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Would You Like Drugs in Your Rice?
Digitus1337 writes "Wired has the scoop on a new type of rice that was just approved for production by a narrow vote. 'Ventria believes growing drugs that produce proteins like lactoferrin and lysozyme in rice could be a cheaper way to develop drugs than building and maintaining expensive manufacturing plants... Opponents say growing the crops in open fields endangers organic and conventional crops, as well as human health...'" Update: 03/30 23:15 GMT by T : That should probably read "growing rice that produces proteins like lactoferrin and lysozyme."
Before you know it we will have sarin producing dandelions and botulism producing crabgrass. Once the gate is open who know what comes thru.
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
Have you ever posted to Slashdot......on rice?
You had me at 'drugs'.
of cross pollenization should be important in determining what plants and drugs should be used. While protein enhancements spreading to other plants or fields could be beneficial, other drugs such as the human growth hormone would have a definite risk.
Maybe I'm really naive, but why can't they grow this sort of crop indoors?
I know that it would probably cost a lot more, but by growing it indoors you cut down on the possibility of cross contamination quite a bit. Also, if you're growing a crop to use it for pharmaceuticals wouldn't you want it to be grown in a bit more of a controlled environment?
"There's companies that are just so cool that you just can't even deal with it," - Bill Gates, about Google
I hope they test the hell out of these types of "medicine" and their effects on their surroundings. What if a large amount of the chemicals they make adversely effects another species in the area? I'm all for production of GM foods that help, but not those that hurt as well just to save a few pennies.
This is really an interesting question. For example Monsanto has sued farmers that are growing "their" soybeans, yet these farmers are actually growing from stocks of their own crop that has been contaminated by virtue of cross pollenization. Sort of the Genie out of the bottle thing.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Does anyone else see this as just another thing thinkgeek can sell, caffienated?
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Really, must these liberal whiners continue to degrade the march of science based solely on their opinion? I eat genetically engineered food, and there's nothing wrong with me! And besides, the third hand really helps to type! Seriously, though, It really comes down to what is necessary for survival. Glo-Fish? Faddish, but really laying the groundwork for the next generation of bio-reactors. And franken food? There's already a huge industry out there for "Organic" food, why can't both co-exist? I'll take my golden rice steamed, and my Kobe Beef fresh from the secluded, beer fed haven it grew up in.
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Scary...
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Ever tried to put 50 acres under a roof? How about 1,000 acres? Then ther are all those other minor details that are required for sustaining life under a roof, sun light, temperature and humidity control, water, minerals and ferilizers.
There's a fair bit more to large-scale hot-house or hydroponic farming than you have had to deal with when you grew a little pot in your closet.
I have absolutely not problem with genetic engineering ... granted that the following conditions are met.
1. the product is clearly labeled
2. it is NOT grown in open airspace.
The reason why the latter one is important is because the second anyone releases a genetically modified crop into open air (even in a contained farm) birds and other creatures will eat the seeds (or the wind will blow the seeds) and slowly but surely this crop will leave the controlled vicinity. When this occurs, you will have not only begun to make the natural genetic code of said crop a fading tradition, but there are also possible health risks that could potentially be involved. Plus has anyone other then me noticed that organically grown food just tates better (Yes I even did a formal blind taste test experiement once with raw oranges.)
This is also bad news for organic farmers because it cost a lot of money ( thousands annually IIRC) to get that certificed organic label placed on products.
Just take a look at the mess canada is now in as well as the western part of the usa with organic (or lack there of ) cannola plants. Its near impossible now to grow actual organic cannola.
here for more info
This is some scary news. Also consider this, once the naturally genetic code is gone... there is no getting it back.
these aren't antibiotics. these are naturally occuring proteins that are present in breast milk that help fight infection. once a baby is weaned off breast milk, s/he no longer receives these proteins. so the idea is to give the non-breast feeding babies a supplement made from this rice so that the infant has a constant supply of the protein.
given that these are naturally occuring proteins that everyone was exposed to as a child, i think the liklihood of bacteria developing a new resistance to them is low (otherwise, it would have happened sometime within the past several thousand years)
Speaking as an extended member of the asian community, I propose the idea that rice IS a drug. It's damn addictive -- just ask most asians! Gotta have rice on a daily basis, if not at least twice a day. Otherwise you start getting the shakes. Potatoes don't cut it, bread certainly isn't it, and pasta just can't compare to the asian grain of choice.
:)
Low carb diet? Might as well call it detox!
Worse yet, its multi-cultural nature can lead to cultural degradation through Ricism. Asian rice tend to be smaller and stick together, texas long-grain tend to be big and separate, and brown rice is "out there" as far as culinary acceptance goes.
So rice with drugs is harmful. Rice IS already comparable to drugs without the additional drugs.
With all this genetically modified food being pushed forward for the betterment of mankind, has anyone ever questioned what would happen to the immune system if we are so hellbent on preventing disease from food sources. Everyone is so cleanliness obsessed that they disinfect everything, but as a child, your immune system has to be built up to defend itself against diseases, with these GM foods being created to basically prevent disease, does that not weaken our immune system, and wouldnt this make us more susceptible to diseases such as the common cold? Fair enough these chemicals are good at for us, and are needed in prevention of certain diseases, but to actually battle the disease and win, our immune system must be up to the task.
There have been documented problems that can occur after harvest as well.
I personally don't have anything against generically engineered organisms, only that you have to be very careful managing them. While they shouldn't be able to compete as well as "natural" varieties, all it takes are a few big screw-ups to destroy the industry.
Indoor growing helps, as do a number of other controls that can be put in place. Moderate regulation is a good thing, in my opinion.
The best thing to do would be to tweak the plants so they are sterile, and thus, incapable of cross-pollinating. This should be a very easy thing to do.
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"What about genetically modifying sweetwater seaweed to contain THC?"
And when the kelp harvesters grab that algin, Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia ice cream will finally become the ultimate food and we'll evolve into a new race of walrus people.
G'goo goo g'joob, baby.
I don't know about the specifics of what kinds of proteins they want to produce with rice, but I do know that it is much more efficient and safe to produce proteins with E. Coli.
Although they're going for 'out of the lab production' with rice, the potential for problems is just too great. Unlike crops which are genetically modified to produce more of their own proteins or molecules that will be in their environment anyways (like Round-Up), the rice would be producing proteins/molecules/drugs which are completely foreign to the crop environment. What really irks me is that they are producing drugs which will possibly be leaked into the ground after degradation or harvesting. If there happen to be bacteria in the ground with some sort of drug resistance that can be transmitted to other bacteria by plasmids/recombination through contamination of the crops, there will be big problems.
The use of E. Coli in the production of pharmaceuticals is much more efficient and can be grown in larger quantities using huge vats in research labs.
On a much more practical note: how exactly are they going to extract the drugs from the rice? Would the rice be sold with the drugs inside and then cooked prior to ingestion? Or would they be steamed and the resulting water ingested?
Bottom line: using ANY crop for pharmaceutical production is inefficient and dangerous and impractical. E. Coli can do what crops do but with much higher efficiency and practicality.
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From the article:
"Even food-processing corporations are very upset about this as well, because they know all you need is one shipment of corn flakes that has a contraceptive in it and there's a real problem, obviously," [Paul] Achitoff said.
Yes, well obviously ... errr ... yes, a condom in a shipment of corn flakes would cause a problem... not sure what that has to do with genetically engineered rice, but, well, errr ... yes.
Someone give the man a cigar!
I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
The biggest concern I have with GE/GM is that too many people think that genetic material can be contained and controlled. Pollen carries genetic material and can easily be blown around the world (let alone over the road into the neighbours crops). Furthermore, viable pollen has been found that is hundreds of years old. So folks, do we really want to let these kinds of things out of the lab?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Yeast producing alcohol?
Let's apply genetic manipulation to produce carbohydrate-free rice please. This Atkins diet is killin' me!
There is an equal risk that the patent holders will attempt to extort payments from the farmers who's seed stocks have become contaminated with thier "intellectual property".
Monsanto has already done this. I'm sure that this will not be the last lawsuit of this type, and I'm also sure that the biotech companies are calculating this type of enforcement as an essential part of their income.
Read, L
So who cares if our rice is genetically altered.
I care because I don't like the idea of a coporation being able to say they now own that rice and be able to dictate what I can and cannot do with it. If the rice genes somehow manage to somehow alter the outcome of sperm or cell would that company then have legal rights over any child created from that sperm and cell.
This is more of a legal/ patent issue. But the fact is that formal science in the field of nutrition and muchless chemistry or even bioengineering the way you and I understand it has only been around for about 100 years. You can argue chemistry has been around since the middle ages, but thats a streach. Again once the origional code is gone. it is gone. To my knowledge no one has started an organization to "backup nature" so to speak.
Even eating organic rice will not save you, since small amounts of rice seeds will surely drift on the winds and contaminate all crops. Do we really want to risk our young daughters eating abnormal quantities of lactoferrin and risking a higher rate of gigantomastia and breast cancer?
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Just a couple of questions of the kind that often get overlooked
Since when was rice eaten raw?
Since when did cooked (i.e., denatured) proteins retain the hormonal/enzyme activities of the native protein?
There's a whole lot of wild imagination going into the stories of these so-called risks.
-wb-
I don't have any problem at all with genetically modified foods. We've been genetically modifying food crops for thousands of years; we've just gotten better at it lately.
But these aren't genetically modified foods--they are food crops modified to produce drugs. Granted, they seem like fairly benign substances, but I don't understand why they need to use food crops. Surely there are plants that could be used for drug manufacture that are not normally cultivated for human consumption, obviating concerns that pharmaceutical crop seeds will get mistakenly mixed in with food crop seeds, or that pharmaceutical crops with cross-pollinate food crops.
I suspect the "supplements for babies" line is a smokescreen designed to engender support for something they knew would be controversial. That may actually backfire, since it makes far more sense to simply make sure babies get real, complete breast milk, and anything that might be seen to undermine that (hello, Nestle) is going to garner negative press.
Lysozyme is next to useless as a drug because the molecule is too big to be absorbed and move around the body. It's really more like a kind of natural preservative for bodily fluids (such as milk, or mucous). I'm not sure about lactoferrin but I suspect it's the same story.
What I do know is that lactoferrin has recently been approved for testing as an antimicrobial agent for shipping and storing beef and other foods. In fact it's more likely to be accepted if it's from a GMO plant crop than sourced from animals, since vCJD has people rightly concerned about the latter process (reusing or combining animal products).
Lysozyme can be used in the same way, as a food preservative. Hell, you could clean floors with these things, put them in "antibacterial" soaps (which do more harm than good but I digress), etc. That sounds like a lot bigger and more lucrative market for industrially growing and extracting it, but it's likely not to come off quite so sympathetic in the press as making sure cute little babies are healthy.
Since when did cooked (i.e., denatured) proteins retain the hormonal/enzyme activities of the native protein?
I used to think that too, since most proteins do seem to be denatured by cooking (or even by digestion, which is why diabetics can't just take an insulin pill). But it seems some proteins are remarkably heat-stable. Like those nasty prion proteins. Cooking your cattle brains before eating them doesn't seem to protect against BSE.
it makes far more sense to simply make sure babies get real, complete breast milk, and anything that might be seen to undermine that (hello, Nestle) is going to garner negative press.
There are cases where breast milk is not an option:
- Some mothers cannot produce milk at all or cannot produce sufficient milk to feed their baby.
- A mother who has to take certain drugs for her own health and well-being may not be able to breastfeed because of the risks those drugs present to the baby.
- Sometimes mom isn't available to breastfeed at all. Women still do occasionally die in childbirth, or more commonly, give their baby up for adoption at birth.
- Newborns can have several different disorders that make all milk products, including those from mom, anywhere from very uncomfortable to severely damaging to them. Phenylketonuria, severe lactose intolerance, etc.
So, for several reasons, it's a good idea to improve infant formula as much as possible. We'll probably never be able to get it as good as breast milk (since mom's body can adapt the formulation to environmental factors, such as passing on antibodies to whatever cold is going around), but it's not necessarily a bad idea.
Interesting that these can also serve as food preservatives, though. You may very well be right about the "true" motivations for this product.
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One of the things that we've seen happening in Canada is that a huge corporation (ie: Monsanto) will sell its genetically modified seed to farmers and charge them an annual licensing fee. The problem arises when some of the seed blows onto neighbouring farmers' fields and starts to merge with their crops. In turn, Monsanto takes legal action against the farmers.
Here's a link to a good, comprehensive story.
Basically, the issue at hand is that even before considering the ethical implications of lacing crops with drugs, we should be thinking about the leverage such enhancements will give to corporate heavyweights like Monsanto in their ongoing struggle to preserve "their" intellectual property.
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...Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
Churchill
I see this problem at two levels, the specific issue, and a larger systemic problem...
The first and obvious one, being that the production of crops which have been bioengineered to produce biologically active chemicals and drugs needs to be strickly managed. They must be kept away from other plants, and for that matter, need to be kept away from bateria which can take genetic material and communicate it to wild species (cross species genetic communication is not commonly considered and is a real issue when dealing with novel or unprecedented genetic application.)
Thalidamide looked like a great idea until deformed babies began to happen. Having a genetically altered crop, speading a gene into wild plant species that might have a significant impact on human health and reproduction, or simply further threaten the viability of endangered environments, is a potential disaster just waiting to happen. We need to place care, and responsiblity ahead of the bottom line, or we might just greedy ourselves to death.
The second, is an administration that has ramrodded through the various dept. of government, the agenda "Rubberstamp Anything Big Business Wants". Just today, the EPA was forced to push through new business practices which may cause a 700% increase in mercury in the fish we eat over the next 10 years. This is in an environment where the mercury levels are already high enough to warm pregnant women "That eating top tier ocean caught fish more than once a week poses a significant risk for birth defect".
I'm a firm believer in capitalism, I believe we need to support business, and create a strong and sustainable economy. However, that strength must not come at the cost of social disaster. Our government has become a machine designed to force all resistance including sanity, aside to promote the wishes of large multinational powers. Time and time again the track record is clear. The public is at risk, every single time our welfare come to a head against some D.C. connected industry's profit margin. It's vital that we not try to reduce this to a Republican/Democratic, Conservative/Liberal issue. These are issues involving the fact that our elected officials are too easily bought and sold for the price of funding future election campaigns. We need to change the system, and waiting for the people who benefit from that system, to change it, is clearly pointless. The people need to stand up and mandate a change from the ground up. The quality and longevity of our lives demands it.
Genda
Yeah, but you'd never produce prions in this manner, or at all for that matter. Prions do a very poor job of catalyzing reactions and are completely useless for anything other than giving people vCJD. And I can't think of any other proteins that work when denatured. The shape of a protein is what gives its unique catalytic capability, denature it and that shape is gone, along with its functionality.
As for prions, not a lot is understood about them. It seems like they work by denaturing proteins, thus shutting down cell functions and generating more prions. They only seem to be a problem for nerve tissue, perhaps because of its low rate of division, but no one really knows. Also, while they do seem to be a large problem for herbivores (mad cow, chronic wasting disease, and a few other variants) they don't seem to have much of an effect on the carnivores that eat those herbivores. This seems to be true of people as well. Despite the fact that many millions of people (in Britain and elsewhere) have been exposed to BSE contaminated beef, there have only been a few thousand reported cases of vCJD.
Some researchers believe that natural herds of animals rely on carnivores to remove the animals with chronic wasting. While human hunters usually select the largest, healthiest animals, carnivores typically target the smallest, or weakest animals. This is a theory that will be soon put to the test as the elk herds in Yellowstone become infected with the chronic wasting epidemic that is sweeping northward through the Rocky Mountains. Researchers have noted chronic wasting starting to appear in the elk herds in Teton National Park, which borders Yellowstone on the south.
Also, CJD (the original kind of CJD which hits people in the later years of their life) seems to be tied to prions, but doesn't seem to be a problem for young people. CJD hasn't been tied to exposure to BSE, it seems that some people just get it later in life.
First your questions:
Rice is eaten raw when it is used in the form of ground up rice flour and not cooked.
As for cooked proteins, does the word 'prion' ring a bell? It not a law of nature that proteins loose their shape or their function just because they are heated.
The problem with GM is not so much the danger of accidentally misusing the products, but the very real danger of genetic pollution, which can happen in many more ways than most people imagine. Just to mention a couple:
1. Bacteria and other microorganisms routinely swap genetic material or even incorporate genetic materials from cells of other species, plants included. This is why the multiresistent bugs are not just an isolated problem - it has been found that the resistance to antibiotics can wander between different species.
2. Many of our most important crop plants have near relatives in the wild. Imagine eg. that we have a genetically modified oat field, which produces some dangerous substance. Wild oat is a common weed in oat fields, so we will very soon have a wild plant which produces a dangerous substance. Wild oat spreads very easily - the seeds are light and blow around in the wind - so soon this trait gets into oat meant for human consumption. Even worse - we don't even need a scenario where a wild species acts as intermediary - many crops are wind pollinated, and their pollen can travel for huge distances, perhaps all around the globe.
Only a ruthless, boneheaded and ignorant idiot would let genetically modified crops loose on the world at present, when we don't know nearly enough about the consequences. Unfortunately this is the kind of people that are in power.