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California Bans Genegineered Fish
Cheeko writes "California regulators have announced that they are blocking the sale of genetically engineered fish. The arguments of the regulators seem to echo some of those discussed earlier here."
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Going beyond the knee-jerk reactions against anything genetically engineered, the key to making these safe is to make sure they can't breed. There was a controversy over engineered trees that make better paper. The researcher noted that making them sterile greatly reduced whatever risk there might be for problems later on.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
Need I say more?
Is there anything stopping California residents from taking a quick trip out of state, buying the little fishys, and then bringing them back home? I can't see how this ban will do much good with today's interstate commerce...
Genetically engineered actors and actresses will be all the rage in a few years. The pets will be nothing in comparison.
...it's called "selective breeding". Traits that are useful are reinforced by breeding those who show it, and culling those who don't. OK, so they're getting genes from a jellyfish or whatever to get the glow, rather than from something inside the species. If someone wants to get upset about it, they should center on it being cross-species, rather than complaining about someone applying engineering to genetics.
There's already enough glowing fish in the Petaluma river...if you want on so bad just bring a net and a bio-hazard suit.
That happened years ago.
(/local/home/curiosity)-#who -u|grep thecat|cut -c 44-49|xargs kill -9
Then please, explain the Pomeranian. Or the Chihuaha. WHAT RIGHT DID WE HAVE TO CREATE THESE CREATURES!? They're more of an afront to God and nature than any GM species, and we didn't need anything more than a few hundred years of breeding to create such abominations.
- Paid for by the SPBYD (Society to Prevent the Breeding of Yippy Dogs)
-Hentai [in vita non pacem est]
So now they are cool rebellious black market items. Instead of stupid glowing fish. Yay.
I'm no eco-head, nor am I trolling here, but everything will impact the ecosystem in one or more ways.
:)
In the case of genetically engineered trees, how does one such tree (parts, stuff, etc.) biodegrading affect the environment? Will that spur some fun new super-efficient/robust termite evolution?
But a more important question (and more on topic), how many of these fish does a cat need to ingest to get the cat to glow?
.sigs are for post^Hers.
...only outlaws will have glowfish.
They blocked it on the basis of a moral argument. It is not the Dept of Fish and Game Commission's job to block the sale of genetically modified fish on a moral argument. They completely disregarded all scientific facts surrounding the situation.
As a CA resident and fish hobbyist, I wrote them a letter expressing my displeasure. No matter how I feel about genetically modified fish, it simply wasn't right to make their decision the way they did.
Moo.
To condemn a technology on the claim it is tampering with life is a flimsy stance. We've been tampering with life forever and no one has complained. It's just that now it's more readily apparent.
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Those "agricultural checkpoints" as you cross the state line into California just got more fun.
"Do you have any fruits or vegetables or seeds?"
"No."
"Well, how about genetically engineered fish?"
"Aw, crap...I mean, NO!"
"We're going to have to search your car. Please get out of the vehicle."
"Indians" were cross breeding corn with corn. Transgenic canola cross-breeds canola with fish. The transgenic canola is patented. Canola, whether transgenic or not has airborne pollen. So neighbours of farmers with transgenic crops have been sued for patent violation for planting their own seed.
Sure, the geneticists can claim that they could "turn on" sterility in the target animal/plant genome. But that begs the conundrum:
If one modification can have unintended consequences than all of them can. If neither can have unintended consequences, why bother with the safeguard?
Okay, it's an oversimplification of a vastly complex subject, but I think the proposition is oversimplified as well. It is all well and good to cite genetic sterility as a safeguard when making other genetic modifications, but what are the unintended consequneces of genetically inducing sterility? More importantly, the unintended consequnces of the two in combination. After all, at one point, adding an extra Y chromosome might have looked like a viable way to block breeding, but now we know that would have resulted in billions of sociopathic fish (but sterile).
Power corupts, but absolute power is kinda neat... at least until your three hundred pound, opposable thumbed, parthenogenic guppies decide that they are entitled to the six pack of Weinhards in the fridge...
We simply don't know enough to know what we have to do to minimize the impact of mistakes, malice and general human stupidity.
"Talk minus action equals nothing" - Joey Shithead, D.O.A.
"Talk minus action equals
expressing a fluorescent protein in zebrafish may sound harmless, but I think restricting such things for now is prudent. It's completely unclear what environmental effects it might have. Ever hear of prions? These are proteins that are misfolded, but also cause similar proteins in normal cells to also misfold. The misfolded proteins can cause diseases, such as mad cow disease. The scary thing about prions is that they are resistant to digestive enzymes in your digestive tract. Thus, diseases like mad cow disease may propagate indefinitely.
While there is no evidence that fluorescent proteins have prion-like properties, I bring this example up because prions have only been accepted doctrine among biochemists within the past decade. In the 80's if you proposed that there was an epigenetic disease-causing agent consisting of misfolded protein, people would have laughed in your face. There is just not enough information as to what may happen. IN addition, I can think of other, simpler, more plausible scenarios regarding glowing fish. Green fluorescing fish may affect native algae populations, which would certainly affect aquatic ecosystems. Also, in introducing the transgene, there are probably also antibiotic drug resistance genes used during the cloning process that are present in the organism. Introducing these genes into the wild is not a good idea for obvious reasons.
The truth of the matter is, we know very little about how heterologous proteins and transgenes will behave in the wild. I myself am a molecular geneticist, and I'm all for promoting biotechnology, but I think it's not a bad idea to keep this kind of technology out of the hands of your average "well the kids are bored of the fish, let's flush it down the toilet" type of consumers. Having genetically modified agriculture is pretty scary in and of itself, although I do believe that the benefits outweigh the risks in that case. Certainly, more studies on environmental and ecosystem impact may be prudent.
NO CARRIER
Fish, Jellyfish. Most people don't care. Why? Because neither animal is cute or cuddly.
I'm going to make this debate more interesting. I'm going take come cute breed of dog, and genetically modify them the face of a human baby.
Then, I'll take the cute puppy for a walk in busy shopping districts, big media events, political debates, the fancy resturants where the politicians have their fancy meals. Anywhere where many people will see it.
I'll treat it like a dog. Teach it tricks, yell at it when the dog disobeys, when it poops in the wrong place, I'll rub it's nose in it. When I go have dinner, I'll leave the poor thing in the rain.
That'll get the debate going.
Tell me, do you think people would accept this dog as "normal" and just go about their business? What do you think people will do then?
After all, what's the difference between a transgenic fish and a transgenic dog? Sure, a baby face will require more modifications to get the right bone structure, skin texture, etc. , but it's no more then what we'll be seeing in the genetically-modified pet market in a few years.
Really, this is on the level of what we'll be seeing in the genetically-modified pet market in a few years.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
California is also the only state on the continental US that still bans domestic ferrets. This ban has more to do with opinion and misinformation than fact. And it ignores an estimated 500K pet ferrets already within California's borders.
I'm not suprised the same attitude is applied to fish.
Breeding and genetic engineering are two, distinct areas of science. You've bought into the propaganda, because you cannot assert that selective breeding would produce the crossing of, for example, the arctic flounder, a bacterium with a tomato plant -the Flavr-Savr tomato.
Genetic engineering allows introduction into a species of genes that express proteins (and other molecules) not available within the host species' existing gene pool.
Whether or not that's a good thing is not known, as the U.S. government does not currently require either environmental impact testing nor FDA safety-type testing. Those regulations were swept away during the Clinton administration so that biotech firms could more quicly bring products to market and thereby boost their revenues -but at what cost?
Genetic engineering is actually being tested on an enormous scale -every one of us is a subject.
Personally, I'm not against development of GE products, but believe they really need to be tested. One day there may come a product whose consequences aren't foreseen, and the impact could mean the loss of another species, or worse.
An example of this is the salmon that grows seven times faster than wild salmon. The developers of these want to raise them in netted pens off the coasts of North America, as salmon are currently farmed.
But what would the consequences be of an accidental release of those fish to the wild? A salmon that grows seven times faster than its wild relatives? C'mon, it doesn't take a genius to figure out what the impact would be -the wild salmon would probably get starved out of existence, and it'd be impossible to prevent that from happening. Once in the wild, you couldn't sweep them up.
Big Daddy, Johnny, Burp, Aunt Zelda, Scott, Slurp, Big Momma
Frankly, I disagree with your opinion. Quoting Galileo, "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect, has intended us to forego their use."
Furthermore, I don't believe morality can be legislated. I would not force my own beliefs upon another and I am appalled that others would applaud successful attempts by the state to do so.
This reminds me of nuclear power. Done right, you can make a nuclear power plant that is incapable of having a melt down, yet people are so afraid of the nightmares of science fiction that they refuse to look at the facts. France has 59 nuclear reactors that supply 77% of the total energy to them, and you don't see a bunch of glowing frenchies now do you? Yet this stupid knee jerk reaction people have to technology has caused us to remain dependent on fossil fuels for our power, and no doubt contributed to the energy crisis in California. I'm not saying that there aren't ANY problems with nuclear power. Obviously there are, but the point is that the positive easily outweighs the negative when viewed in a rational light, and the decision not to use the technology comes from people's emotions/fears and not reason. Genetic engineering is a lot like nuclear power, with the exception of the bar to entry being a lot lower. Unlike nuclear power, all you need to do genetic research is the scientists, the money, and a few cute helpless animals. People trying to block genetic manipulation (either the sale of it or the research) are just going to force it to go underground, or to another country that lacks regulation where there is a much higher probability that something WILL go wrong. The solution is not to outlaw it, but to regulate it closely.