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Lawsuit Filed Against Unregulated GloFish
purduephotog writes "You may remember the infamous poll on glowing pets posted in response to the marketing of GloFish. The Center for Food Safety has filed a lawsuit asking to halt all sales of said fish until the government can properly regulate it. More information at ABCNews.com."
The suit alleges the hidden genes can threaten human and animal health if the biotech fish are released and consumed by other fish that eventually are eaten by humans.
I'm not a big fan of GM food but we've been monkeying with the food supply at a higher level for years: pesticides, fungicides, seedless fruits, selective breeding. More recently we have Monsanto and their 'Terminator Gene', etc.
Worrying about fish that may make it to the wild and into the food chain seems pretty tame in comparison.
(just had a thought.. someone with these GloFish(tm) should feed a few to their cat and watch for ill effects. I'd wager the only interesting bit would be the ability to scoop the litterbox in the dark.
Trolling is a art,
Who the heck is eating any fish that glows? So, what does "food safety" have to do with anything?
I had the same reaction, but you know someone is gonna do it anyway.
Too bad they can't solve this by putting a warning label on 'em...
Then again, if you're stupid enough to eat one you deserve what you get. That's just me, though. I mean, you can buy all sorts of dangerous pets and there's no law protecting you if you stick your hand in the cage, right? So what if they're genetically engineered, they're for looking not eating.
=Smidge=
ok obviously to many people are taking things literally to much, they only glow when there is a Light source that shows the transplanted Gene, ie a Black light or a infrared light, they do not glow in the dark, they do not emit light at all. under normal light they appear to be normal Zerba striped fish. so all this glowing poop and firefly fish is utter nonsense. Sheesh no wonder they got people like those that are sueing for regulation of these fish. The unfortunate part in all of this is that their parents were not sued and stopped from creating such a whining ass Tard as they have become. The worlds population is doubling every 40 years, what a shame the intelligence factor is not keeping pace.
If firefighters fight fire and crime fighters fight crime, what do Freedom fighters fight?
If they sell these fish, once they die, what do you think people will do with their dead fish? Not all people will be responsible about disposal--one flush down the toilet, or one dumping into a creek, and this genetic modification is now in the environment. Bigger fish comes by and eats it. Now what?
This is only one of a plethora of examples that may (and probably will) happen. What happens when an organism ingests this GM fish? Will it cause cancer? Bastard prions causing a new vCJD? New flu virus that no one has seen before? No one knows. This is why it needs to be regulated.
I think there are bigger threats to the survival of mankind than some glow in the dark fish.
You're probably right. But, on the other hand, we realy have no way of knowing what the long-term effects are and that is the nut of the matter.
John Q. Public buys glowing fish for his kids, gets tired of feeding them and tosses them in the local river where they become part of the food chain.
AIDS is such a scourge because it can spread quietly for years before it shows itself in symptoms. What if it takes twenty years of eating genetically-modified foods before poisonous levels of some protein are developed in the body? The sciense we're relying on to tell us this is safe has largely been funded by the people who stand to make a profit off of it. Are you ready to roll the dice now?
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
d00d din't you see Jurassic Park? n00b.
a number of organisms exist that glow or luminesce (various bacteria, fireflies, some squid, etc.). their predators do not glow or luminesce. hence, it's fairly obvious that if little timmy eats the glofish, he's not gonna glow.
For a more scientific perspective, I am currently researching the potential for DNA transport in the environment and its potential danger--think dead plants that have been modified in some way, (say pesticide resistance), and bits of their DNA being incorporated by bacteria. While the process can occur, i.e., bacteria can pick up DNA from outside the cell, the frequency with which it occurs is very small (this is called transformation).
We're not bacteria, and I don't have much knowledge of transformation in higher organisms, but a quick look at a microbiology book says that eukaryotic sells have a different mechanism (transfection), which seems to have an even smaller chance of success.
so, bottom line, it's a nonissue, at least in terms of people eating them. bacteria picking up the genes, however, is a bigger issue though...
What? Mad cow has exactly NOTHING to do with GM foods! BSE is currently thought to be caused by a specific protein that inhabits the spinal cord and brain of infected cattle. This is not a result of cows eating GM cows - nor is it punishment for some sort of animistic cannibalism. The ban on cows eating cows was related to cross contamination - ie a healthy cow eats a sick cow and subsequently gets sick - of BSE. BTW - nice try with AIDS too, but again, it has NOTHING to do with GM unless you buy into the c-o-n-spiracy theories...
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
EEEEEH!!! Wrong!
4 .h tml
h .r eut/
Just because a company says that a product it is selling is safe does not mean it isn't. Point me to one study that justifies a lawsuit.
I'll point you to some evidence that your statement is wrong:
Right off the bat, I can show you just spoke out of your ass:
"There is no evidence that these genetically engineered zebra danio fish pose any more threat to the environment than their unmodified counterparts which have long been widely sold in the United States. In the absence of a clear risk to the public health, the FDA finds no reason to regulate these particular fish."
http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2003/NEW0099
In fact:
"The zebra fish were originally developed to detect environmental toxins, but Alan Blake and colleagues at Yorktown Technologies, L.P. licensed them to sell as pets."
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/11/21/offbeat.glofis
Please, point us to a single study that says they aren't safe. A real study, not just someone being irrationally paranoid about the mystical evils of genetic engineering.
We all saw Jurassic Park, but that's not a reason to go freaking out about a cool invention.
When an organism eats this GM fish, it will be full. Nothing else. Why would it be any different than eating the anemone that the gene is from in the FIRST place?
Seriously, no higher organism sucks up genes from its diet and adds them to its genome, it just doesn't work like that.
I'm not crazy about a world of genetically modified creatures, but there are more important things that already affect our lives that these people should be going after, not likely harmless little red fish.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I imagine any study I point to will be immediately dismissed by you as being "irrationally paranoid" so you'll have to excuse me for not wasting my time doing a Google search.
I did one for you, I didn't see any. I found the ones I pointed to though. Please use real studies, facts, and logic to justify lawsuits. It's your line of thinking that has led to this horrible overlawyered situation we have today. You gave absolutely no reason why these fish are a menace to society, you just assume they are because rich people created them.
Just because something can be done doesn't mean it should be done, especially when the only gain is to make someone enough money to buy their second Hummer, "cool invention" or not.
Rich people have done more for this world than whiners like you ever will. It's because of the rich people in this world who work their asses off to invent things that you can sit in front of your computer typing pointless messages on
If you pointed me to a real study, done by an unbiased third-party, that justified your claims, I would not call you irrationally paranoid, instead I might learn something.
But obviously I'm not going to learn anything from you today, and that's disappointing.
I wish people would stop suing and trying to regulate everything just because they don't trust it, for some reason they can't put their finger on.
In the meantime, the only people calling this product "unsafe" have no evidence whatsoever to back up their claims. Again, please point me to some if you have some inside knowledge. But I'd hate for you to "waste your time" by doing a 2 second google search.
Of course, it could be argued that that is a survival instinct on the part of lawyers.
hmmmm, how about we use the hawiian eucalyptis groves as new homes for koalas.
It should be plainly obvious that this kind of commercial practice is extremely dangerous to our environment and sets a poor precedent. Who are we to say that this species is harmless? Please don't tell me that they understand the consequences of such a fish getting into the wild! Hell, it need be only slightly less pallatable to predators and (eventually) you can kiss the 'pure-bred' version goodbye.
Perhaps I am simply nostalgic, but I'd prefer leave the ecosystem to successive generations more or less how I found it. I don't want the ocean to look like a rave.
Is it really necessary to assume these kinds of risks and meddle with nature simply for people's amusement?
While I agree with your point about other animals, funnily enough I think that where humans are concerned, genetic engineering is the only possible next step.
Why?
Because evolution, for humans (at least in the western world), has in effect come to a standstill. The sick don't die, and even when they do die they often have time to reproduce first (except for a very small minority). The weak don't get eaten by predators. The stupid don't get eaten by predators as well, though their country does... but that's another topic. Anyway so my point is that there are no selection factors that are able to affect humanity at large, because there's too many of us and we're too well protected from our environment. Note that I think it's great that we're not playing that game anymore, because that game is not one that is acceptable for us, intelligent, thinking human beings.
So then, the only way to continue evolving as a species is to drive our own evolution. There are several ways you can do that. You can use the nazi way of selective breeding (or rather selective killing), only let people with 'good genes' have kids... but what a terrible world that would be. Or you could use a bit of genetic engineering to nudge things forward. The latter needs to be done with great care to avoid all the potential dangers, but it is clearly a better solution than the former, and a better solution than simply doing nothing and stagnating forever (or until we kill each other with nukes or pretzels or whatever).
Daniel
Carpe Diem
All the Terminator gene does is sterilize the seeds, but Kudzu (and similar) is such a fast growing plant exactly because it has no need to go through a seed cycle. It simply spreads and roots and spreads and roots - potentially one monsterously large plant covering a hundred acres. Whoops! :D
P.S.
Genetic engineers are number five on the Top Ten list of People You Do Not Want To Hear Say "Whoops!"
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
I would like you to provide some proof that any animal more complex than a bacteria has ever taken up the DNA of a creature it consumed.
What complete fear mongering.
Clear, Dark Skies