. He grafted a tomato vine to a local weed. Voila--tomatoes later in the season. His neighbour thought it was a great idea and performed the same trick. Unfortunately, when he shared the fruits of his labour with his family, they all ended up in the emergency ward with high fevers and hallucinations.
It turns out that the plant to which both farmers had grafted their tomatoes was jimsonweed (datura stramonium) which produces psychoactive chemicals in its leaves. Because of different pruning practices, the second farmer's tomatoes contained a much higher concentration of the active ingredient, leading to the poisoning. For more details, consult The Medical Detectives, Berton Roueche, Plume, 1991).
Despite the risks of unpredicted reactions (even after centuries of use), grafting is an accepted and essential part of modern agriculture. We don't have angry demonstrators storming our grocery stores demanding the removal of foods and wine because grafting has been around so long. There may be small risks associated with GM foods--but because of intense public scrutiny, GM foods will be better characterized and more frequently tested than anything else on your plate.
Manufacturers will shy away from introducing obvious potential allergens (peanut proteins and the like, for example) to products for human consumption. Most GM crops are designed to be infertile anyway, severely limiting their spread.
Tempest in a teapot, people. Move along. The ethical sense of agribusiness can be questioned, but not their greed. Simply put, they're going to be damned careful about doing anything that might expose them to ruinously costly lawsuits.
~Idarubicin