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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 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.
I think you miss the irony of the column. The last paragraph says it all:
Surely it would not be difficult to shift this gene here and that gene there and come up with permanently blooming azaleas, rhodies, and camellias. Then, the only difference between winter and spring would be the temperature. But not to worry. Global warming will take care of that, too
This was a subtle satire of the suburbinite mentality about technology. It was not ment as a serious set of ideas.
Maybe, but I like the idea of a grass that only grows two inches and stops. Where I am from there is a native grass that only grows four inches and stops. It is also the first to turn green in the spring and the last to turn brown in the summer. Unfortunately it is a prarie grass and does not form much of a turf. It does a pretty good job of choking out weeds, but cannot compete with turf grasses like bermuda. Even so my parents have introduced it into those areas of their yard that they do not want to maintain. It is doing pretty well, but a beefed up variety and one that did not grow quite so tall would be nice.
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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.
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
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.
If you want a hypoallergenic cat then purchase a Siberian. I know someone with terrible allergies who bought a Siberian for this very reason and has had no problems whatsoever.
First of all, IAAGE, (I'm a genetic engineer)
Whether the article is facetious or not, I think it brings up a valid approach
OK, let me relate this in historical terms: During the space race, the U.S. spent billions trying to put 3 guys on that big vaccuous rock in the sky. In the end, they got all the glory, but more importantly, they got a world of new technologies that benefitted all mankind (and girl-kind too).
This technological bootstrapping would have never happened without this wasteful brute-force approach to the spacerace. Dividing up those billions and investing it in various fields or research would not have provided the same benefits. This is one thing the Americans are very good at is overdoing solutions and reaping the benefits of their work. Compare this with the Russians that go for simplicity, but get no tech trickle-down.
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.
To get back to the point at hand, {insert biotech company} have a ready market for something nobody knows much about. If they develop and mature the technologies to create new products faster than their competitors (because you know they'll be competing) then they will have a technology base that will make curing disease trivial. And with the money they can make on this, they can do the disease work for cheap. or better yet, universities, with these new technologies can do the work as open source.
Honestly, I think anything that anything that gets capitalism to develop technology is good. Capitalism excels at developing new technology, and is at its worst when it can't and must feed off itself.
For those of you that don't like to read long comments, let alone RTFA, I think this is a good thing because it promotes the growth of technologies as a whole and thus is good.
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?
We should be weaning the agricultural community off of this, but instead our tax $ pay so that we can have more expensive food... Because that makes sense...
I beg your pardon, but Bush unconditionally supports psychopaths like Rashid Dostum of Afghanistan and the truly horrendous Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan. And if you hate having your fingernails pulled out or your genitals electrocuted for political dissent, then by all means stay away from U.S. client states like Egypt and Jordan.
While I laud your belief in promoting political freedom worldwide, I question your choosing statist politicians as feedom's champions, particularly in light of the repressive legislation that they sponsor over the wishes, or best interests, of their subjects. Or the blind eye they turn to the crimes of evil (but compliant) regimes like the ones I mentioned.
I suggest that a better model for political change is the last of your four examples, the Iranian student protesters, whose movement is widely popular among their people. Applying the mendacious, violent Bushian model of "spreading freedom" to a place like Iran, where the forms and ideas of representative government are gradually and inexorably being adopted by popular will, guarantees that the reform movement will be gravely set back as the mullahs capitalize upon the fear created a foreign aggressor. This is why dictators always promote the notion of a looming threat like "terrorists" or "Communists" from outside, or from within, to facilitate control of the population, i.e., with the ludicrously-named PATRIOT Act, the Sedition Act, etc.
*Fun Fact: The U.S. State Department authorized the export of advanced ball-bearing manufacturing equipment in the early 1970s to the Soviet Union, knowing it was the only way the Soviets would be able to manufacture ICBMs with MIRV warheads. Why the hell would they do that, you wonder? To keep the Commies in the game. To keep the herd frightened of the "Soviet Menace." We fed them, too, when they were too incompetent to feed themselves. Again, to keep the threat alive--certain people (not you or I) profit from such thinking.
In 1948, the U.K. shipped their latest Rolls-Royce jet engines with accompanying schematics to the Soviets as "goodwill gesture." The Soviets refined the design and it became the basis for all following Soviet jet engine technology. Otherwise, they would have remained at a significant strategic disadvantage for decades with greatly inferior jet aircraft. Why did the British-American ruling class do this? To ensure that a powerful foreign enemy existed, to justify retaining a large, and for some people, lucrative, post-war military and to facilitate social control through fear.
"OH SHIT, THERE'S A HORSE IN THE HOSPITAL!"
That's an exceedingly naive view.
In nature, one teeny tiny grass plant somewhere gets the mutation. It takes thousands of generations of the animals that feed on it for that mutation to spread far enough to be important. That gives the animals plenty of time to evolve to keep up with the change.
When humanity introduces a genetically engineered plant, it emerges as hundreds of thousands of acres of the stuff - all planted within one growing season, fed with the best nutrition, watered with mathematical perfection and sprayed to keep
bugs from destroying it. The potential for an advantageous gene to cross over into the wild all in a couple of generations is HUGE. None of the other species of plants and animals stand a chance of adapting in the event of such a sudden change - so they die.
This isn't a theoretical problem - it's already happening. Do a web search for 'Starlink corn' if you disbelieve that this can be a problem.
www.sjbaker.org
My house is surrounded by Pines, Firs and Cedars. Every October/November it just takes a bit of rain and wind and a LOT of leaves/needles come falling down. OK, so 75% stays on the tree, but the rest comes down during a one month period. I live in Seattle, so it may differ in warmer climates - I don't know.