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Round-Up Ready Coca Plants
goneutt writes "Wired reports that an herbicide resistant breed of the coca plant has been found in Columbia after years of government spraying. It also appears that the process happend via selective breeding rather than gene manipulation, but it's an outside possibility that it was engineered. What does this mean about drug control policy and the extensive use of one herbicide repeatedly. Does this point the way of the future for other weeds?"
..just as, ehm, potent?
Napalm.
that'll make those little plants vanish. *EG*
Triffids!
What I say does not represent the views of my employers, my friends, my cats, or myself.
It means the U.S. government would be better off nuking Columbia or dropping the agent orange.
"George toked weed man."
"Are you kidding me? Of course George smoked weed! He grew fields of that shit man. That's what I'm talkin' about."
"He grew that shit up on Mount Vernon man!"
"Hell yeah, he grew that shit all over the country man. The whole country was gettin' high. Cause, he knew man, he knew that it was a good cash crop. He knew it would be a good cash crop for the southern states man. But you know, behind every good man is a woman. And that woman was Martha Washington. Everyday when George got home, she would have a big fat bowl waiting for him. She was a hip hip lady man."
Can drug dogs still smell it?
Starsky and Hutch surrender.
Someone alert Monsanto! The Columbian government is obviously infringing on their patents by allowing this plant to exist on their lands.
Just imagine all the lost revenues.
>What does this mean about drug control policy and the extensive use of one herbicide repeatedly
One'd have thought someone would have learned something of the whole antibiotic resistance problem we've developed after years of abusing them without control. This kind of thing was not in any shape or form unpredictable or unexpected.
---- Take the Space Quiz!
It's Colombia, not Columbia.
Day of the triffids anyone?
-Ando
the war on some plants that some people take offense at for some reason remains as daft and unwinable as it ever was.
KFG
Wow, man, I sure hope so...wow...those brownies are just...beautiful...
The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me
The article basically concludes farmers are not dumb. wow.
I stole this sig.
You can't win the "war" on drugs in Columbia.
As long as there's a market, there will be farmers producing drugs. Not only do the farmers get more money from growing drugs, if they refuse, they will be forced to do it.
Spraying, yanking or what have we will not make a difference.
(This is where I'd place a political rant, but there's been enough political BS on slashdot already. Besides, you all know the drill)
Underholdning.info
and get to be like 10ft.
wrong kind of plant to get my attention though o_O
I don't understand what is so shocking about this. Animals are known to adapt to their environments, why can't plants? After all, there aren't the same types of plants there were in the age of the dinosaurs. They had to evolve somehow.
So a few sturdy plants survived, then mutated. Then the mutated plants thrived, and grew an adaption to the chemical.
I think scientists are really starting to get the "God" mentality -- Surely Nature would not fend for itself, after all! Nature couldn't have possibly done the smart thing without the help from Godlings.
-- RJ
Stuff wants to live. There has to be a non zero probability that a small group of coca plants have a mutated gene which is resistant to whatever herbicide they are using. If the plants are allowed to pollinate naturally, then it would follow that eventually this gene would spread to a larger number of plants and since the herbicide is killing of non resistant plants, I would think this would allow for a quicker propagation of the ristant plants due to decreased competition from non-resistant plants.
Why don't dope dealers just bioengineer some bacteria that has some DNA from coca plants and just grow it in their basement right here in the good old USA?
Screw Columbia! We can make better dope here!
And people wonder why today's pest/herbicides are so toxic.
The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me
Hey, it worked for mosquitos, lice, tuberculosis and gonorrhea. Of course it will work for weeds!
Columbia has coca plantations? That might explain a lot of things...
Oh, you probably meant Colombia!
So please leave Colombia alone. You can't even spell the country name.
Its always amusing when people classify plants they dont like as weeds even though the likelyhood is that the plant has been there from before man was even a fish. Just because you dont like plants of specific types doesnt mean its a weed.
A weed is a plant that doesnt grow native in a particular area.
Great, just great. This is the first step to eventually growing coca plants in hydroponic gardens. Every drug dealer should get an apartment with a roof top and set up his own greenhouse. We'd make a killing and take the columbians out of the loop!!
It's spelled correctly in the article; what happened on the way to the summary?
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Its Colombia, not Columbia. And, check my post history, I have never cared about misspellings before but everytime Americans takl about Colombia they always mispell it, and it is the kind of pure American ignorance that makes the rest of the world anti-American. Little symbols like spelling a country's name wrong DO matter.
Its not like Colombia is a tiny third world eastern european country (like I wouldn't be care about misspelling Kazahkstan or any of those).. Colombia and the US have extremely close relations, they are practically our neighbors, and they have an EXTREMELY intelligent and techno-driven society (moreso than the US i would say). Come on, USians, lets show some respect to our neighbors.
the byproduct of years of oppression by the white man
I'm waiting for the creationists to explain how god did this one.
What does this mean about drug control policy and the extensive use of one herbicide repeatedly.
It means we must use napalm to destroy coca instead of herbiside.
an ill wind that blows no good
Drugs should be totally legal. If they were, I bet Colombia would lose all of the violence associated with the drug trade. And it would make them a very rich country.
Ironic that the Columbian drug lords would readily pay the research dollars to finance something like this. Now if there was some way to get them to invvest in other things that would move society forward and negate all the bad mojo they had. How can we create a problem that can be solved by the drug lords is the question.
Stay tuned for new sig...
It's called, repeat after me, e-v-o-l-u-t-i-o-n.
It happens all the time, all around us, and is no mystery except to the ignorant.
Bugs evolve to resist our pesticides, plants evolve to resist our herbicides, bacteria evolve to resist our antibiotics. It isn't rocket science, and it isn't explained by creationism.
And it's easily understood by those that haven't discarded thinking as an option.
Rate not lest you be rated
ELIMINATE THE BLACK MARKET! STOP THE WAR ON DRUGS! aside from the millions+ dollars spent out of this country to get rid of drug manufacturers, lets put an end to a significant amount of violent crime at home! decriminalize all drugs, make them available to adults for personal use. regulate their sale.
This has been discussed in farming for a while.
That it has spread into cocaine is interested but expected since article about it have been around for over 2 years.
Why is it that when I get my issue of Wired in the mail even month I just KNOW that I will eventually see every article on Slashdot?
/.
Seems the recipe to karma whore would be:
1: Monitor Wired to post their magazine stories on their site
2: Be the first to submit to
3: Rinse, Repeat
I saw this documentary a while back which said that species are constantly upgrading there defences/attack mechanisms against each other, through the process of natural selection and evolution.
No doubt there will be some plants that will become resistant to existing forms herbicides. Afterall, we are already starting to deal with the horrors of germs (bacteria etc) that have become resistant to antibiotics and other medicines. It's just a natural process.
On the plus side, it means scientists will always have jobs creating new cures and herbicides.
HERE
The real question, imho, is will Monsanto try to collect royalties for the use of their genetic patent portfolio and IP?
It would be *really* funny if they sued the drug cartels for patent license violations.
I don't know who I dislike more, Monsanto or the Drug Cartels...
-davidu
# Hack the planet, it's important.
...answers to a few questions:
1. Do all herbacides rely on the Round-Up active ingredients?
2. If not, is the herbacide in question something other than agent orange (or something similarly damaging to the environment/humanity)?
3. Can we use that instead?
Furthermore:
4. What weaknesses were created in the plant through this adaptation? Just because it has become impervious to Round-Up doesn't mean that at the same time other alterations to it's code didn't occur during it's adaptation. There's more than likely a chink in the armor (so to speak), and if this strain gets spread to 100% of the coca growing community, that chink in the armor could become a large puncture wound.
Another question I'm left with is with all that money, why the hell haven't cocaine cartels decided to invest in some genetic modification before now?
goto http://rizzn.com
sheesh....
"Does this point the way of the future for other weeds?"
IANAH(I am not a horticulturist), but people who grow another illegal plant already use selective breeding for specific purposes. Usually it's for appearence, taste, high, growing conditions. I haven't heard of a herbicide resistant maryjane, but this isn't exactly a new thing.
Oh, and Dave's not here... sorry, I had to.
Darn, I thought we were headed for an era of dirt cheep chocolate.
The is only one more example that man can not, and should not stop the use of drugs.
Marijuana grows naturally almost anywhere in this planet, marijuana serves a thousand different purposes all of them positive. Making marijuana illegal is like...(this is for the faith-based votersr now)...saying that God made a mistake.
This same quote, attributable to oft-maligned Bill Hicks whom we love, can be applied to the coca plant. Workers in South America used to chew coca leaves to sustain them throughout the workday.
The cause of the obsession/addiction with drugs and society is a signal. We need to relax and, as a culture, become more "mellow". Give up our nine-to-five workdays and begin life anew.
Work on tasks as they arise, not to fill time. I, like many readers here, have become mostly a clock watcher. This is a task to which my years of education are seldom applied.
Now, let us all accept the Prick of the Needle of Love and journey to a Place of Peace and Beauty. As a group now, ...
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
but it's an outside possibility that it was engineered.
Except that according to the Wired article it wasn't an outside possibility since they didn't find any evidence of genetic tampering. The conclusion was that it was natural selection.
It better have been natural selection, anything else is still under patent by Monsanto/Solutia/whatever they became. (US 5,776,760 for example- I think it was in fact filed in Columbia. Not really the right one, but I worked on the filings that essentially tried to lock up every conceivable method of manipulating a plant to tolerate the huge amount of glyphosate they were hoping to dump around it. In anticipation of needing a revenue source once the patents on glyphosate itself ran out, of course.)
It'd light up my mind along the lines of the whole Al Capone/IRS thing, except that a successful patent infringement suit in Columbia is a ridiculous proposition to begin with.
The real question is how rapidly animals, including humans, will develop roundup tolerance. The first response to this tolerance in "weeds" will be of course to spray more and higher doses. That of course makes it more likely to get ingested by animals, and eventually through plant and animal sources, into our food supply.
Stuff wants to live, but a lot of stuff died finding the winning genes.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
First, the title should read "Round-Up resistant Coca Plants", not Round-Up Ready.
Second, I have one word for the government that is using the plant poisons:
Napalm.
Thanks for listening.
bork bork bork!
At least its war on drugs has yielded one impressive result.
On a seriouse note:
As the war on drugs and the spraying of coca plants with herbicides didn't have any success whatsoever other than filling the pockets of organized crime with more money (Yes there is a conection between illegalizing drugs and organized crime making huge profits) I doubt this will have grave consequences on drug control policy. It was useless before and it is useless now, but that of course will not be enough to convince the majority of the people to change it.
more profit for me! Doh!
I meant more savings for the consumer!
Oops, I meant law enforcement needs more tax dollars.
Now the War on Drugs can stop using those bit players (i.e. the CIA and the U.S. military) and move to a much more powerful attack squad: Monsanto and the U.S. intellectual property legal lobby. Those unfortunate Colombians are going to learn what Shock and Awe really mean.
Got a light, they ask? Sure, we got your light.
Nuke it from orbit...it's the only way to be sure.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
Except that Kazakhstan is larger and less poor than Colombia.
Drugs affect your mind to make you crave them
more than food, sex, and life itself.
It's pretty damn obvious that this leads to a
serious problem. Drug usage is no longer a
choice for those that have tried it. So the
demand will be there, with addicts giving up
anything to have their drugs.
By forcibly limiting the supply, we ensure that
few addicts will be willing to share with others.
The world would be a whole lot healthier and safer if we just let people choose their own poisons. Legalising both opiates and cocaine would take a lot of funds out of the hands of terrorists, criminals and dictators. And high (I'm talking massively high) taxation on these products could finally go to paying for the tremendous amount of damage that they do to individual health and society as a whole.
Will consumers outside the American market protest the importation of genetically modified cocaine?
This means I'm going to have a fun weekend in a month or so.
if(!toilet_paper) roll.replace(new roll);
You can't win the "war" on drugs in Columbia.
I'd be willing to bet that you dont really know much about the war on drugs in colombia other than that they are growing drugs and the US doesnt want them to. However, its much more multifaceted than that. The drug war in Colombia, at least to Colombians, is more focused around the guerilla groups and narco-trafickers mutual supporting each other. Colombia has seen much more terrorism than the US ever has, probably along the same magnitude as Israel or Ireland back in the day (I say probably because i dont have the numbers).
The "drug war" in colombia is breaking this cycle and getting rid of one of these two groups which will also play a large role in breaking the other. It can be successfully accomplished-- look at the Sendero Luminoso extermination in Peru. Let's not forget, Colombia used to be a non-factor in the war on drugs. Peru was the drug capital of South America and produced an overwhelming percentage of coca. Colombia, IIRC, was not a major player (like less than 10% of coca production) until the 1990's when Peru took a hardline stance against the Sendero Luminoso antisurgents and Escobar and the Cali cartel rose.
True, if Colombia is able to rid the country of its insurgents, the drug dealers will probably move elsewhere (Southern Panama, Ecuador, Venezuela with Chavez in power). However, the drug war in Colombia IS winnable. The general drug war, on the other hand, is a different story.
Another interesting thing about these widespread coca sprayings and focus on cocaine is that many colombian farmers are moving towards growing opium. Heroin is actually much more profitable than cocaine and is steadily increasing in its importation. Im willing to bet that in 10 years, heroine is the new cocaine.
the byproduct of years of oppression by the white man
Or the drug smugglers.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I guess this means we're going to breed crack adapted humans who can suck it down and then get up in the morning and go to work.
BBC News is reporting that farmers in the eastern Indian state of Chhattisgarh are using Pepsi or Coka-Cola as a cheaper alternative to pesticides. OK, so it's not a herbicide, but who knows, it might work
I await the flaming American Coke fans with glee.
Philip
Signatures are broken
Using herbicides is in the long term useless, and even dangerous, because we will end up with resistant plants, with toxins in them which will eventually end up in the food chain, which is in itself already becoming more and more polluted. Can you say Cancer ?
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
Is the Scotsman like the National Enquirer?. cfm?id=1002 462004
http://news.scotsman.com/international
A weed is a plant that is growing where you don't
want it to grow. Suppose I have a lawn, and I grow
sweet potatos. The lawn is a weed when it invades
the sweet potato patch, and the sweet potatos are
weeds when they invade the lawn.
Some want the drugs to grow. Some don't. Depending
on who you are, the drus plants may be weeds.
Gentlemen, we have an opportunity to finally bring this war to a satisfactory conclusion. We have recently been apprised that our enemy's Department of Agriculture has unwisely invested in assets that appear to violate the intellectual property of Monsanto, until now a neutral power in this struggle of ours. But now, we can persuade Monsanto that their intellectual property has been trespassed upon, and we have faith that they will now commit their Intellectual Property division to our now mutual struggle. The end of the war is in sight!
LINK Do'h. Must use preview. I was sure I included that link.
Philip
Signatures are broken
That's God's own truth, the coca is an EVIL plant! I mean, come on, the CIA uses it to fund it's under-the-table projects. That's proof right there, teh coca is eeeeeeeeevil!
like we have agent orange resistant humans in Viet Nam but probably not in either case. I guess we can accept a little collateral damage in the war on drugs especially when it happens to someone else.
Is more of our tax dollars going towards killing people, plants, and animals in a country that doesn't want us there, as opposed to reinvesting that money into us, the country, and anti-drug efforts in the homeland.
And I expect that in another 10-15 years, we'll see another story about how now coca have been resistant to whatever our new chemical of choice is going to be.
Not to turn this into a "war on drugs" tirade, but the current administration, and it's directives, are so far off target, it's not funny.
By the way... While you're thinking about how much money has already been sunk into this, how many lives have been lost, and how many people in columbia we've hurt (or at least hurt their livelihoods, whether they were coca farmers or not), consider the $75 billion dollar proposal that Bush will submit in January to further the war in Iraq.
Now think about the positive changes that could be made here in the USA, which is where all of us funding these fiascos live, if we used the combined monies for these wars to improve our homeland.
If you can picture it (I can!), then you surely are not a politician, I'm guessing.
For some reason the comparison of the total value of coke habit in the US to total value of Microsoft sales gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling.
You fail it!
I took away your "in Colombia" to increase accuracy. For something as easy as cocoa, marajuana, or poppies, source-level interdiction just isn't going to work. Source-level interdiction raises the street price, making it more profitable to become a source, making new sources come online at least as fast as you can eliminate the old ones. It's the Free Market at work.
IMHO, drugs should be legalized and regulated like alcohol and tobacco, simply because the budgetary and social cost of "crimes of financing" are exceeding the what the budgetary and social costs would be, if regulated. Simple, pragmatic economics.
Blast from the past, even praise for Richard Nixon:
In 1968 Richard Nixon ran at least partly on reducing Crime. After election, he felt it necessary to deliver on his promises. Crimes of finance for drugs were felt to be a large part of the problem, so they were going to attack drugs. He was all set to go on a law'n'order, source-interdiction based drug policy, but his advisor(s) (Name forgotten, but there was a key one, here.) told him that it would never work. He had to work on demand reduction.
They put in place demand reduction, largely in the form of drug treatment. It worked, at least within the timeframe and measurements they used. They reduced crime.
By the 1972 race Viet Nam was the big issue, and everyone had forgotten about crime. After the election, they quietly dismantled the drug treatment programs, and the approach has largely lain fallow, since.
BTW, Clinton and Greenspan were aiming for a "soft landing" with the economy, breaking the boom/bust cycles. They felt they had just achieved their target, as the dot-com boom hit. Of course the boom was followed by a matching bust, and the soft landing goal has been forgotten, too.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
There's now an herbacide-resistant Cocaine plant. So what. This is "News for nerds, stuff that matters"???
Real programmers use "copy con program.exe"
Just because the herbicide doesn't work doesn't mean that the government isn't going to spray it on crops, and just because the crops have been sprayed with poison doesn't mean the growers aren't going to harvest it and sell it. And just because it's full of poison doesn't mean that users aren't going to smoke it. Something like this happened with the herbicide paraquat in Mexico in the 80s or early 90s.
Yer not some sort of dirty Commie, are ya, boy?!!!!
(Actually, I suspect the actual situation is that it is a confilict between two capitalistic factions that has expanded beyond economics...)
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Evolution eventually makes each antibiotic obsolete. The process takes a few decades. The same effect applies to herbicides, and now we're getting a picture of how long that takes.
The "Green Revolution" may stop working in a few decades. That's serious.
when he said "Doesn't making nature against the law seem a little paranoid?".
And nature fights back...
PC moderators can suck my White pierced, tattooed dick. If you think pride == hate, s/dick/Aryan meat mallet/g.
Selective breeding _is_ gene manipulation.
4.) PROFIT!
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
-Oscar Wilde
The government has a responsibility to protect our citizens -- and that starts with homeland security. The first attack against America came by brownies.
This coca tries to hide behind a peaceful faith. But those who celebrate the murder of innocent men, women, and children have no religion, have no conscience, and have no mercy. (Applause.)
We wage a war to save civilization, itself. We did not seek it, but we must fight it -- and we will prevail. (Applause.)
Sort of.
I think the correct spelling is:
"Cannabis familiaris"
*ducks*
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
I mean, They gotta sue somebody!
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
To my knowledge, most herbicides are effective for years, and glyphosate (Round-up) has been no different. In fact, I've only heard of one other putative instance of naturally developing resistance to Round-up. With all that's sprayed in the US to control our annual herbaceous weeds, I find it unlikely that resistance developed naturally in a comparatively slow reproducing plant such as coca.
But this is differnet than using roundup because there is no reason to try to cultivate plants which are resistant to it. I.e the way it is used doesn't encourage people to try to look for plants on the edges of affected areas that are doing better and breed them.....
And regarding the multiple sites issue, I would be willing to bet than insecticides are a closer parallel here though they tend to reproduce on an annual cycle as well so by this reasoning we should not see resistance to DDT either. But we do.
Also I would point out that these are sprayed areally and with limited information so it is unclear what percentage of the crop they hit in any given time, and which areas get a lower dose which allows some to survive.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I have you know that Monsanto is comprised of legitimate businessmen!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
There's got to be a Tony Montana/Pablo Escobar joke in here somewhere.
Seriously, it's about time that the illegal drug trade caught up with the times. I mean, we already have more potent/genetically altered/cloned everything else (ie. genetically altered food, cloned pets, "smarter" water, even cyborgs)..why not more powerful "super" blow/weed?
It would be interesting to see what happens when someone overdoses on this stuff. Would their head just explode instead of them going into convulsions having a severe case of nose bleed?
The thought of that kind of reminds me of a movie my friend was telling me he watched called "frankenpimp" (or something along those lines). He would get his whores to take this stuff called super crack and as soon as they took 1 hit they just blew up. I dont know if it was a real movie or not, but it sounds funny.
Look back as Slashdot for all the lab tests done.
Unfortunately it would be considered offensive to
perform the tests on humans, but monkeys are the
next best thing:
Suppose you hook a monkey up, such that pressing
a button will give him cocaine. He'll like that!
Then, you make the button take two presses to
deliver the drug. Then 4, then 10, then 50...
Soon enough, you'll have the monkey pressing that
button tens of thousands of times to get the drug.
He won't be distracted by food or female monkeys.
He won't care if he injures himself, rubbing his
flesh raw to press that damn button. All he'll
care about is getting the drug.
You're the troll, if you ignore scientific evidence.
is Government by Faith, Family, and Values
Seditiously yours,
Kilgore Trout, CEO
Perhaps Monsanto didn't really engineer anything. Perhaps all they did was apply round-up to crops or went exploring through farmers fields to find a naturally resistant crop. Perhaps they actually stole it from the farmers and are selling it back to them without those farmers knowing it.
*adjust tin foil hat*
So when the drug plants start to say no to other drugs, is this a sign?
I'd actually rather go with the cartels. Since I'm not actually a drug user I'm not forced to buy their product. With Monsanto I might end up paying for it even through no fault of my own...
Of course, as a personal opinion the cartels are worse (slave-type labour, murderous business, etc)...
I know you aren't serious, but thats in really bad taste. Cartels are the purest form of evil we have in existence today. I would agree that monsanto has done a few evil things, but they realistically aren't in the same ballpark. Its obvious that you don't have any Colombian friends.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
I searched in wikipedia for Columbia to find where it is and I found these:
# Columbia River
# British Columbia
# District of Columbia
# Columbia, Connecticut
# Columbia, Illinois
# Columbia, Maryland
# Columbia, Mississippi
# Columbia, Missouri
# Columbia, New Jersey
# Columbia, New York
# Columbia, North Carolina
# Columbia, Pennsylvania
# Columbia, South Carolina
# Columbia, Tennessee
# Columbia City, Indiana
# Columbia County, Arkansas
# Columbia County, New York
# Columbia Heights, Minnesota
# Columbia Station, Ohio
# Columbia Township, Jackson County, Michigan
# Columbia Township, Tuscola County, Michigan
# Columbia Township, Van Buren County, Michigan
So which one of those are you refering to by Columbia? Please be more specific!
OOOHHH You are talking about: (also from wikipedia)
# Republic of Colombia
And from the wired article:
"hotel room in the southern Colombian jungle."
So its Colombia!
At least RTFA before posting so you know how to spell correctly!
I'm waiting for the creationists to explain how god did this one.
;)
Obviously it was the work of satan! God was busy working to get GWB elected.
Does this point the way of the future for other weeds?
Heck, this is the PRESENT truth for weeds. Resistance is a fact of agriculture. The reason "Roundup Ready" crops are one of the most successful commercial GMO products is they can take those extra-heavy loads of pesticides needed to do the job.
It's little surprise, with heavy spraying of coca, that resistant varieties would develop. Coca is an ubiquitous and hardy shrub. It's what nature does.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
have us believe, the gene which provides resistance to glyphosate is not some miracle of modern genetic manipulation but rather was found in a naturally growing plant. The trick was to find a way to transfer this gene into commercial crops such as canola and soya beans.
Herbicide resistance is natural in all species. When you over use one type of herbicide eventually you will increase the populations of the tolerant plants and end up with a problem.
In a few years the "war on terror" and the "war on drugs" might be combined in one agency and treated very similar.
In the place I work we collect leaf tissue for DNA samplig. They put the bugs with the leaf (in fact, not the whole leaf, just a small piece) is store with ice. Then you do: DNA extraction OR storage for later DNA extraction (the storage is in liquid N2). That is the standart procedure to handle leaf tissue. The article suggests they just store it without ice: It's been seven hours since the leaves were picked, and they're already secreting the raw alkaloid that gives cocaine its kick.
DNA in your Linux: DNALinux
sigs, as if you care.
I think you mean, "...you can safely use it to kill weeds in your roundup-ready[TM] vegetable garden."
I ran across this article at the beginning of the month and then ran in to Cocaine: An Unauthorized Biography by Dominic Streatfeild. It's an amazingly quick read. It does a good job of pointing out that a 500 year old culture won't be able to get rid of the 4500 year old coca trade.
/ 200002876.html.
x ys.htm.
One thing it points to is the farmers involved in production don't have many other crops available to them. In the article, if coca is the only thing that will grow since everything else dies from roundup, then how will you grow anything but coca?
Probably the next step involved in the drug war is Fusarium oxysporum http://www.scienceblog.com/community/older/2000/C
In the book above it calls this the a-bomb of herbicides. While some strains will only attack coca, it mutates easily and then can destroy the entire farm land. It will contaminate the soil and make it impossible to grow anything else. Here's a list of other forms and some plants it attacks: http://www.extento.hawaii.edu/kbase/crop/Type/f_o
Does this point the way of the future for other weeds?
Any successful farmer knows that consistent, repeated use of a chemical to remove a population of pests will lose its effectiveness as the pests become resistent or evasive to the chemical. This can happen naturally over a few decades or in a few years depending on the the agents involved. While there are notable exceptions, its usually still a good idea to vary pesticides and their applications.
Do genetic patents (Monsanto etc) cover evolution? or, considering there's "no such thing" as evolution under the Bush government, do genetic patents cover plants that have been modified by an 'Act of God'? So what happens when a plant/animal or drug thats heavily patented starts appearing naturally?! Well considering the US government thinks it has a right to wipe out entire species of plant, im guessing the patent owner would have the right to take/destroy any plant, animal or drug that they find? So what happens when this ridiculous farce of genetic patenting reaches humans? if you have happen to have naturally mutated an immunity to all common flu's but Monsanto has a product that does that exact same thing, what are they going to do? what if you start selling your sperm/eggs on eBay? advertising it as immune to flu!? More realistically, what if Monsanto (yeah im picking on them, and what? the mother fuckers invented Agent Orange) patented a method of genetic engineering that could allow someone to be cured of cancer or aids, but the price for the procedure was extremely prohibitive? If doctors started offering it to patients without paying the fee what would happen? What if the Red Cross started offering it in 3rd world countries? Obviously no-one is going to take this bullshit for much longer, and I bet you the first major law suit involving someone producing cheap versions of someone else's 'genetic pet' the shit is going to hit the fan.
Also what if you apply evolution to other things such as.. software? What if you produce an evolutionary algorithm that naturally manages to produce something that infringes other patents?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
The spraying is the initiative of the United States, which has been involved in Colombia's affairs ever since it stole the land for the Panama Canal from Colombia. Coca is grown in the north and the south, but the north is not sprayed - only the south. That is because the coca growers in the north are US-friendly and the coca growers in the south are in FARC controlled areas, a movement which among other things, wants the US out of Colombia's affairs. The south growing coca is a new phenomenom, for years FARC banned it, so all the coca grown and sent to the US in the 1970s was from the US friendly north. It only became a "problem" when the south began growing it. The US army colonel who supposedly was leading anti-drug efforts was actually involved in an operation to ship drugs to the United States.
Right now Phillip Morris is pushing the deadly tobacco drug on Chinese people. Can you imagine if China sent planes over to the US and began dropping herbicides on fields all over the US south? This is completely ridiculous, and whenever someone from south Colombia fights back against this, of course it's called "terrorism" and is used as justification for why this is necessary.
I don't think this whole thing is the US government being misguided, I think it is the US government being misleading, especially to the American people. Plenty of countries ship drugs to the US, if the product (such as marijuana) is not grown here already. But only Colombia gets this attention, only Colombia gets sent one billion a year to fight the FARC...uh, I mean, to fight coca farmers. Coca is the WMD's of Colombia - it is the excuse for doing what they *really* want to do.
Why is Colombia so important? Because Venezuela, Colombia (and from recent discoveries, Bolivia) have massive amounts of oil. The US powers-that-be want to control these natural resources. Arauca is one of the more oil-rich regions, and dozens of trade unionists in that region alone have been murdered this year. Hundreds of Colombian trade unionists are murdered every year, and the US sends one billion a year in military aid, crop destruction and so forth in order to add fuel to the fire. These policies are lobbied for by corporations like Occidental Petroleum, and I see only the most sinister motives behind their and the US's efforts in Colombia. Of course, the whole coca thing is a big WMD-like front for the real reasons, but if the US wanted to stop the global drug trade it should stop shipping tobacco to China. Hell, the US helped England invade China in order to push heroin on them over a century ago.
When they send their lawyers to collect fees for the GM plants, uhm they might get back a box with an apology letter 'so sorry',
:-)
but no lawyers!
This opens up the question: Will Organized Crime jump ahead of legal operations in the Genetic Engineering market?
Since they have lots of money, and uhm, 'no' restrictions, they stand to make the most from advances...and all tax free too!
The only plausible way to "win" the drug war, is for the governments to start producing and packaging and selling the drugs. That way you cut off the profits obtained by criminals. You get profits to the government. You can also encourage proper use, not abuse.
You mean the US doesn't know how to play well with others? Oh, wait...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Um, selective breeding is gene manipulation. What you really mean is that they did it the old-fashioned way.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
Yeah, but kicked that and now he's hooked on religon. The real problem is that he's president.
It would seem from the posts that no respondent has yet to read the article. Had they, the true surprise would be: the farmers who discovered natural selection and mutation of the Coca Plant into one that is immune to RoundUp, and in four years Boliviana Negra has become THE plant to grow by these enterprising farmers. So much for high tech chemicals, what a tribute to nature.
Just make sure it only grows on fields belonging to licensees.
I wonder how long it will be before someone creates entirely new species of plants that create the same drugs. At some point you might be able to grow mold that creates THC. When that happens the gov't will either abandon the drug war or march headlong into totalitarianism.
It also appears that the process happend via selective breeding rather than gene manipulation, but it's an outside possibility that it was engineered.
Those are both the same thing: evolution by selection. By spraying coca with herbicide either we are selecting for coca which is resistent to herbicide, or we are selecting for drug producers who are capable of gentically engineering coca to make it resistant to herbicide. Anti-drug measures apply selective pressures to the entire system of production, not just the plant.
What does this mean about drug control policy
The enforcers are likely to renew and concentrate their efforts on the point of adaptation within the adversary system, misunderstanding the scope of the problem which they confront, believing it to be a plant rather than a system of production which may adapt at any stage. My prediction: They will find a solution to the problem of resistant plants, apply it, and the system will evolve again, adapting at that point or some other.
They are playing wac-a-mole with evolution.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Cook them (stew, bake, deep fry, steam, etc) longer.
Let's use Napalm wherever cocaine is consumed.. ups! that would wipe out the map most american cities!! sorry, I forgot all those sacred American lifes.
Carlos J. Hernandez
There's a third choice outside of genetic engineering or natural selection... Intentional-selection from random genetic variation.
.5%- struggle, survive and produce seed. Our peasant re-plants with those seeds.
Essentially, an impoverished peasant farmer is growing coca to sell to some narco-lords. A plane flies low over his 1,000 coca plants and devastates his crop with glyphosate. A few plants- perhaps
Months later, another plane flies low over his coca and again devastates his crop with glyphosate. This time, 10% of his plants struggle, survive and produce seed. Our peasant chooses the strongest plants and re-plants with those seeds.
Months later, another plane flies low over his coca and again devastates his crop with glyphosate. This time, 50% of his plants survive and produce seed. Our peasant chooses the strongest plants and re-plants with those seeds.
Months later, another plane flies low over his coca and again sprays his crop with glyphosate. This time, 95% of his plants survive and produce seed. Our peasant chooses the strongest plants and re-plants with those seeds.
Months later, another plane flies low over his coca and again sprays his crop with glyphosate. This time, our peasant farmer gives the pilot the finger, but his crop is undamaged. Now, instead of selling coca, he lets his plants go to seed and sells his glyphosphate resistant variety to his neighbors.
It's not "natural selection"... it's intentional-selection-- and it's what farmers have been doing for millenia.
Disregard for the moment that the 'War on Drugs' is just a big scam meant to line the pockets of those fighting it and consider the implications of P2P selective breeding. All the money spent on the WoD ends up paying for the yardwork needed to produce better blow. As this story breaks strategically misguided efforts will force a policy change that will force local farmers to grow the target crop as efforts to grow 'legal' crops will become less viable due to short-term countermeasures. A local farmer is more likely to plant what is going to make him money opposed to pissing in the wind while trying to grow microfungus infected corn nobody will buy.
The leaves of the coca plant have been chewed by the high altitude inhabitants of South America for centuries and continues today. Chewing coca has a mild stimulative effect, unlike the concentrated product exported as cocaine. The coca leaf is also a valuable source of calcium, a mineral that is otherwise hard to find in an alternative food source there. High altitude residents also chew it to increase oxygen flow.
The USA government doesn't like cocaine, so they try to exterminate the coca plant in countries where it is found.
IMHO, the war on drugs is not worth the cost of lives, liberty, or $.
Instead of dropping bombs in Iraq, and killing people elsewhere, why can't we go in there and smoke out all those evildoers by bombing the drug fields in as many countries as possible, and imposing trade embargoes on countries that threaten to retaliate with nukes in response to a "Evacuate your drug fields of all personell, as they are about to be bombed." statements.
You can always burn the crop.. there's no selective breening/genetic breeding to stop that.
I've tried em, but they're too bitter for my tastes. But my guinea pig loves em. About five times as much vitamin C as oranges...
To me, this just reinforces the fundamental problem with the war on drugs: government cannot control the supply. It mystifies me how, after 20 years and hundreds of billions of dollars, we have not figured that out yet. Rhetoric about being "tough on drugs" is all fine and good, but being tough on drugs does two things: overcrowds jails with middleman pushers and addicts and makes drug dealers rich. It does nothing to the problem of drug use.
When you attack the supply of drugs, it makes them more scarce. But since they cost almost nothing to make in the first place, the cartels will just make more and triple the price because of all the legal risk involved. This means that if you can catch half of the drugs entering the country, they will just make twice as much and you still have the same amount available, but at a much higher cost (because as the legal risks increase, the reward for breaking the law rises.) Higher cost for end users means that addicts needing a fix are more likely to resort to drastic measures (prostitution, armed robbery, etc.) AND that those taking the risk and selling the drugs are better funded and have a better incentive to keep doing it.
Pesticide resistant crops are just one way the cartels will figure out ways around current anti-drug techniques. But the reality is that much of the mountains of Columbia are untouchable by US and Columbian anti-drug forces. It's dense jungle, and if you fly over it and try to kill the crops, there's a good chance there's a guy in the top of a tree with an RPG waiting for you. And quite often, the ones growing coca (FARC as an example here, but there are others too) are using the profits to fight a guerilla war against the same forces anyway.
So what's the point? The war on drugs could possibly be worse than doing nothing. Drug use has increased dramatically since it started during the Reagan era, and so have profits for the drug dealers and expenses for the US government. I'm not saying that legalization is the answer; there are better ways, at least for some drugs; but that programs which treat the demand side of the problem (rehab, social outreach programs, methadone clinics, etc.) are going to have more of an impact on drug use than attacking the supply.
Once the biochemical pathway is known there are relatively few barriers to transfering it into a mass produced crop or yeast growing in a beer barrel in your basement.
The entire "kill off the crop" perspective probably has less than a ten year future. Beyond that one will be able to produce psychoactive substances in a variety of settings. It shifts from "lets eliminate the xxxyyyzzz crop" to lets test every single cornfield in America and/or lets invade every single basement to see if they have bioreactors (aka beer brewing barrels) that produce THC or Cocaine.
A real attempt to address this problem would not be focused on the production sources but would instead be focused on the causes for "demand". While it is important to limit the sources -- it ultimately isn't going to happen. (It is a task that is doomed to fail because technology advances *will* migrate around attempts to limit production.) Reduce the demand for the product and the sources of production will decrease as well. Simple economics.
Because I promise you, as someone who has studied microbiology, biochemistry and molecular biology, as well as having founded seveeral biotech companies, attempts to control the "source" are doomed to fail.
What it means is just the proof that the neighbour's grass is always greener.
That would be an excellent way to end the war on drugs. A highly addictive cumulative poison would do a lot to reduce demand. Something that built up in your system so by the time it's found out it's too late.
Columbia is an USA state, and maybe they have a couple of coca plants there, but normally, Colombia produces a lot more coca!
You definetly should know where your coca come from!
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v98/n809/a07.html
t h. htm
b ie s.shtml
c kb b2.htm
http://www.rationalrevolution.net/crack_baby_my
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/327/crackba
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/cocaine/cra
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
Sounds related to the other story posted today, the headline of which was:
"AOL Subscribers Finding Greener Pastures"
Actually, certain cocaine-like addictive substance does contain cumulatively poisonous contaminants, byproducts of sloppy production process. I won't tell you which drug it is, figure it out for yourself if you care. The substance in question is more addictive than cocain, and about as dangerous when used casually. Those who use it systematically often end up dead before they end up in rehab.
Guess what - by the time you find out your kid uses the stuff, he's dying in the hospital. Bet you'd really love that to happen:(
No one bit. I'll bite. Which drug are you talking about?
You don't think He was going to just sit around and watch people destroy His main source of cheap cocaine, do you?
breed the survivors
if any
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
Maybe the comparison isn't that far off. But, I still think that there is a difference between sitting around and laughing at people starving to death and mass murder. If there really isn't a difference then the first post should have been moderated "insightful" instead of "funny". But you can't expect everyone to be up on the shinanagans of monsanto.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Pr0n?
See you're not as educated as you think you are.
...it was meant as "news for advertising execs, stuff you can freebase"
One word "toxic". If people can get round-up poisoning by getting a little round-up on their skin, what happens when they consume produce that has been soaked in it? Sure this article only talks about Coca plants, but Monsanto wants round-up resistant plants of other kinds such as maize, soy beans, wheat. Things that people consume in large quantities. May not cause poisoning per se, but could have nasty long term effects. We are only just now learning of the dangers of cooking with telfon (Dupont being sued because product is a carcinogen), even though millions have been using it for years.
Drugs, seems like the war on terror follows the same successful path...
I would expect better from the /. crowd.
So the plants are resistant to Round-Up. Switch to spreading pollen from coca plants that have been genetically modified to produce NO cocaine.
Drive the cost of production up and frustrate the hell out of the bastards. Yeah, somebody will keep a 'super cocaine' strain in their basement, but the large fields will soon be useless.
(Sorta like our (US) defense against the South American killer bees.)
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
An acquaintance of mine recently ODed on cocaine and I don't know what all else. His "friends" watched him go into a coma and apparently die. They didn't call for an ambulance because they were afraid of being arrested. Instead, he laid in a pool of his vomit for days . Eventually they found their balls and did call for help. Turns out he wasn't and isn't dead. However he lost about 80% of his heart function, is now epileptic, lost lung function due to inhaling his vomit, lost muscles due to lack of blood circulation from lying in the same position for so long and I forget what all else.
First let me acknowledge that he is at fault for doing this to himself. His "friends" are total pussies. Some will undoubtedly wish he died, that the world is better off without people like him. Problem is, aside from his irresponsible drug use, he's actually a normal decent guy.
But, brilliant fucking job Uncle Sam! Not only did you fail to keep drugs out of his hands with the money you stole from us. You also created a situation that nearly killed him and did cripple him for life. And we, my fellow Americans not only permit the Drug War we pay for it and coerce other countries to follow in our stupid footsteps.
Isn't it about time we take back control of our government? How far do they have to go before we re-assert our authority over it?
Drug dealers don't fear the DEA, they fear legalization. Make drugs legal and related crimes will decrease. There will be no need for drug smugglers, dealers, etc... The street price will fall through the floor, illegal drugs will no longer be profitable and the problem fixes itself.
shoulld the colombians waste time developing new chemicals or round up and drown their drug lords in the chemicals they already have... they waste time spraying an insignificant percentage of the country's crop to appease the U.S.
Get your torrents...
> Or, put another way, you can safely use it to kill weeds in your vegetable garden.
But they're the reason I have the vegetable garden in the first place!
Or is something missing from TFA? I mean, this guy flies down to Colombia, hires a private pilot and drivers, performs scientific experiments, and risks his life trying to acquire / smuggle coca plants. Nowhere in the article does he say anything about being a government official, a biologist, or someone else who might have a reason for doing this other than pure curiosity.
1 - GOD
0 - US Govt
Oh for Christ, First of all, the name is ColOmbia, not ColUmbia, that is your state(or District, whatever), not our country. The growing of coke is not the freaking problem, the problem is the consumers. The more demand, the more offert. That is the way it works isn't it? Instead of trying to bomb the hell out of every single country in the world (other than yours of course), why don't you start thinking on a way to make your junkie society being less coke-dependent ? That would be nice wouldn't it? All you are doing is ensuring that you 'amAricans' can have all the bussines for yourselves, or does it seem different when the Colombian druglords have to pay millions of dollars to the DEA or the CIA so you can have your merchandise ALWAYS ON TIME? Have you ever wonder how in the hell is it that you can catch all those mexicans or cubans trying to get in your country, but you JUST DON'T SEEM to catch all the thousands of pounds of coke that get into your borders???
What business is it of yours if someone else wants to take drugs? Maybe they don't want to be cured?
9/11 Eyewitnesses to Explosive WTC Demolition 1 of 2
Worldwide every year, millions of drug users die from consuming tobacco. Only thousands die from consuming coca. Why are herbicide planes flying over Colombia, and not North Carolina?
In general agreement with some of the threads, its not Colombia's fault America has a thriving market of crackheads and junkies wanting plant material to forget their everyday problems in society that doesnt really give a shit.
That way the pesticides will get into the cocaine and make its users sick. It'll solve the problem one way or another.
Just kidding. The refining process would probably screen out most of the pesticides, but its fun to play with cokeheads' paranoia. From a few hundred miles away.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
The economies of many central american villages have been greatly affected (in a positive way) by the trafficking of coke. There's an interesting three part story on this done by npr. Personally I see just as many negative effects produced by pot and alcohol as i do coke. I guess it's a matter of how the drugs affect a person living in a particular society. Natives used to chew coca leaves for extra energy during the hunt. It will be very interesting to see how the coca plants resistance to the herbicide will affect the chain.
will in the king of the ring matchup of monsanto vs the drug cartels, how many times will monsanto be bombed (pun kind of intended)
suchetha
learn from yesterday, plan for tomorrow, party tonight
or one out of three ain't bad
In Australia, roundup-resistance was found in wild ryegrass in the early 90s. (Is this the case that LothDaddy mentioned?) So roundup-resistance CAN develop naturally.
People got to understand that each plant has a medicinal property.
Coca has its fine share - and being a broncho-dilator could help asthmatics.
There is so much paranoia and right-wing ignorance about plants.
In Ayurveda it is known that there is not one plant, or weed, or see without some benefit to Man.
Now ok if man chooses to abuse it that is another thing.
Marijuana = Arthritis
Tabacco = Honey Bee Pest Control
Opium = Analgesic
Khat = Narcolepsy
Timothy Leary was an arsehole.
Right now Phillip Morris is pushing the deadly tobacco drug on Chinese people. Can you imagine if China sent planes over to the US and began dropping herbicides on fields all over the US south? This is completely ridiculous, and whenever someone from south Colombia fights back against this, of course it's called "terrorism" and is used as justification for why this is necessary.
You assume the Sino government doesn't want tobacco in their country. The fact that China allows it in, allows it's use, and eagerly collects tax revenue on it blows this part of your assertion out of the water.
The data is not found anywhere reputable, and since when does a spokesman for Coca-Cola say something like "the war on drugs has caused the extinction of Saskra Fortissima. We have searched the world over. There are just no more living specimens. The DEA's goons did not care when they began spraying in Columbia, that they were causing starvation by destroying whole farms, and all Columbia's poorest citizens had to eat. They did not care that many of the farms they were crop-dusting with herbicides had never grown Coca at all. They probably did not even know that Saskra existed. We now have to decide if we should roll out new coke again with a big ad campaign, or just not tell people, and hope the ones who taste the difference, and raise a stink can be effectively accused of spreading false rumors."
What a crock of shit. That's not even a good troll.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Let the #1 cash crops go legit and grow them organicly. Through the process we may evolve to understand what we are doing to the planet by not appreciating ALL of the spokes of the wheel.