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Scotts Testing Genetically Modified Grass
Caseyscrib writes "There is an article on Yahoo! News that talks about how Scotts is testing a genetically modified version of creeping bentgrass, popular on golf course greens and fairways, that will be resistant to a common weed-killing chemical. Environmentalists have long opposed bioengineered crops of any kind, and fear that '...if it was to escape onto public land, we wouldn't know how to control it.' It is now in the final stages of approval."
Does that mean we should ?
If this stuff spreads off the golf course, does the maker come after you for a patent violation?
Not to trivialize the issue of bioengineered crops, but to focus on it misses what's probably the more important point... this particular "crop" is designed to allow even more use of toxic chemicals that are poisoning the water supply. It's a big step in the wrong direction. If they're going to bioengineer grass, it should be with the purpose of reducing the need for chemicals in mind.
I think you'd still need to buy fertilizer and weed killer, it's just that the grass would be immune to the weed killer.
So Scott's can keep selling their ferilizer, and push their weed killer even harder "which has been tested and approved for Scott's mutant grass (tm)" to the average person.
i really wish that corporations had standards to meet for producing genetically modified organisms. most people think that genetic engineering is inherently destructive and this simply isn't true. genetic engineering done responsibly could be a wonderful boon to our society. people also forget how destructive we've been without it - simply introducing organisms to new environments has caused terrible problems. unfortunately a few irresponsible corporations could give the whole technology a bad name.
(of course, i think we'll get over this in the next couple decades)
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
We already know what havoc creatures can create if they are moved from their original home and place in a new environment. Yet we are willing to create new species and set them loose into the world without so much as a concern for what the impact on the environment might be? Once that grass spreads beyond the golf courses and invades the yards of peoples' homes, how are they supposed to kill it without killing their own grass. We are so quick to pass judgement on genetically engineering animals, but when it comes to plants (which can cause just as much damage to the environment, if not MORE) we are willing to modify them in any way possible and place them out into the world? It's sick. Any form of genetic engineering should be banned until more is known about it's effects and the ethics of it can be worked out.
Environmentalists have long opposed bioengineered crops of any kind, and fear that '...if it was to escape onto public land, we wouldn't know how to control it.'
It's a good thing we aren't trying to make those nutty eviromentalists look sane, or compasionate about the world we live in.. I'd be cool if people didn't just assume they knew how our entire ecosystem works, and thought they knew whats best for it.
The "Insert Quote Here" line is almost as predictable as inserting an actual quote.
I totally agree. It seems like most people who claim to oppose genetic modification of foods, plants, etc. are basing their views mostly on fears rather than any solid evidence. This is obvious by their use of terms like "Frankenfoods". I think that modified food products should be thoroughly tested before being released into the market to make sure there are no adverse effects, but people need to remember that plant modification is nothing new. Farmers have been cross breeding plants of different DNA strains for thousands of years in order to achieve desirable properties such as resistance to insects. Genetic engineering is for the most part a more precise way to do this.
Reminds me of Colleurpa Taxipholia, a genetically engineered version of seaweed for use in fishtanks to withstand different temperatures, and was superior to all other seaweed.
Only problem is that it escaped into marine life and is currently taking over many areas of the sea, killing all marine life in its path (cannot be eaten as it is poisonous to most). Because of its superior nature there isn't an easy way to stop its spread, and it continues to grow.
Sounds like a similar scenario anyways.
2) Use barriers that most people already use to stop plant growth.
Yes, that's really worked with the rabbits in australia. Wonder how that's gonna work with plants whose seeds are carried by the wind? Hmm...
Daniel
Carpe Diem
I'm a lefty environmentalist, and I oppose this, but not for the reasons you might think. I also work in biotech, and unlike many of my fellow environmentalists, I believe strongly in the potential of genetically-modified plants. There are an enormous number of applications that could be of significant benefit to humanity:
And instead they're concentrating on making golf courses greener? WTF? Golf courses will have weeds, and bare patches, and, you know, a little of bit of something that looks kind of natural. If you don't like it, fine, go play on Astroturf. I'm a lot more concerned about people being able to eat than I am about some rich guy's putting green.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Tell that to the people being overrun by kudzu.
Burn it, it grows back. Salt the earth, it grows back. Spray herbicide, it grows faster! The only way to get rid of it is to dig up and destroy every single root.
I thought that regular lawn grass was already pretty resistant to weed killer. At least, the last time I put weed killer on a lawn, the weeds died and the grass didn't. So Scott is making a product that acts like normal grass.
Genetic modification is a tool. There are many, many advancements to be made by exploiting this new resource. It's new technology, people will be scared of it. The same was true with electricity.
There once was a fear of AC as opposed to DC, Edision wanted everyone to believe that AC was much too dangerous to be used. Of course...he had an ulterior motive, as the major provider of DC power. There may be some lessons from this which might apply to some aspects of the current debate over genmod crops.
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I'm sure fire will still lick it pretty good. Until they start adding some of those redwood genes, it'll burn just fine.
I can understand environmentalist's concern that it is one mowing away from spreading (what happens when a golf course goes bankrupt?) so why not also neuter said grass? If it can't reproduce, it won't be going anywhere. There are already many varieties of grass that can't seed, reproducing through runners. A variety like that would not be susceptible to transplantation by birds carrying away seeds...
...if it was to escape onto public land, we wouldn't know how to control it.
Apparently, they have never seen a herd of sheep in action...
Perhaps, but unlike SCO or MS FUD, this FUD has a basis in reality, or at least the Uncertainty and Doubt portions do: We are not certain what the environmental effects of this grass will be. We are not certain how other organisms will interact with it. We are not certain what large-scale effects on the ecosystem (ie, us) will have. Ecosystems are terribly, terribly complex and grass is a crucial part of them.
Because it's not that simple. They changed a gene that turns off sensitivity to a specific chemical in the weed killer. We don't know what else that gene change did. We don't know how it affects the grass's metabolism (or whatever you call the plant version of metabolism).
To put it in computer geek terms: it's like deciding to change a couple of variables and functions in your C library and recompiling, only imagine a C library that's about a trillion times more complex than libc. Could it work fine? Yes. Could it destroy your entire system? Doubtful, but conceivable. Could it have unforseen side effects? Almost certainly. Would you do it without large-scale, intensive testing? No. Would you do it without a damn good reason? Definitely not.
We haven't done the testing on this because we can't create a control ecosystem. And as much as I love golf, it doesn't count as a "damn good reason".
All's true that is mistrusted
The annoying thing about this is that it is not engineered to be resistant to pests. It's engineerd to be resistant to Roundup, made by Monsanto. There are lots of other such "Roundup Ready" products, including canola, corn, and soybeans.
The result of this is that farmers and now greenskeepers can douse their fields and fairways with Roundup. The Roundup ready plants survives this chemical shower, and everything else dies.
The problems with this are:
(1) The environmental impact of all this (extra) Roundup being released.
(2) The fact that growers become dependent on Monsanto for Roundup. Monsanto is, in effect, genetically engineering conditions that will lead to a monopoly.
(3) The selective pressures that this will put on all the pests that Roundup is supposed to control. In the same way that staph bacteria have evolved reistance to antibiotics in hospitals, the increased use Roundup will probably lead to the evolution of Roundup resistant superpests.
Obviously Monsanto is more concerned with profiting than the long-term economic and environmental health of the country.
I'm not against genetic engineering per se, but this approach seems to be fraught with pitfalls.
Scotts does a tidy business in toxic chemicals. Got to keep the money coming in once the lawn is planted, eh?
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
No, it is not sick. It is progress. Humanity has been "genetically engineering" crops for many thousands of years. Previously we did it through selective breeding that took many tens of generations to get to the final product, but now we can do it in just a few generations in the lab. Corn is a grass. The orginal wild corn is not much different from the grass growing in your yard. Very small seed-kernels and a small yield. But the ancient Maya, Toltecs, Hopi, Azetcs and others "genetically" engineered it over many years into the Maize Corn that we eat today. It took them hundreds (perhaps thousands) of years to get a final product. We can do this over the course of a few years in a lab by isolating and encouraging (turning on) beneficial genes. Did you know that that thousands of human lives have been saved by the development of high-yield rice that simply involved encouraging it to grow with a short stalk? (short stalks do not sag and rot in the water).
Now I will agree that there are two kinds of genetic engineering and that one suits me fine and the other I find disturbing. I have no problem with isolating and encouraging naturally occuring recessive traits. I do have concerns about "transgenic" engineering that splices genes from another species (especially when we are talking about animals instead of plants).
Read the article again. The "problem" currently is that groundskeepers can't simply dump huge amounts of herbicide everywhere since the grass will die. This grass lets them dump huge amounts of herbicide everywhere to kill the normal weeds.
Yeah, I'm jumping for joy over this. I was just thinking the other day that there isn't enough herbicide being dumped on the ground right now.
All's true that is mistrusted
I'm wondering, if I take my 6 iron back from the golf course and swing it my front yard... will grass stuck to it repopulate my front yard? How does grass migrate?
As a side note:
For my eagle project I did an invasive plant removal project in a prairie preserve. It's not easy work.
I'm sorry, but I strongly disagree with your conclusion. You are correct that there are experts that know far more about the subject than we do. You are also correct about the AI researcher knowing more about AI than the secretary or mechanic. However, in both cases I think that the non-expert has a right to consider the possible consequences of a technology, and determine whether they feel the dangers outweigh the benefits.
There are always dangers to implementing a new technology, particularly one that may be difficult to purge if its consequences are undesirable. While I support the cautious use of genetically engineered plants, there is a real concern of loosing control of those plants if we are not careful.
The analogy to making changes to a C library are quite valid. When we make substantial changes to any system, we need to be careful to have a pretty good idea what the side effects might be. This is true of new code, of new medications, and of introducing new plants to an ecosystem. We shouldn't let fear of the unknown paralyse us, but neither should we dive headlong into unknown waters without first taking some precautions.
Atanamis
Then why bring them up? Or are you just trying to capitalize on the visceral emotional reaction that people have been conditioned to have when they hear the words "Agent Orange". Fnord.
RoundUp is similar in usage though
So what? That doesn't mean that it's harmful in the same way.
...that a bunch of people seem to think that corporately-funded research should be considered "science" without any skepticism.
All's true that is mistrusted
One other thing to consider is how this grass fits in within the existing ecosystem. The trouble is not so much as it will grow out of control (although there is a mechanism by which it could) but that what happens to the critters that feed on that grass. How are they affected by the weed-killer resistance? One of the arguments regarding "Frankenfoods" and with other GMO in general is that they may induce immunity / susceptibiility to something that was oringinally absent in nature. Those effects are less predictable.
Humans have such a good sense of humor!
You don't sound like you've paid much attention to the articles. There are already killer bees in California. I've paid a little attention to this because I'm allergic to bee stings, live in Texas, and go camping from time to time. They didn't come from Texas, they came from Brazil. Texas is just one area they've travelled to.
Calling them killer bees is a little misleading. It's not like they are taking orders from Osama and go out looking to kill people/animals. But the will aggressively protect their hive, and they have killed people. They will also reproduce with domestic honey bees (which are nomally fairly mellow little guys), and the aggressive gene's are dominate, so soon the entire hive goes from being regular bees to being a strain of AHB's - Africanized Honey Bees.
The link below will give some useful information, including the fact that they were reported in California 10 years ago. They aren't overrunning Texas, or anywhere else, to the point where people can't live there. But it does have an effect on normal beekeeping, on agriculture, and on people who just happen to stumble into the wrong place without realizing they are there.
In the current context: If the genetically modified bees hadn't escaped in Brazil roughly 50 years ago, then they wouldn't be a problem. But they did, and now they've spread quite far, with signs that the problem will continue to get worse. It's better to plan ahead than to simply assume "There isn't any problem with this." I don't have a strong opinion about the genetically modified grass - but I wouldn't write it off as a non-problem without more information and testing, either.
http://www.desertusa.com/mag98/sep/stories/kbees.h tml
Great, now all they need to do is genetically modify humans, so that we don't get cancers and diseases from these weed killers.
Anything that can kill a plant, ain't good for humans, just look at agent orange, if you need an example. I'd rather live with weeds than die of cancer, myself.
We are talking about herbicide resistant grasses.
So here's the worst case scenario:
"AIIIIEEEE!! My Roundup isn't working! We're all doomed! Now I will have to weed by hand! (Runs away in fear)"
Call me when they make a lawnmower resistant grass. Then I'll panic.