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Genetic Engineers Barking Up the Wrong Trees?
Rick the Red writes "In a commentary titled 'Genetic engineering for better suburbia', Vincent Barnes says, 'Cures for diseases and feeding the world with genetically modified foods is well and good but the real money is in solving the problems of homeowners, the vast silent majority of Americans who toil away every spring and summer fighting pests and every fall injuring their backs and falling off ladders.' Should Monsanto bring us designer maples that don't shed leaves? Would you buy designer grass that grows two inches and stops? Even if you won't eat GM food?"
...I think curing disease would be pretty good.
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Should we focus our money on massively increasing food production, making backup organs, and fighting diseases or should we make some nice trees?
Idiotic.
If those scientists are going up to trees and barking, I think they've been doing a little genetic engineering on themselves on the side. Woof!
This article isn't really worth your time. The blurb really says it all. His only really good idea is that genetic engineering could be useful closer to home, but his examples are really nothing more than wishful impossibilities.
For example:
Surely some genetic feature of a non-deciduous tree could be implanted in maples so that one may enjoy all the reds and yellows but not the stupefying task of raking and cleaning out gutters. In the spring, the leaves could turn green again and the cycle would repeat so that a sense of seasonal change isn't lost, only my backache.
He obviously understands the process by which die, causing them to turn colors and fall off, since he knows that if leaves don't die and turn colors then plants would loose devastating amounts of water durring the winter period. However, he somehow wants those leaves to come back to life when spring hits. I don't care how many genes shift around, it's going to take nothing more than voodoo magic to both kill the leaves so they change color, and make them come back to life.
The best you could do is get a nice waxy coating on the leaves so they can stay green all year without drying the tree out, or make them stick tighter to the brances so they fall off slowly throughout the winter rather than all at once in the fall, with stragglers falling out like loose teeth as new leaves budded underneith them.
From this point the article goes completely downhill. He doesn't even mention actual possibilities, like removing the gene that causes cat to produce dander people are allergic to (something that already is recieving lots of research money.)
Should Monsanto bring us designer maples that don't shed leaves?
No. Monsanto should go away. It should die a quiet corporate death.
This is one technocratic religion we don't need more of, thanks very much. Monsanto plays God, and we are its Eden.
Science goes too far. This is an example.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
and besides, the sheer fact that such research might pay-off is a sure sign of the decay of our civilisation.
Already, little or no research is done in areas where little or no profit is expected (malaria e.g.), thereby killing millions every year.
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
GM weads that kill themselves.
....I think the above posters (and probably most readers) are missing the point that the article is clearly meant as satire - not very well-executed satire, but satire nonetheless.
This BBC story is 3 years old. But GM bacterium could eliminate tooth decay.e ch/2002/ boston_2002/1825309.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/sci_t
Presumably we could also modify the bacteria that cause unpleasant smells, like BO, bad breath or smelly feet.
Get them working on producing a GM human-female that thinks that stanky basementgeeks are supersexy. They can come in several variants -- the scrawny goth, the buxom blond, the dominatrix redhead ... They'd make a billion....
How does the Slashdot Effect happen given that no slashdotters ever RTFA?
Should Monsanto bring us designer maples that don't shed leaves? Would you buy designer grass that grows two inches and stops? Even if you won't eat GM food?
The answer is still NO. The issue with GM plants is that GM corporations have proven time and time again that they are not being in the remotest bit responsible for what they are producing. They take GM plants that have not been anywhere near adequately tested, and let them out in the wild, where they crossbreed with other plants freely. They have absolutely no clue if they are about to create the next kudzu, and they don't appear to give a damn if they do, either. (Heck, they'd probably see one of their plants getting out of control and taking over everywhere as a gold mine!) And don't forget that it's Monsanto that gave us the Terminator Gene.
No thanks. My life depends on plant life, so I'd prefer if people didn't wantonly muck with it. What was that old saying about people who live in glass houses throwing stones?
"Should Monsanto bring us designer maples that don't shed leaves?"
I love to wade through the leaves that cover the sidewalks, you insensitive clod. If they remove my town's glorious autumn splendor, I'm moving to Canada.
I'd have to say that its better not to mess with nature in that way (unless you use a contained enviro) because the plant could become some sort of "super-plant" and destroy all of its predators and grow over its rivals or something like that. It should be tested rigourously before you release at least...
its caused by greed, ignorance, bad education, capitalism, war, land mines, etc etc etc.
its not caused by 'we dont have a magic melon'
if u can genetically engineer humans with emotional health, then you would stop world hunger a lot faster.
Of course I would! I really don't understand those who fear GM food. It's not like the cows, or even the corn we eat now, is "natural." Most of our food has been selectively bred for centuries. The result is the same mucking-with-genes, just much more slowly than genetic engineering promises.
If you refuse to eat beef because of moral reasons (I understand that there are lots of legitimate reasons not to eat beef--but I'm concentrating on the "oh, poor cow" reason), then would you be willing to eat beef grown in a cow body that was born with no brain whatsoever and kept alive by machines? You'd be eating beef, but it would've been grown like a vegetable. Most of the vegetarians I've asked say they would sooner eat a real cow than my genetically engineered monster. But why? How is it really any different from any of the food products we're created for ourselves over the centuries?
Personally, I'd much rather have GM food than beef that has been fllled to the brim with hormones to to make the "natural" animal perform better. And I'd be first in line to buy trees and grass.
The lameness filter is complaining about junk characters. What are junk characters? Did that question mark just count? Will this block of text make this message ok? ---------------------
watch funny commercials.
So, people start using grass and other pants that are geneticly engineered plants. What sort of impact is this going to have on the local insect population? YOu might not care if there are less bugs, but the fish in your local streams and rivers might care quite a bit. Also the other critters that eat the fish could be impacted.
Pretty Pictures!
I don't trust GM food and I can't see how I could trust two inch of GM grass, GM trees that are or GM anything else, considering that the animals that will eat it might end up in my plate.
Would you buy designer grass that grows two inches and stops? Even if you won't eat GM food?
Personally, I have no problems with genetic manipulation of things. Howerver the sort of people who whine about GM food, will probably throw a fit about any GM product. Example: 'GM grass will be bad because goats will eat it ant grow tentacles!'
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Honestly, from the absurdity of that guy's opinion piece, I would guess that he is trying to be satirical. If he's not, then I hope there aren't many more like him.
I'm all for curing diseases and feeding people (although even without GM food we throw out enough food to feed the entire world or pay farmers not to grow anything), but there is something about messing with the basic building blocks of all life on earth that is extremely disturbing. It took millions of years for the earth to get where it is, and most people would agree that whatever process got us to this point has done a pretty good job of creating a tremendously complex and interconnected ecosystem.
Are we really so foolhardy to believe that after only a hundred years or so of knowing DNA exists that we can start changing things without catastrophic effects on the world we live in?
I mean, could rumanants like cows eat the grass, and would it cross pollenate with normal grass, to create another weed? Would it invade gardens?
There are oodles of ethical questions to be answered BEFORE releasing a GM product into the wild. Profit is not the bottom line in the real world.
Microsoft is well known for making software that is popular in suberbia, but it's also known for being insecure, and a scourge on the Internet if plugged in unpatched. Releasing "perfect height" grass into the wild is much more dangerous than releasing an unpatched operating system. The consequences to the ecosystem aren't as simple as unplugging every Windows computer from the Internet and cleaning the worms off of them, or blocking ports.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Same for leaves. They want to use those loud leaf blowers. They'll use a leaf blower on individual leaves. Picking up the leaf would be more efficient but efficiency is not the point.
I'll eat GM foods. We've been eating them for decades.
I'd love to see grass like that, or plants which give off some sort of mosquito repellent...these are things I would love to have. But a maple tree that doesn't turn in the fall and then drop its leaves...no thanks. Part of the maple's charm is its autumnal transformation.
The problem isn't genetic technology, it is who controlls genetic technology. If you get rid of that unhealthy controll (PATENTS!), then lots of good things will happen with it naturally.
I don't have a problem with uning genetic technology for anything, what I have a problem with is that if someone controlls a specific piece of genetic technology - then they have a strong incentive to push/impose it even if it is not in my best interest. People are what they hold themselves accountable to, if Acme company has a patnet on a technology that sucks - they will push that technology even if they have the capability to make something far safer or better - that's just the way it is in a patent world. You can see this hapening in the pharmacutical industry all the time nowdays.
No, but I'd be the first on my block to buy an Elm tree resistant to dutch elm disease or an American Chestnut tree resistant to blight.
I once read a book on the subject...don't ask me what the name of it was. I have forgotten!
In this book the book said that sometimes plants and animals desire to be geneticly modified. I know it sounds strange, but there is a man who can talk to the plants. His name is the "Plant Whisperer" but really he doesn't whisper but is just a psychic. And he says that it is very true that plants long to be modified.
The reason for this is that their spirits have been developed up to a point and they can't break out of it. They long to have arms, legs, fingernails, etc, just like real people. They watch us every day longing to experience our lives and our loves.
I support research that will fulfill these aspiraitons. Life is too precious and should not be wasted sitting in a garden somewhere. Let us live and love with our plant brethren!
In an evermore artificial world, a person can go an entire day without seeing the sky, a tree or any animal, or touching cotton, wood, or anything *real*.
I know that there are kids that live in cities that have never seen the stars, and have no clue to the connection between the stuff that magically appears in the supermarket and the dirt that it's grown in. Gen-modding everything for the sake of fattys who don't want to care for their living landscape is only going to leave us with plants and animals that are not adapted to the natural world, and a weakened ecosystem.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get back on my horse so I can cry at sunset when somebody litters.
Lets go and give all them lazy bastard Londoners free perfect looking gardens before we help that poor girl with cancer. I'm sorry but this is downright stupid, even for Slashdot this is breaking a new barrel in.
If you want a nice garden or tree then you put work into it and you get what you put in back. You don't plant a few seeds and watch the magic happen. We don't have nor need magic beans. I personally wouldn't eat GM foods untill they were proven safe, but on the other hand if we can make super whatever plants safe that can feed the starving I want that to happen before I want to make sure my garden looks like I just mowed it.
I like muppets.
Just so you know, the argument goes like this. We have been mucking with things for years but we have obeyed natural rules. That is we controll what gets bred with what, but these things still have to breed and they slowly show more of the traits we want (fatter kernels on the corn, more THC in the weed). We have created some monsters thought this, such as the english bulldog that cannot mate and must be artificially inseminated inorder to proliferate.
We don't really have a decoder ring yet for the genome. For example, cloned sheep get some wierd cancer and die off prematurely. So maybe we can insert a gene into a plant that makes it fatter, but maybe it also makes the pland suck up more nutrients from the soil. And then we push it on some farmers and thier ground only can grow mutant freak plant and all thier other crops in the rotation are screwed.
Also there some of us have a problem with the way monsanto does business. I'll let you look inot that one on your own.
Finally the world hunger problem is about distribution and not quantity.
See all of the above. As a geneticist, I'm actually an avid proponent of genetic engineering. Hell, we should engineer anything we can get our hands on as long as it is for something that we can profit from: plants producing enzymes that cure otherwise incurable disorders, plants that do not need pesticides, animals that carry humanized organs... People who fear genetic engineering do so out of ignorance mostly. They do not realize that our efforts are piss-poor compared to what Nature is doing to all genetic material of all living organisms every day.
That said, I do not believe for a single second that genetic engineering will reach the home owner any time soon. Having to do something in the garden can actually be enjoyable, you know. But seriously, however useful it may be, you can betcher sweet *ss that green activists (Greenpeace comes to mind) will sow such fear and hate that GE organisms will not be available for common use for a long time to come. Who do you think came up with the term "Frankenfood"? Go tell to the poor kids who eat Golden Rice that genetic engineering is bad. And, to any fanatic who might be reading this post, before you embark on yet another hate-trip, please check here for a well-balanced discussion of the issue. Hunger is caused in large part by issues other than innate defects in Nature's gifts, but many of those are issues that are not going to be solved any time soon. You can be fundamentalistic about this or you can be realistic. Poor people loose in the first case.
----- One learns to itch where one can scratch.
How about genetically engineered humans that can appreciate nature without having to compulsively twist it into something considered "beautiful" by the chemical industry?
...you can spend lots of money fixing your roof when a NeoMaple branch cracks under the weight of the snow on it and crashes through. Good idea!
I lived through this crap back in 1995-96 (I think) in upstate New York when there was a heavy early snowfall. There was much damage, both to trees and to buildings.
[ home ]
Genetic engineering is just like any other engineering: companies promise features, features, features, and ignore the bugs. GM's fundamental bugs, like proliferation, unintended consequences, ecosystem competition and unknown risks, have never been adequately addressed. The difference is that this engineering is messing with our ecosystem, upon which all life, especially ours, depends. We can't just roll back from a failed rollout. More GM marketing, rather than science to eliminate those risks, shows that the danger is just increasing.
--
make install -not war
Came early this year?
you had me at #!
Should Monsanto bring us designer maples that don't shed leaves? Would you buy designer grass that grows two inches and stops?
Yes, and um, yes. Please even. While they're at it, lets get some trees that make more oxygen so I can stop feeling bad for cutting down the rain forest. I'd also like a dog that doesn't have to eat or poop, ferns for the house that I don't need to water so often, and a gerbil that can power my PC as long as I give it some sugar every now and then.
This forum Sig is licensed under the LGPL.
you fix todays problems with special doctored foods them tomarrow you have special germs that are just that better or worse depends what end of the stick you are on
does the words
staff infection
AIDS
ecoli
or that small town in irland that has the methane potato farms because gm screwed up on the BETTER part of potato
The grass already exists. It's called "No Mow", sold by Prairie Nurseries.s p
http://www.prairienursery.com/catalog/cat_nomow.a
And I'm not certain, but I don't think it's GM.
Anyone who lives in an area subject to ice storms should be glad that their trees lose leaves in the winter.
Please. This lemming suicide business is a popular myth--the first obvious sign of ignorance in the article.
One must consider all the implications when tinkering with genetic modifications. I believe that nature is delicately balanced, and it would be very difficult to change one thing without affecting another. How can one know for sure that we're taking all affected elements into the picture when we make genetic modifications?
How would you control the separation between the "suburban Doug fir" trees and the regular ones? What about any animals that naturally eat grass and suddenly come across the modified standard length grass? It's impossible to predict with our current level of understanding.
Science must first better understand nature and how everything is interconnected before we can begin tinkering with the genetics. It's not all about aesthetics or the consumers or the "right tree". There are also future generations to consider.
Let's work on the basics first, then we can start fooling around. Yeah?
Erm, well, I guess we've already been fooling around, huh? And we have cancer. :)
I immediately think "General Motors" And no, I would not eat General Motors food.
I have spend the first 5years of homeownership burying, removing and killing my lawn and other popularily cultivated plants.
they have all been replaced with stands of a variety of indigenous plants, shrubs, grasses and trees.
My brownstone-townhouse has a 'small' corner lot, but ive got mayapples, ferns, jackinpulpits, many trees, shrubs, etc etc etc etc.
not in a million years would i buy such stupidity. Im trying to diversify the plant life to support a greater diversity of insects, birds and animals.
This idea is as stupid as the moron who waters, fertilizes and mows his kentucky-blue-grass wasteland.
Absolute stupidity.
Grass should be free to grow and reach its potential - John Deere
I already did - it is called "Buffalo grass", and is a native grass of the midwestern region. Once established, it needs little water, and will not grow very tall.
In this particular case, there is little need for gengineering, just for people to realize that the brilliant green of fescue grass is not needed, and the more muted green of buffalo is just as good.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Do you want more info? If so, just google for "Starlink", the marketing name for Monstanto's chemical resistant crops.
They could have created a crop that would have reduced the amount of poisons we dump into the environment. Instead, they created one that allows us to use more poisons. Why? Well, you don't expect a chemical company to help us reduce the need for chemicals, do you?
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
Helping vast silent majority of Americans managing their lawns has always been a higher priority than curing for diseases and feeding the world ...
Don't need genetic engineering here. Already got that by breeding in the conventional manner.
Buffalo grass varietal called "Tatanka". Great grass for lawns. Left to its own, it will grow about 3 inches in a season, so it usually gets mowed once or twice a year.
Alternatively, we could always get the good folks in Ca, Nev, AZ, and NM to realize that they are living in Deserts and blue grass just doesn't belong there.
You could engineer the leaves so they turn to dust rather than simply die and fall off. This way you don't have to rake stuff up. Of course that could cause a breathing hazard so how about leaves that die and then dissolve when it rains?
I'm not biologist, but I know you are wrong. Red Oak is fair common in the north, and it holds onto (dead) leaves until spring.
Actually if the grass was done the RIGHT way, a regulatory signal would be downgraded via a point mutation in a promoter. It would just lower expression of previously existing proteins. The plus side to this is that it could just be screened for out of natural grass, and you could defuse the greenpeacers.
Storm
If leaves didn't fall, wouldn't that eliminate a lot of the nutrients in the ground that come from them? Even if any new trees grew from the deprived soil, all the herbavores would be eating their young shoots instead of the itty-bitty grass blades. Once all the young trees are gone, the plant eaters'll die off and there'll be no meat for the carnivores! And then society will fall into disarray as we battle each other in post-apocolyptic wastelands for rations and gasoline with our superpowered death cars, seeing only by the light of cinematic explosions!
Yeah. Think about it.
Yeah, I wanna plant a seed in my backyard and have it grow into a bigass SUV.
Table-ized A.I.
I've never understood peoples desire for a "perfect" green lawn. Its a uniform ugly. One color, not variation. They rarely use it for any other activity, it doesn't support as much nature, yet they must have it.
Grass is fine on a golf course or a ballpark. It is worthless in front of your home.
You design a tree that barks up itself.
I'm just full of brilliant solutions like this. Well, I'm full of something, anyway.
Some people are advising Buffalo grass. I've seen a Buffalo grass lawn. Eh... :-/ I suppose if I owned some Buffalo...
I'd rather take a more John Campbellian approach of man versus the universe and get this damn bluegrass to thrive here in the post-apocalyptic desert wastes of Sothern California.
IMHO, this would be a very dangerous idea...
Currently, trees which are too closely aligned genetically, are having problems with pest attacks. As an example, google for 'southern pine beetle'. Slash pines, a staple of the southern pine industry, as greatly suseptible to the SPB. Slash pines have been genetically bred (not exactly GM, but heading in that direction) for maximum production and guess what happens ? You get a spicies of beetle that just loves that particular tree and threatens to destroy whole plantings.
OTOH, other species of pines (longleaf, loblolly, etc) are sufficiently diverse (genetically speaking) that a beetle might find one tree it likes, but have to skip the next 10 or 20. Biodiversity works. Lets not screw with something that works just fine. A given planting of longleaf (I should know, I can see them right outside my window) may have a higher initial mortality rate than a similar planting of slash, but in the long run they will produce more and better timber.
This msg is brought to you by the letter 'W'.. for Worthless Wuss
If you want trees and grass that don't grow you have plastic already. If you want nature have nature. If don't have asphalt.
Dyslexics have more fnu.
Would I like grass that grows to 2" tall and has built-in resistance to weed killer?
That all depends...
Will Monsanto sue me if I don't use their brand of glyphosate, that cost 10x as much?
If it does grow to more than 2", just very slowly, will they sue me for not using their brand of lawnmower blades, in their brand of lawnmower, running on their brand of gasoline, all of which cost 10x as much as normal?
If I go away for the summer and this grass actually goes to seed, with they sue me for millions in lost profits because a few of those seeds landed in my neighbors' yards?
No, thank-you-very-much! I intend to stay as far away from GE products as I possibly can... And that has nothing to do with the BS fears about "franken"-products.
...and the manufacturers will sue your ass if you want to propagate them.
0 0.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-213339,
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
Plastic.
It's really that simple.
Laws are for people with no friends.
I've virtually no moral problems with genetic engineering as such. But when it comes to what you do with it, I favour genetic engineering in big mammals over "lower" life. If you modify a cow and it escapes, well, you'll probably get it back before it breeds and spreads its genes uncontrolably (Also, because it is more expensive per piece, you'll be more careful with it). The lower the life form, the faster things may go wrong, and it might happen in very "unexpected" ways. For example, AFAIK taxol and taxol-like compounds are not only produced by the tree, but also by several micro-organisms living on that tree. Now, that suggests inter-species DNA exchange. No harm done here? Fine, guarantees that it is always harmless? Of course not. And that is the achilles heel (and stupidity) of GM crops. The world has only a few staple crops. They come in many varieties. Often a single farmer has several varieties. Now GM crops are introduced as a single variety. That is Russian roulette. If a disease gets hold of that a) it can spread like wildfire, b) a major part of the earth population will suffer from famine (and possibly (civil) war etc.).
Bert
No bread? Let them eat cake!
Research like these can only prove to be a complete waste of funds and resources. GM crops can increase food production, its nutritional value and resistance to common pests, etc. On the other hand, growing a designer grass would only decrease a little bit of your work. I am sure, whoever said it was under the influence of vodka... ;).
Read a newspaper. Today. Now. Then do it again tomorrow.
The fact that so very many people, presumably intelligent and educated people, could not realize this article is satirical bodes ill for the ability of geeks to digest and influence popular culture and opinion.
If the ability to make your child smarter, stronger, faster, or whatever were available, it would probably be a bigger money maker than all other GM areas combined. Parents are now selecting embryos that don't have certain diseases, or even ones that can be a donor for another child. Others are selecting for sex -- either a boy to carry on the family name or a girl to "balance" the family. Throw in cosmetics (you could have the blue-eyed blonde baby you'd always wanted) and lifestyle choices (if there is a gay gene or genes, expect parents to "fix" that), and you are looking at tens of billions of dollars a year.
By your comment I can see that you have never been up here where it actually gets cold and snows then. Some pine trees can carry nearly twice their weight in snow. And what the hell are you talking about hardwood trees getting the sap out of the trunk? If the trees did that, they'd die. Sap doesn't freeze until it gets really cold, and even then, when trees to crack, it's usually nothing major.
So please shut up and stop talking out of your ass.
Sig
Because he disagrees with you that automatically makes him flamebait? That's the kind of attitude that leads to censorship. While you may or may not agree with him, his post was well thought out and clearly intended to express his point of view, not start a flame war.
Sigs are for the weak.
The only thing confusing is that it is in "opinion" and not "humor".
It may be an American thing, or it may be a Slashdot thing, but why do so many people posting around here think that sarcasm/irony/satire can't contain insight or express an opinion?
Why not bake some lime and turn it into cement then cement over the entire fucking world, and don't sue me when you fall over and break you hip because cement is harder than grass.
I can do this for you today without Monsanto or GM.
If you pay me an extra $10 then I'll even throw in a bucket of green paint so you can pretend it's just like nature.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Screw that. How about a lawn with a high THC content?
Need Mercedes parts ?
I agree with you that it wasn't flamebait, but well thought out? It came across to me as naive in the extreme, at the simplest level where was there any analysis of the effect on the existing ecosystems?
It seemed kind of flamey to me. I'm sorry. I will keep these thoughts far from the subject line and censor myself, since I am clearly infringing on other peoples freedom. In addition I give his post credit by writing a response. I'm glad you can see how me speaking my mind leads to censorship, because I sure can't. Somewhere in your post there is an implicit contradiction. If can you find it I'll never use the word flamebait again.
Too many people.
its caused by greed,
nope too many people. If there were only two people in the world you could be as greedy as you like and I would still have food.
its caused by ignorance.
of that fact that if you and you partner have 3 children then who the fucks going to feed them, that's one more mouth to feed.
its cause by bad education.
Too much education, if we all died off at an early age like we used to there wouldn't be so many people.
its caused by capitalism.
nope too many people, how exactly is capatilism making people starve? take out capitilism from the starving and what have you got left? too many people.
its caused by war.
Well, sort of, war does reduce the population so there should be more food to go around afterwards.
its cause by land mines.
don't blame world hunger on inanimate objects.
if u can genetically engineer humans that are impotent, then you would stop world hunger a lot faster.
Though I do agree that other factors play a small part, but you could even argue that, greed, ignorance, bad education, capitalism, war and land mines were caused by too many people.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I think GM foods and other GM plants are two seperate matters. With crops that people may eat, the possible benefits are huge for nations with starving or nutritionally deficient populations, such as has been seen with golden rice. Thus the benefits could possibly offset the potentially adverse environmental side effects. Modifying plants because somebody is too lazy to mow their lawn is another matter, since the benefit to risk ratio is likely not in the same class.
No, No, No!!
... as can grass, then all grass would only grow to 2 inches.
... and in the US, my home country, the food should *always* be marked if it contains GMO or if the produce is GM...
This artificial, modern bullshit is going to destroy everything. If there are maples which won't shed their leaves then they can spread
GM food is very dangerous
In case you are wondering just how evil GM products are to the environment, there was a test done in England where they planted some fields with GM crops that reduced the % of weeds from about 30% to around 5%.
The biologists were horified to find that almost all of the native animal life and a considerable portion of the native plant life around the fields was dying off or had disappeared. This was a direct result of the loss of the food supply provided by the "weeds". Weeds exist for a reason: diversity. They are pioneer plants that colonize an area and prepare it for longer lived plant species as the vegetation evolves.
Fewer weeds, few insects. Fewer insects, less flowering plant polination, and fewer birds. Fewer birds and more bad insects that can still eat the GM crop.
More pesticide and more cost to the farmers. Most cost to farmers and consumers, the more profit for Monsanto. You see a pattern forming here?
Monsanto and the other corporations pushing for GM crops are ignoring of just how interdependent ALL life is on this planet. 4 billion years of evolution went into creating the web of life that keeps us alive on this world. And they think they can improve on that? It makes them sound like pushers on the street corner promising a high like you've never known. And no strings attached. Heroine anyone ?
Must be the pennies on their eyes, because if they have their way, we humans will be joining the rest of the species that are quickly going extinct in a few generations.
They can protest all they want about the "benefits to humanity" but I wonder if they have considered what will be our epitaph? Science must treat the world like a doctor treats a patient: Rule #1: do no harm.
=========
"R.I.P.
Human Race
Death by suicide:
Starved when GM crops failed.
Poisined the atmosphere and the water.
Destroyed entire world's eco-systems.
Victim of own Greed, Stupidity and Hubris"
Hah! the day we let suburbabia totally dictate what we as a collective organism do is the day we may as well get it all over with and just nuke the biosphere! Maple trees that don't drop leaves, the lazy asswipes! they are are already to fat and need the exercise not to mention the entire system that has its own uses for leaves that fall!! How shortsighted & narcissictic can navel gazing get?!!
I saw the above titled movie last night at a screening in New York. It examines Monsanto's extensive attempts to control both the global food supply and departments of the US government through the introduction of genetically modified seeds.
More info at the movie's website.
This reminds me of GloFish, genetically engineered zebrafish which fluoresce light. Does anyone know if those are actually selling well?
I want one, but they're banned in California. Gah!
This is "the vast silent majority of Maxicans who toil away ..." :-)
Otherwise accurate
Never mention reproduction. You gotta fuck with their heads and focus minds on shiny tech because people will only stop having too many kids if they have serious mental problems - like fetishizing hardware.
Seems like day in day out, the last thing any moron will ever give up is the "right" to reproduce up to 20 children a couple. "Oh, the west is oppressing my human rights to splooge offspring all over the lower east side".
Personally, I think anyone who has over 4 kids should be class action sue-able.
Seems so similar (i guess its linked anyways) to how migration is an untouchable issue; as if the sole issue associated with migration is racism.
I didn't say you should censor yourself, I just disagreed with you. You'll notice nowhere in my post did I say that you shouldn't have been allowed to express your opinion. You, however, said that the original post should have been modded down as flamebait, which is a form of censorship. Therefore you were saying the original should have been censored, I said it shouldn't, but said nothing about you being censored.
Sigs are for the weak.
The real money will be in designing the offspring of rich, vain people. "Would you like little Bobby with blond or --" "Doctor, he will be more attractive, smarter, and stronger than all the other chldren in the world, won't he?" "How much are you willing to spend?"
the 'leftist hippies' refused to 'go after mobutu'?
... nixon, reagan,bush.. etc etc etc
yeah. leftist hippies like
but i guess its ok to support people-starving dictators since we were in the cold war and he was stopping communism.
----
or
like i said.
war is the cause. cold war, hot war, its just war.
I fully agree. Why use genetic engineering for treatment of diabetes or cancer or such diseases which affect but only few people! Who cares for them?
:)
How much better would it be to use genetic engineering for better purposes like:
1. Create clone of Jr. Bush. It would be a shame to miss his leadership after two short terms.
2. Create version of pets who eat very little, never shed furs, very very handy to keep, maybe even tuck in your pocket and most of all be very obedient to you, even if you don't feed it on time.
3. Terminate all those rare animals by genetically neutering their species. After all who needs them?
4. Create trees which automatically lend themselves for logging
5. Selectively breed humans to weed out the nature conscious and environmentalists. They are such pests!
6. And cows which are born half-cooked, shaped to enable them to be burgarized.
I am being flooded with ideas. I am sure the congress wouldn't mind funding any of these
BTW: Before flaming read the post again
you cant grow food in toxic polluted dirt, i dont care how you gmod it.
just because you have access to land and seed doesnt mean you won starve to death.
please, for the love of christ, learn some history some time. start with stalin's "collectivization"
, keep going as you learn about 'biopiracy', take a look at colonialism, and dont stop until you have washed the stupid PR bullshit out of your mind
b) 0 calorie Guiness for the couch habitue
c) Dogs with 4 stomaches that can live off grass, thus your best friend is also your lawn mower.
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves
They're called Pine Trees.
For example, the Americans spend millions to design a pen that will write in zero-g, the Russians use a pencil. The russians have an elegant solution, but the Americans now have a new understanding of chemistry, a new understanding of flow-dynamics, perhaps a new manufacturing process for fine detail, plus detailed experience of zero-G. The Russians have invested nothing and gained nothing in their solution.
I know you didn't state it, but you implied it, and it's not true - NASA didn't spend any money to design these. And the Fisher pen company sold them to the Russian space program not too long after they began selling them to NASA.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
...don't leaves that are strewn around the floor decomposing contribute to the nutrients in the soil? Wouldn't the soil eventually become dry due to lack of uhhh food for it?
a grass or garden plant that would either stop fire ants (and only fire ants) from breeding or would lower the potency of that witches-brew they use for a sting.
I think of polyester. If suddenly all your clothes in you closet became polyester without your consent, and the manufacturers of polyester sent you a bill, how would you react ?
Perhaps another analogy would be interesting to examine, what would happen if you started a beer compay, and you create a beer that is identical to another major beer, to the point that the FBI forensics team couldn't tell, except for labeling of course. This is just a mixture of ingredients after all and it is possible that your mixtures somehow ends up the same. Unless you used some special patented process of brewing there would be no infringment, and of course the purchasers of the beer would have zero liabilty, AND if someone left cases of the stuff in your yard you don't owe either of the beer companies ANYTHING !
GM is nothing more that receipes. If they lose the secret sauce by not containing it, too bad for them. If it ends up in my yard I should owe them nothing. If they won't contain it and pay for it's removal and the restoring of my yard to it's original state, then they obviously don't accept the liabilties of ownership, and give up rights of ownership.
regards
dbcad7
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
yoo hoo Get your facts straight. Monsanto is an American company, HQ in St. Louis, MO. Trust me I know! Also, Monsanto did not, I repeat did not, create or own the so-called Terminator Gene. While the article may have been satire, the replies show the lack of understanding and the need for education on this subject. Fortunately many replies have mentioned the fact that humans have been messing with breeding of plants and animals since the first dog was domesticated. Keep it real, people!
doesn't cross-polinate the organic products that I buy. Best of all, keep it in complete isolation, in hot houses, wherever you want. When people start dying of weird diseases 30 years down the road I don't want to be affected.
This reminds me that "lead is OK" stuff pushed by the oil industry, or "asbestos is fine", or "chlorine and benzene are not a danger", or "PCBs don't cause cancer", or "cigarettes aren't addictive". Quite frankly after all of this I'm surprised that some slashdotters place so much trust in Monsanto et al. Those PR really do their work.
Those who don't learn from the history are bound to repeat it.
Wait, since when was Monsanto a Canadian company? Thier world headquarters are in St. Louis Missouri, and unless the state congress actually took my advice, we are still part of the union. Did you just add that little detail to seem smarter, or what?
Monsanto is evil on the bounds of a SCO, Microsoft, and what Comcast did to TechTV rolled into one. They're the makers of GM crops, Round-up the weedkiller, and the brain cell nuker known as Aspartame(NutraSweet). Monsanto has this bad habit of suing farmers who use their crops without paying for it, even if the seed drifted through the air to a neighboring farm they'll sue him anyway. With little to no defense they tend to lose their farm. Wheres the revolt people?
Okay, so you're saying that never happens, and we've been breeding plants for milennia. Bingo. If we haven't seen nasty unexpected side-effects from propagating random changes in DNA, many of which are invisible, what is it about carefully crafting a set of task-specific DNA changes that gives people the willies and conjures up "Attack of the killer tomatoes" scenarios?
Before getting all worked up about the responsibility of GM corporations, why not give a moment of thought to the callous and insensitive breeders, who will happily propagate any old mutation that, at least in part, improves a plant for their needs? Do they bother checking what other mutations their new breed has? Do they sequence all their candidate strain's DNA and verify it against a database before releasing it to the public? Hell no! They're all "look at the size of these grapefruit! Buy some of our seeds! Only $5.00!"
Few People realize this but a Grass varient called Banff for the meadows it started from has been established by Agriculture Canada.
Yes I once had a full lawn of it and it does grow to 2 1/2 inches and pretty much stays there. And it is a pretty, fine wonderful barefoot grass to boot!
Vista, the single biggest argument for Desktop Linux! It doesn't "Just Work"(TM).
I hate to break it to you, but Monsanto is alive and well in Canada too, sucessfully sueing Percy www.percyschmeiser.com/into the ground. Sure the federal government has officially canned one project recently, but still the common law here now about Monsanto's rights, are frightening.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Would you buy designer grass that grows two inches and stops? Even if you won't eat GM food?
No.
There's little difference between modifying a gene and releasing the resultant mutant into an area, and introducing a non-native species into an area. Humans have no clue about the long term effects when they do stuff like that.
Yeah, I did know that. I had intended the comment somewhat as a joke about how people try to run away from problems as if going elsewhere will make things different, but it seems that no-one got it.
This question continues to bother me in a subterranean kind of way.
I think the answer lies in three things:
1. The dis-connectedness of society; neighbors are no longer the people you know. Cities and societies are filled with faceless people. It's hard to organize anything when people have lost emotional and social connection with each other.
2. The Dream. Truth, especially these days, is scary and unsettling. It is much easier in the short game to pretend that everything is okay. To ignore it all and get on with your life. There is certainly enough soothing illusion and lie provided to help us all along in that endeavor, as well as demonstrations of just how 'futile' it is to resist.
3. The Poison. The very things many people are struggling to ignore are the same things which are also bleeding them of the vital awareness and energy required to act. Monsanto alone makes several commonly consumed products which actively deteriorate one's ability to think and function.
The solution?
Each individual must choose to embrace awareness and to grow and strengthen themselves. At the moment it is still possible to do this.
Curiously, the more difficult it becomes to remain free and the more effort the Powers That Be put into controlling the world, the more unstable the equation becomes. When Free Choice has been removed to a high enough degree, the world shakes itself off. --A fail-safe, re-set mechanism. It has happened before many times, and it started happening again a few years ago. The process is quickly gaining strength. It'll be interesting to see how it all goes down this time around.
-FL
i think you're describing the broken window fallacy of economics. the wealth that the russians saved with simplicity wasn't lost, it was diverted into other more "worthy" markets. (completely ignoring that the russians lived in a COMMUNIST economy, however.) actually, without ignoring it, i would say that the communists had less total resources to steal from their citizens in order to achieve similar goals, due to the larger inefficiencies of a totalitarian centralized economy.
however, if what you're proposing w/r/t biotech is that economic incentives to develop genetic engineering technologies for markets as "petty" as conspicuous consumption of unsustainable-suburbia, and that those technologies more effectively sequence and cure genetic diseases, i agree.
the common example of this in economics is that "the baker doesn't bake bread because he wants to help the bread eaters, he does so because there's a market demand which helps him survive by fullfilling". genetic engineers should concentrate on the most valuable markets for their products -- even if that means short grass rather than cancer cures -- because it will be the most efficient long-term path to those noble goals.
GM food isn't going to help them. In fact, GM has a lot less to do with solving hunger and curing disease than it does with wank issues like intellectual property and exploiting poor people. Ignorant pro-GM stalwarts like to think that poor people shouldn't complain about not being able to save patented seeds if they're getting a steady supply of food for once, but what they don't say is that they cede control of their very lives to large foreign companies who don't even know how safe their food is to eat. They also like to think that this is not happening in the developed world, but they don't want to talk about the price of medicine in the US or the consequences of not being required to label GM foods, or why these two ideas are potentially dangerous.
Herein lies the "well-balanced discussion" linked in the parent post. This article is an ad, pure and simple, and the supposed balance comes from the mention that there may be adverse side effects of consuming GM food - although we haven't seen any yet. The economic and political issues at play in GM circles are completely ignored.
As the parent post demonstrates, being neither fundamentalist nor realistic is also possible.Attack its weak point for massive damage!
Most people I know that live in suburbs already have Zoysia. Its a hybrid grass that chokes out weeds and grows right up to about the right hieght and then slows. You still ahve to cut it occasionally but not that often. If you let it get too tall it will bend in half giving you a mowed lawn look whether you feel in the mood ot mow or not. Granted it isn't GM but hybrids are in a way a form of gene tinkering.
My point is, although we now have the ability to shortcut right to the desired traits, engineering plants (or anything else for that matter) isn't exactly a recent human endevor.
Nothing to see here, move along.
Have you ever been in a place where snow or ice storm happened a month or two earlier than usual? When the trees still have some or all of their leaves?
It is BAD. Those leaves hold extra snow/ice, and the branches can't take the weight, and you have huge branches (or even half-trees) lying everywhere - your yard, the street, power lines, you name it.
There may be other interesting and useful ways to use GM, but outside of the deep south this would be an incredibly bad idea.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
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Isn't a cement sidewalk as natural as a wooden table? Do people who think something is more "natural" than something else live happier lives because of their own brand of righteous indignation?
I've yet to see evidence that "liberal enlighented environmenatalist peace activists" are any less unhappy than "right wing religious nutjobs", so I'll keep pushing down my own path, thank you.
BTW, as an on topic comment, I *would* buy GM grass that grew 2" and stopped, if it was the same cost as normal grass. In fact, I came close to buying Turtle Turf when I put in my own 11,000 sq. feet of suburban glory, but it was way too expensive compared to "normal" grass.
Peace, war, what's the difference, you'd still be unhappy.
My Linux Command of the Day site : LCOD
Yes, and yes.
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
They are making varieties of common potted plants that have their flowers for much longer time. Would you choose a GM bouqet for your Valentines Date? (Why make up those weird ideas in the article?)
They might as well do it right (as opposed to making hybrids which is hit or miss at best). I might miss the maple leaves, but watching a buddy pay $30000 in construction costs for what a tree did to his sewage line, there'll be alot of money in making trees that don't (even if that means natural selection through the planting of other breeds with less curious roots ). Change happens. Deal or die.
"Vee do not vear the hello-my-name-ist badge!!" - The Real Mad Scientist
Some friends have several. Some seem to be colored deeper than others, but they do fluoresce nicely under black light.
Get off my virtual lawn, you damned virtual kids!
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Pfffffft! Golden rice is a joke.
At least I remember talking to someone about it.
It is a plant that is a lot like grass, except it stops growing at 2" naturally.
I have severe grass pollen allergies, and have to hire someone to cut my grass. I pretty much consider grass to be a weed, and really wish I could get rid of it entirely, but as I understand it that is very hard to do without digging out and throwing away the top layer of soil.
The naturally occuring plant that I was told about might be a nice alternative. Part of the problem is expense, but I was also told that it will eventually take over a lawn if you plant it in one part like an invasive species. This is nice if you want it, but then I also have neighbors whose lot does not have a barrier with mine, and I don't know if they wouldn't like it. While this new plant might have the advantage that I not have allergies to it, it is also possible that my allergies would be worse with this plant than with grass.
So the problems with this new, naturally occuring plant are that I might not be able to get rid of it once I plant it, and that I might have even more allergies with it than before.
Anyone know what plant I'm talking about btw?
Regardless, I would have the same worries with a GE grass, except I think there would be a much greater possibility of worse allergy problems. (To say nothing of gene drift and contaminating the general environment with something that we cannot possibly see the full consequences of for quite a while. We already have enough problems with natural but importanted plants like blackberries and scotch broom where I live.)
I hate Liberals and Conservatives.
If you are a Liberal or a Conservative, then HAVE A NICE DAY!
Courage.