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Open Source Life?
JimCricket writes "What happens when a bio-cracker unleashes a plant virus on all the wheat in North America, and the genetic code to 'Wheat 2.0' is closed-source, patented code owned by a corporation? Should life be Open Source? Download Aborted takes a look at this issue."
Sounds strange, outlandish, fantasy... not really.
In the real world, the article mentions the Monsanto Case against Percy Schmeiser. Their seed ended up on his land through no fault of his, yet they claim they have a right to be paid license fees or to force him to spend his time and money removing corn derived from their migrating seed.
It's not just scary that the courts will side with them on this and let them steamroll over innocent parties, but that they cannot control the spread of their lab-grown genes. One of the "fictional" premises of White Death is that even without an evil plot, a GMO could escape its farm environment and reproduce in the wild, gradually replacing the formerly dominant species on a genetic level. The problem is that this GMO has defects and liabilities that are unknown, and while it might last long enough to marginalize the genes of the wild organism it's replacing, something could come along and wipe out the newly dominant GMO en masse, leaving stocks of that animal or plant decimated worldwide.
Frightening.
Start a happiness pandemic
...ultimately creating genetic viruses that override us and make us slaves to the system!
Its just ruminations on someones blog and should be treated as such.
Aren't we all on low carb diets anyway?
who's moderating the meta-moderators?
Another great win for corperate America!!!
And don't forget the F.U.D. that will be spread about any opensource that does come out. How do you know that Wheat is safe to eat without Wheat 2.0 Update?
I officially put my own genetic code under the terms of the LGPL. You can redistribute me and my clones as you like, as long as they remain in the LGPL themselves. If I participate in the reproduction, all the better. You see, the reason I put it in the LGPL is that I am not picky as to who I "link my code" with ;)
The perfect sig is a lot like silence, only louder
but I resent the comparison of Gates and God. Despite 99.9% of the field of science being reverse engineering.
At least it's not copy protected, well except for the atom.
So, can I release my genes under the GPL? Or will I have to find a different license?
EVERYDAY IS CATURDAY
Genetic life should not be able to be owned. It would be the same as if I owned the DNA sequence to create a fish. Would it also mean that each person technically owns their DNA or any other type of unique chemical composition? This could open up an extremely dangerous black market of genetic trade. ie: I could sell my DNA strand on the black market for money, and then I could be freely cloned etc.
I got off topic, just thinking out loud.
Aj
GroupShares Inc. - A Free and Interactive Stock Market Community
-------
artlu.net
We'll be able to clean up the "intellectual property" law train wreck pretty easily once all the lawyers have starved to death, anyway.
Also, I predict that it will become illegal to import cheaper wheat from Canada due to "safety considerations".
"Skill shows through where genius wears thin." -Wittgenstein || Religion: uniting aviation and architecture.
I'm not a lawyer or biologist, but it may be interesting to compare this issue to what's going on in the software industry. There are some clear similarities between genetic code (the blueprint for lifeforms) and software code
I disagree. Genetic code is a mapping of biological cells used to translate RNA codons, and is representational of a natural reality. Software code implements programs or data for some purpose, but is creative. There is a fundamental difference between the two, IMO.
Sigs cause cancer.
What happens when a bio-cracker unleashes a plant virus on all the wheat in North America, and the genetic code to 'Wheat 2.0' is closed-source, patented code owned by a corporation?
People owning oat and barley futures make a small fortune.
That would seriously be a good way of making money.
Step 1: Make nasty wheat virus
Step 2: Buy barley and oat futures
Step 3: Release nasty wheat virus
Step 4: Profit!
Don't mistake DNA and software. When someone creates a virus will we be able to fix it quickly and minimize its effects?
We don't understand DNA as well as we do code. For now closed is better.
sig
The universe is closed source, and theres been no problems, if it was open source I don't think we'd have as many hackers hacking on stuff, reverse engineering the cosmos.
Didn't you see mimic? The won't die because you engineered them to, they'll get bigger and bigger and then start killing humans. Just like the wheat obviouslly would.
what prevents a bioterrorist from grabbing a sample of regular wheat and making a virus for it? where is the new vulnerability?
corporations which're indulging in despicable patent activities, often at the cost of developing nations and in atleast one case farmers who've been using the so called "innovation" since thousands of years. Case in point: India Fights U.S. Basmati Rice Patent .
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Everyone knows not to eat wheat 1.0, but wait for a later version.
It's too buggy.
I thought the main reasons to be open source was so that
1)you can get help from developers across the world and
2)so that the code can be scrutinised by many eyes and bugs can be very quickly patched.
without a myriad of good guys being able to scrutinise the genetic structure of the plants the badguys are more likely to find an unpatched weakness, opposed to having to disassemble and map the plants genetic structure first.
This raises the question:
is open source only effective when there are more good guy than bad guys?
How many computers are too many?
GMO could escape its farm environment and reproduce in the wild, gradually replacing the formerly dominant species on a genetic level.
Ye gods! It's xbill all over again!
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Sounds alarmist to me. If anyone pulled a stunt like that, their patent would be revoked, if only due to popular protest. People on /. ascribe a little too much power to corporations. If the price of wheat bread goes up 10x, you better believe there's going to be some popular protest - and people vote, not corporations.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
There are legitimate ethical questions about patenting life forms, but I don't think that it's really so much of an intellectual-property issue. Patenting the genome of an existing organism sounds like it should be wrong, until you realize that mapping isn't obvious at all (as far as I know, since I'm just a computer programmer).
I also found the argument about open-source software having fewer bugs to be kind of lame. How many of you will be doing code-reviews on Wheat 2.0, even if the source code is under the GPL? (Besides, the "source" is arguably available anyway; the original is all written in assembly code anyway :)
Have you read my blog lately?
>> What happens when a bio-cracker unleashes a plant virus on all the wheat in North America...?
Probably a lot of poor people are going to die.
This actually might happen, we dont have vast ammounts of knowledge on this subject, we are just learning, but if something goes wrong nobody can predict the results. Genetics are great for mankind, but quite dangerous if misused
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This is so simple...
"Intellectual Property" is not real property. It's a set of rights granted by law that can be taken back by another law.
So, if some bio-hacker ever does release a wheat plauge with the intent of profiting on sales of Wheat 2.0, that plan can very easily be foiled simply by passing the Wheat Fraud Prevention Act of 20xx that voids the Wheat 2.0 patent. Problem solved.
that's canola not corn in the monsanto case
Percy Schmeiser vs. Monsanto
By Percy Schmeiser
I've been farming since 1947 when I took over from my father. My wife and I are known on the Prairies as seed developers in canola and as seed savers. Hundreds of thousands of farmers save their seed from year to year.
I was also a member of the provincial legislature. I was on many agricultural committees, both on the provincial level and representing the province on the federal level. I was mayor of my community and a councillor for over 25 years. So, all my life I've worked for the betterment of farmers and rules, laws and regulations that would benefit them and make their farming operations viable.
The whole issue of GMOs can be divided into three main categories: the first category is the issue of the property rights of farmers versus the intellectual property rights of multinationals like Monsanto. The second issue is the health and danger to our food with the introduction of GMOs. The third issue is the environment.
Over this last year there have been other very important issues. The GM wheat issue, and what I think is one of the worst things: the pharmaceutical issue of GM plants producing prescription-type drugs, which I'll touch on later. I want to concentrate on the issue I'm involved with: Property rights of farmers vs. the intellectual property rights of multinationals.
In August 1998 I received a lawsuit document from Monsanto. Up to that time I never had anything to do with Monsanto's GM canola. I'd never bought their seed or gone to a Monsanto meeting. I didn't even know a Monsanto rep.
There were a number of items in the lawsuit. First of all, they said I had somehow acquired Monsanto's GM canola seed without a licence, planted it, grew it and therefore infringed on their patent. They went on to say that it was 80 or 90 percent contamination that I had in a roadside ditch and so on.
When we were sued my wife and I immediately realized that 50 years of research and development on our pure canola seed that was suitable and adaptable to certain conditions on the Prairies, climatic and soil conditions and especially diseases that we had in canola, could now be contaminated. We said to Monsanto at the time, "Look, if you have any of your GMOs in our pure canola seed you are liable for the destruction of our property and our pure seed." So, we stood up to them.
I think at that time there were two main issues. We lost 50 years of research and development and we felt that if farmers ever lose the right to use their own seed the future development of new seeds and plants suitable to their local climatic and soil conditions would be stopped. Those are the two main reasons we stood up to Monsanto.
It took two years of pre-trial and in those two years Monsanto withdrew all allegations that I had ever obtained seed illegally. They even went so far as to admit the allegations were false.
But, they still found that the fact that they had found some of Monsanto's GM canola plants in the ditch along my field, not even in the field, meant I violated the patent. So, it became a patent infringement case. I had no choice where it would be heard. Patent laws are federal, so it was before the federal court of Canada immediately, with one judge. It went to trial in June 2000 and lasted two and a half weeks.
That ruling is what brought my case to international attention. These are some of the main points:
1. It does not matter how Monsanto's GM canola or soybeans or any GM plant gets into a farmer's field. The judge went on to specify how this could happen: cross-pollination and direct seed movement. Believe me that's a primary cause - wind, birds and bees, because we have a lot of wind on the prairies.
The judge said it doesn't matter how it gets into a farmer's field, destroying or contaminating your crop, it all becomes Monsanto's property. You no longer own your crop. That's what startled people all over the world; how an organic or conventional farmer can lose a crop and
Murderous, rampaging plant life is generally best combatted with the strains of "Puberty Love".
Start a happiness pandemic
The blogger is misusing the term "open source". All patented works are open source, but still proprietary, not "free". Also the code of any organism can be read by performing PCR on its nuclear DNA. True, this is equivalent to assembly language, but it's currently the only language we have for genetics.
(Side topic: Whoever creates a high-level genetic language and compiler will either win the Nobel prize immediately, or be burned at the stake. Or both.)
The problem is abusive patents. The Schmeiser loss completely blew my mind. Canada has given carte blanche for Monsanto to (secretly) shoot their wad over the entire country, then charge royalties on every farmer. Patented food crops go way Way WAY across the line of human decency, but our wonderful nations of Freedom(tm) say it's a great business model.
Words fail me. I can't properly describe how insanely awful this is.
in the exciting world of the future, the RIAA will have rid the world of music file sharing, but something else will have risen to take it's place.
oh, what a battle it will be, the PSAA (porn studios association of america) versus the renegade pirates, who fight to keep the genetic information of their favourite 'actors' flowing freely.
mkay, that last bit sounded dirtier in print.
A virus... that kills all the wheat in the US... hmm...
Curse you, Atkins! Curse youuuuuu!!
Their seed ended up on his land through no fault of his, yet they claim they have a right to be paid license fees or to force him to spend his time and money removing corn derived from their migrating seed.
This version of events was determined to be false by the trial court, and that decision was upheld by the Supreme Court. Instead they found that he had saved seed that he knew was Monsanto-patented, (genetically modified to resist Roundup herbicide) and planted it without paying them a license fee.
No damages were assessed, however, because the court found that he did not accrue any extra profit as a result of using the genetically modified canola seed as opposed to regular canola. The reason being that he didn't take advantage of the invention because he didn't use Roundup and therefore had no way of making extra profit based on the patented bits.
(Also, for what it's worth, the case concerned canola, not corn.)
Basically, the only way you can view the Schmeiser decision as unfairly pro-Monsanto is if you believe that genetic modifications should be inherently unpatentable. (Which is not necessarily a silly position--I'm not sure I don't think that.)
Or if you are ignorant of the true facts of the case.
2) Engineered sequences can be patented, but not the organism holding the engineered sequence.
3) Engineered sequences which escape into the natural population through natural reproductive means loose their patent, with a caveat, the former patent owner should be held responsible for all clean up cost, and may be subject to bio-terrorism charges for endangering a nations eco-system.
Just thinking outloud, sorry.
Why does this immediately remind me of a new brand of antivirus software that would appear to take advantage of (read as: extort) the same type of situation?
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
I'm a bio student and Dr. David Suzuki, a noted geneticist and bio ethicist came to my university (Emory) last semester to deliver a speech about this very subject. He argued that genetic manipulation had enormous potential to do good for the world, but there was little chance that corporations would use it to do good (He says genetically modified food feeding the world's poor and hungry is a sham - we already make enough food for everyone on earth, the problem is distribution, through those selfsame corporations) and that genetic technology was simply moving too fast for people to both come to terms with it and regulate its widespread use.
We're seeing this in the crazy lawsuits and issues stemming from genetic engineering (companies forcing farmers to pay for genetically modified crops that accidently took hold on their land and the supposedly sterlie glolight danios aquarium fish [which arent sterile - indeed since they really are just zebra danios they should breed like mad]).
The further corporatization of science is not a good thing; yes the money does help new research get done, but none of the important sharing of information goes on. We've had open source in biology, through research and journals (Watson and Crick's use of many source to construct a model of DNA comes to mind immediately) and that kind of peer review will be very necessary in genetics.
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
Canola is the fancy name they switched to after marketing figured out why rape seed wasn't selling. (Except for China where they don't know what the word means.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Since when did blogs become a credible news (much less academic) source?
C:\>
I realize that it's incredibly unpopular on slashdot to come out in favor of practically any intellectual property, but this article was logically flawed. Yes, it makes sense that the genetic code(s) for apples should be public domain, or perhaps even shared by the few people willing/able to describe those codes, but to extend that logic and say that if someone CREATES a new code based on the old, let's say for an apple that cures cancer, is ridiculous. At the very least, if someone were nice enough to do so on their own dime (they'd have to if they didn't own the improvement - we'd all just steal it from them otherwise) then we should be nice enough to give that guy some help/money/services in exchange for his incredible contribution to life. If only we could count on everyone to do that, or if only there were some kind of sociological structure to accomplish the same goal. OHWAIT! There is - and it's called the public freaking market. By allowing (temporary) ownership of intellectual property such as this, we collectively incentivize innovation, via direct reward. I completely agree with shareadvocates that in some cases, specifically in environments where information is quickly and universally shared as a matter of course, that same level of innovation can probably be reached or even surpassed by many people making very minor, inexpensive innovations collectively. Hell, there are millions of programmers - it's not that exclusive a club. But in genetic engineering and manipulation, where the resources to contribute to the science are often incredibly expensive, more protection and incentive needs to be applied if any innovation can be expected.
I'll agree that there needs to be legal protection for non-GMO farmers who have crops that are cross-polinated by GMOs. This would be difficult to accomplish given the complications involved with proving that only cross-polination actually occurred(and that the victim non-GMO farmer wasn't actually pirating patented seeds). From a legal standpoint, it would be easiest to simply forbid the patenting of any organism(GMO or otherwise) which reproduces freely and sexually. In other words, this would allow firms to patent sterile or asexual organisms along with parts of organisms(vat-grown tissues, organs, etc).
As far as that Monsanto case goes, I find it rather unfortunate that the court's decision does not appear to be based on how the Roundup Ready canola plants got onto Schmeiser's property in the first place. That should have been the primary concern of the court.
Also, in regards to the rampant spread of GMOs into a wild environment, keep in mind that non-native species have been spreading for years, causing shifts in ecosystems all across the globe. Rats alone have caused enormous damage. We've also unleashed a few non-GMO hybrids, such as those lovely Africanized "killer" bees. Escaped GMOs will just add to the stew of organisms invading ecosystems worldwide, and I suspect that when they make their appearance on the scene, they'll have some stiff competition. If GMOs do have defects or liabilities(unknown or otherwse), they will very likely play a big role in their ability to spread. Never underestimate the ability of bacteria, viruses, parasites, etc to adapt to new prey in the wild. It won't take bio-crackers to engineer GMO-killing plagues. They'll emerge on their own.
A scenario akin to that which you mentioned in White Death could potentially occur using techniques more primitive than genetic engineering. Again, just take a look at Africanized bees.
For that matter, grandchildren would then be considered "derivative works", giving an exponentially increasing revenue source.
"They're not my kids, they're my IP portfolio."
Although the courts seem commercially biased, all farmers that grow non-mod'd crops have a basis for lawsuit due to the negligence of Monsanto (and other GMO companies) to control their product. They have, in fact, lowered the value of the farmer's infected crop and (if the farmer grows his own) future crop's seeds. Although in practice this position is absurd (cross-pollination happens regularly depending on land configuration and the wind patterns/strength) the current ruling leaves this argument open for usage (IMO).
I'm not a lawyer or biologist, but it may be interesting to compare this issue to what's going on in the software industry. There are some clear similarities between genetic code (the blueprint for lifeforms) and software code (the instructions that define a computer program).
"I'm not a stoner or a druggie, but it may be interesting to compare this issue to what's going on in the medical industry. There are some clear similarities between medicine administration (the drugs that cure our common aches and pains) and hemp, cocaine, and crank (the drugs that put us in a ephoric state)."
Give me a break, anyone who has no knowledge of the fields they speak of usually doesn't understand the true issues at hand. This blog is near worthless, IMHO.
Alright, folks, if your genes were GPLed, then all the derrivative works from those genes have to be released to the public. There would be no one single "ownership" of those genes.
Consequentially, that means there is no obligation to wait until said product is 18yrs old before it reaches EOL with the current maintainer. Since the product is GPLed, it theoretically can be picked up and maintained by anyone and everyone that wishes to do so. If anyone should profit from publicly reselling the product, they are required to um...release the genetic material along with all the enhancements and alterations to the bastard's DNA.
I officially put my own genetic code under the terms of the LGPL. You can redistribute me and my clones as you like...
Funny post, but it brings up an interesting point. Biotech companies are patenting gene sequences all the time. What's to *stop* you, or me, or CowboyNeal from filing a patent for "A unique sequence of genetic material such that will produce a particular individual, to wit, me?"
Do the biotech companies know the exact sequence of GTCA's in the genes they patent? If not, then I don't see any reason a human individual couldn't patent his/her/hir own 46 chromosomes (+/-).
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
He saved the seed from his own fields. How was he supposed to seperate out the Roundup-ready contaminated stuff?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Now, personally, I'm of the belief that if Schmeiser arrived at his particular seed crop genetics through natural selection (which appears to be the case from my cursory research) then he should be allowed to make use of that crop HE developed naturally. But it appears that the law's viewpoint is that he knowingly developed "Roundup" proof crops to specifically use Monsanto's "Roundup" herbicide without paying them a license fee. That's definitely a violation of existing patent law.
What happens when a bio-cracker unleashes a plant virus on all the wheat in North America, and the genetic code to 'Wheat 2.0' is closed-source, patented code owned by a corporation? Should life be Open Source?
What, so Wheat 2.0's team of volunteer geneticists can rush out a quick patch? And would you like user-contributions to be in the form of digital sequences, or would you rather have us do a little quick PCR with the live stuff and ship you a test tube full of DNA?
Living organisms are open source already. Given the necessary hardware and the accompanying wads of cash, you can crack open any nucleus you want and sequence its chromosomes until the cows come home. Sure, it's uncommented, but it's not like Monsanto is sponsoring an annual obfuscated protein sequence contest, and if you're allergic to uncommented code, Open Source is definitely not your cup of tea.
If you're really concerned about engineered agricultural diseases, you might want to consider the solution that 3.8 billion years of evolution came up with: genetic diversity. If you don't have three midwestern states entirely covered with the same clones, it's going to be much, much harder to obliterate the whole crop.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
What makes it worse is that (I'm guessing here) these genes were probably discovered with public funding of some sort. A similar thing happened a few years ago when the Staph aureus genome was decoded using a lot of NIH (i.e. taxpayer) money to pay for the research. The company then went out and patented it, to a great deal of uproar in the community. If you were paying attention, it also happened during the SARS scare, and I remember two companies were trying to figure out who was really the first to get to it, cuz the one in Toronto was going to essentially release it free to the world, and the other was a company that was going to patent it and make the world wait for their marketability research to figure out what name they should choose for the vaccine. Hopefully this stuff will be headed off soon, but the gov't is so hopelessly in the pharmaceutical companies pockets on this and everything else, I have little hope.
The problem is that this GMO has defects and liabilities that are unknown,
One that is known, is that it is homogenous. If the topic of the article is about someone engineering a virus, bacteria or pest that would wipe out a nation's entire food crop, then at least the first two are made massively easier by having genetically identical crops.
Consider the Irish Potato famine. One blight that affected the few imported strains of potatoes on which the nation depended caused a famine. Few people in the modern Western world really understand what is meant by that word.
'Closed-Source' might be possible in a legal sense with food, but considering the companies want to grow it everywhere and sell it to everyone, it can hardly be secure through obscurity. So is it dangerous? YES!
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
This analogy is very misleading; with software, a worm that takes out half the net--say, blaster--causes temporary damage. Many people never even noticed blaster. In meatspace, a virus that took out all of the US's wheat would cause mass starvation and civil disorder.
In other words in software we have the luxury of assuming that failure is inevitable and planning out how to fix future failures; in meatspace you absolutely must prevent catastrophic failure or you might not get a second chance.
It's definitely true that we're not far from being in a world where a reasonably smart person can make a doomsday virus, and it's important to think about these issues beforehand, but I think this line of reasoning is misleading.
Not exactly. The court found that some of the seeds he was saving and planting (not at all an odd or unnatural activity for the farmer) contained monsanto's genes. They also decided that he "ought to have known" that the genes were in his saved seed. They did not rule that he did know and deliberately concealed it nor did they rule that he was fraudulately using it.
So his version of events, knowing the supreme court's decision does not fall. I would argue that the points he makes about cross-pollination are entirely valid whether you like him personally or not.
I mean what the hell is going on here? In my opinion, COPYRIGHTS for scientific information goes against the whole concept of science. Furthermore, there is no possible justification for the exclusive use of ANY scientific information or patents for any scientific discovery or engineering feat that accepts ANY public funding. I paid for that. I should be able to use it.
You heard me pharmacutical industry.
This idea that genes can somehow be patented is ludacrous. I'm fine with patenting a way to see the genes or a way to make the genes. I may not be able to see my own genes or the genes of a stalk of wheat. That doesn't mean they belong exclusively to you if you can. Even if you create a plant or animal entirely from scratch, the genes belong to that plant or animal first.
Hey Mr. Wheat Stalk, do you have any objections to the free distribution of your genetic code? Speak now, or forever hold your piece.
You should not be able to patent a concept or any generic product, but how can you defend patenting anything that exists in the wild.
Take an example of rubber. You can patent a machine that extracts the rubber from a tree, and I'm fine with that. You shoud not be able to patent the idea of extracting rubber from a tree. Now people think you should be able to patent the tree's rubber.
What are we coming to? Why are we allowing this to happen?
What he doesn't say is something that I found in following the link canadians.org to the information page on this issue, there you can find a link to the Judgement from May 21, it found that:
Sounds to me that they found it in a little more than that ditch as he claims. It's still an interesting read, and does raise some good questions. Like "who owns life"The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
It would have been as simple as keeping seeds from less-contaminated areas. Like, for instance, the area of his crop furthest from the GM canola. Its not that complicated.
So... He was supposed to destroy the seed from his own land and change the way he farmed because it had been contaminated by Monsanto's genes drifting in the breeze? Sounds like he has grounds for a damage suit.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
What your comment suggests is that this man should incur an extra expense every year of testing the seeds for cross polination, rather than go about farming as he always has.
How would you like to be forced by a Supreme Court ruling to pay to test the grass in your front yard because someone in the vicinity of 0-100 miles from your house created and patented their own grass.. a cross, ah, of Bluegrass, Kentucky Bluegrass, Featherbed Bent, and Northern California Sensemilia? You shouldn't be forced to incur that expense because some irresponsible person allowed their grass to be cross polinated or simply to be carried as seed in the belly of a bird, and neither should he.
Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
.. but you apparently failed to take "common sense". I suggest you visit some areas of the US south, were kudzu is literally burying things, despite enough spraying and mechanical removal leading to soil exposure and erosion to completely contaminate underground aquifers. You can NOT get rid of it unless you resort to truly garganutan efforts, literally declare chemical warfare on your area. Or go look at some lakes that have been decimated by carp, hardly a species left in them of the fishes that isn't carp. Now add in human intervention to make certain genes even MORE dominant than even nature and natural selection provides. Now add in their ability to go cross species, GM tech, and their complete willingness to do so, and their mindset of "to hell with the consequences as long as we might make some short term profit in it or get a research grant so we don't need to get a another job..". None of these people truly know the long term consequences, yet they release these products, and they WILL spread.
It's ignorant and uneducated smugness like yours in the scientific and corporate world that is GOING TO CAUSE some pretty bad effects in a few years time. I hope you remember your post when that happens. If you are aware of biology, have you heard of starlink corn yet? If you can't see the irony in reading his personal account, and others, about how canola that has been GM modified is now classed as a "superweed" and IS taking over all over the north, and exactly how it is affecting people and the economy, then you need to turn your degree back in. There is no excuse for this level of ignorance in a college graduate.
And it's not "just a threat" if it COMES TRUE. He got screed, shafted, cost him thousands, destroyed 50 years work. What do you mean "they can't do that" they JUST DID DO THAT. And they suceeded in scaring any number of other people off just with the threat of litigation. I call that legal extortion. Extortion = a threat to make you do something you wouldn't normally do because the other guy has something on you. In this case, it's the paid off corrupt system that has "something on" the farmers-either go along and be monsantos patsy and whore, and shutup about it, OR ELSE. That's extortion, no other word for it.
ok forgive me for being naive, or redundant
but if it doesnt matter how the genetic material got there, what is to stop corporations, competing farmers, drunk football players with no cows to tip, etc from just going around spreading seeds in peoples fields and tipping off the 'authorities'? to destroy random people?
sounds like a system begging to be exploited
The court found it likely that he specifically saved the seeds from a small area of his previous crops that proved extremely resistant to Roundup. >95% of his crop the next year was found to be Roundup-resistant. That's pretty unlikely to have been the result of him planting seeds from all parts of his land (previously planted with conventional canoloa) equally.
Nonetheless, he did not use Roundup and thereby take advantage of the GM seeds' properties, thus the court assessed no damages for his actions. They did rule that Monsanto can patent a genetic modification. That's the only real precedent of the case and the only real issue anyone can argue with IMO. Assuming you grant the patent, the fact that a hypothetical farmer who purposely harvested wind-blown GM seeds and took advantage of their properties without paying the patent owner would be liable for infringement seems unremarkable to me.
They'll just claim prior art.
You have the right to defend your property, but if they run away when you show up with your gun, you can't shoot them. You also can't shoot first if they're just stealing seeds. There has to be a threat to your life to justify shooting somebody.
I'm not taking sides, but there is definitely more than one side to this story.
This is the reply. Basically, they alledge that Percy stole the crop and planted it.
Although there may be other reasons to be wary of genetically modified organisms, the problem here isn't unique to GMOs. It arises in any situation in which the public good requires the release of proprietary information. This can happen with chemicals, and probably with various mechanical and electronic devices. For example, back in the 1960s my father, a neurologist, handled a case in which a farmer had been overcome by the fumes of a farm chemical (a pesticide, I think) and needed to know what was in it in order to treat him. The manufacturer refused to tell him, claiming that it was a trade secret. Fortunately, my father was able to get the state government to act. The attorney general called the president of the manufacturer and told him that if he didn't provide the information he would do everything in his power to make sure that that company never did business in the state again.
...area of his previous crops that proved extremely resistant to Roundup. ...he did not use Roundup...
How did he figure out if it was resistant to Roundup if he didn't use it?
Ewige Blumenkraft.
Unfortunately the business model of closed source genetics promotes monocultures. As I commented in April's story Smart Breeding to Beat Biotechnology:
"the overall problem with current biotechnology is that it is proprietary / closed source / locked hood genetics. The applications might be wonderful, but the methodology and implementations leave a lot to be desired if you like open source science.
Just like with proprietary software, if you see some nifty new feature you'd like to add you your own application, you can't. In proprietary software you can't just buy the algorithm: you have to buy the whole package (and perhaps the support package and perhaps the computer to run it on). In much of current biotechnology you can't just buy the nifty new gene, you have to buy the whole potato (and you only get a limited choice of potato types if any choice at all) *and* you're just leasing the potato *and* you have to keep buying the upgrades each year. Smart Breeding, in contrast, is a close equivalent of open source software."
Ways in which Locked-hood genetics is like proprietary software:
- Patent = a new solution to an old problem? Good patent.
- Patent = an old solution applied to a new problem? Possibly a bad / stupid patent.
But in the case of most of these life patents, they've patented an old solution to an old problem: there isn't any novelty there.They're patenting "method to find gene for making dragonfly wings as used by dragonflies in flying," which was only novel about, say 300 million years ago. Now if instead they were patenting "method for gene for making dragonfly wings added to tomatoes so they fly straight to the harvest box" that would be a new and original idea.
And in agricultural patents they've been able to patent genes / traits that were previously developed by groups of farmers. i.e. its like they're not only violating the GPL, but patenting the software they've borrowed.
One example: trypanosomiasis- sleeping sickness. Infects 500,000/year, kills 100,000/year. And it drives you mad before you go into a coma and die. The older treatment Melarsoprol contains arsenic (and anti-freeze) and kills over 5% of patients taking it. It also feels like injecting bleach into the body. Another newer treatment (Eflornithine) works better and has far less severe side effects. It was used throughout the 90's as the best treatment. However, Eflornithine was only commercially manufactured as a potential cancer treatment-- once found to not work on cancer, there was no reason to continue making it, and Aventis ended production of eflornithine in 1999. As the last of the old stock ran out, patients had to go back to the dangerous and painful arsenic treatment.
Luckily for those 500,000 people per year, eflornithine was later found to have one important use: its a fine facial hair depilatory cream . So as the production of this drug was re-started to prevent the horror of unwanted facial hair, 500k people get the side-benefit of a non-arsenic treatment for a deadly disease. But only because eflornithine was found to treat excess hair, not because it prevents painful death.
This is just one anecdote- one illness. Because this is Slashdot, got to have some software analogies... they can be made. In the software world of closed source, Microsoft can discontinue support for a product, and people suffer from the time and money to upgrade. Or you can be the country of Iceland, volunteering to do all the work to make an Icelandic language verion of Windows 98, and Microsoft can just refuse you. In the biotech/med world of closed source, you can be 500,000 people not wanting to inject arsenic in their veins, and Aventis can still discontinue support for for your non-arsenic drug treatment.
It could be argued that eflornithine wouldn't have existed without closed-source drug development: but that doesn't seem to be the case here. First, while drug production is closed-source, basic research is at heart open-source. Sencond, Al Sjoerdsma, the scientist who first discovered its properties was apparently more of a Tim Berners-Lee type than a Gates or Darl McBride type. Other posters in here have pointed out how many patented drugs often are first found in university labs (taxpayer funded, open source methods) before disappearing into a licencing hole.
As I just referenced from telling good patents from bad patents:
Patenting an old solution (yellow colored beans) to an old problem (how to make yellow colored beans)? Extaordinarily stupid patent. Similarly there is the patent for the bacterial BT gene put into plants. BT is an old (and open source / farming) solution to a problem (how to get a toxin to kill pest insects). The "new" problem was how to get plants to express that same gene / toxin. All they did was move an old algorithm into a new situation and they get a patent.Its as if Microsoft got a patent for GUIs simply by moving them from Xerox or Mac machines into IBM machines. Or in the case of the Neem or Yellow Bean patents, its like Microsoft got a patent on Babbage engines or Turing machines- simply because the original work had been done in other countries.
Note, this doesn't mean that copyrights would no longer exist, etc., but it does mean that all intellectual property rights would permanently expire, say, five years after applied for. This includes patents and copyrights. I guess it makes sense for trademarks to last as long as the entity that creates them exists. Oooooooooooooooh well.
merely cleaning the scum out of the gene pool.