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Open-Source Technique for GM Crops
a_d_white writes "The Biological Innovation for Open Society has developed TransBacter, a new technique for creating genetically modified crops, which is being released as a BioForge project. Their license allows anyone to use and improve the technique as long as improvements are shared with everyone, à la open source. Other techniques for creating genetically modified crops rely on Agrobacterium, but this new method allows using bacteria outside this genus. The New York Times and Wired cover the story. The founding of BIOS was mentioned previously. Although the Nature paper is available from the BIOS website, with their emphasis on the free sharing of ideas it's rather ironic that the technique was not reported in an open-access journal."
I understand BioForge is a place for scientists to collaborate but is it also a place for funding? Did the scientists who put together this article do so with funds from a University or (less likely) a corporation?
If more of these papers are to come out, and I hope they do, the proper funding channels should be lined up since those who fund a research project tend to be very possessive about the results.
-Teiresias
Their license allows anyone to use and improve the technique as long as improvements are shared with everyone, à la open source.
This is foolish. They should have released it under a free license for anyone except those who deny the same right to use their bio-patents. Otherwise certain scums are able to use this technique while not being forced to change their behaviour, hurting the industry, hurting the farmers, hurting the scientific progress, with no consequences. A perfect license should be useful for cross-licensing with proprietary patents portfolios but sadly this one while being certainly great in spirit is just too weak in its current form to achieve this goal. In the real world of patent sharks we need to fight a little bit harder.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Seems like a way to introduce a harmful gm product as a weapon to destroy a nations food supply. By providing this information so readily it may make the job much easier. Especially as improvements to the techniques are made.
Does biodiversity mean a thing to any of you? Having one strain of GM corn dominate all of an an area's crops might be awesome when it comes to raising productivity levels and immunity to pesticides, but when an unforseen disease starts to affect the plants (which can happen a lot) they would be completely wiped out, because they are all the same. Nature does it better, lets not fuck around with it.
Introducing GM plants to an area can be compared to introducing alien species to a place where they do not belong. There is no possible way to forsee all the negative impacts that could arise. Check out all the problems Australia has with feral animals, for instance. here
http://www.thelung.org
Right now a lot of slashdotters hope their government will do something similar for IT workers to stop outsourcing. Other industries already have such measures to protect them. IIRC the American steel industries are a fine example.
That's just the way the world works. If you have something, you protect it, ethics be damned. Is it fair? Probably not. However, if you don't do it then people will lose jobs and that's not good for the elections.
Who's to blame? The politicians who are really just listening to their voters or the people who fear for their jobs? Things aren't always right or wrong.
As much as the potato in Ireland.
Of course the Famine was a result of using an imported genetic mono-crop, but I also thinking of the change, across Europe, that the introduction of potato from the Americas after 1492 created. It allowed the production of a lot of food in a small area and was army/pillage/tax resistant. A mixed result; that extra food allowed a population increase available for colonizing abroad, but helped make areas like the Balkans such fractal hate zones. (Yep, the potato is the root of many problems. Sorry.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I don't think the analogy with open source software is quite right. After all, with OSS I have a choice - I download the software, .configure, make install and I have it. Then if it I choose I can delete it.
With this stuff I can still choose whether I want to plant it or eat it, but I cannot choose whether my neighbor's GM'd tomatoes pollinate my tomatoes. I won't find out until I plant the resulting seeds next summer and WHOA! My tomatoes have deformed frog legs on them, but geez, they grow like the dickens in my cat's litter box!
I'll leave them on the front porch - help yourself.
Just what the third world countries need is to become dependent upon GM crops, and then, ten-years from now have Monsanto decide to enforce all its patents.
Just like with software, third world countries are best sticking to public-domain agriculture.
If you are ok with GM stuff then you should also be fine with the intro of non-native species. Why would one be ok and the other not ok? The same fundamental issue exists with both: the unintended consequences of introducing a species alien to this environment are unknown and predictions of "it'll be fine" are often wrong. Go talk to the Australians about introduced species and see if they agree that the human mind is up to the task, last I heard the problems were NOT solved. And yes, if it is genetically modified surely it is a new species!?
90% of the wealth is in 2% of the pockets. Bummer to be in the majority.
Well, that's my point -- the novelty here (besides the method itself, which is impressive and new) is the use of open-source terminology, not the free (by Stallman-approved usage of "free") availability of a molecular biology tool. The emphasis on IP issues here has given most of the readers a wildly skewed impression that public domain methods, tools and data are the exception in research, not the norm.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...