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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?"
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?
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.
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.
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make install -not war
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.
Bullshit. You can selectively breed humans to be stronger, or whatever. You cannot selectively breed humans to grow 10 arms and be green.
Selective breeding is "natural". In many ways that's what nature does as well with natural selection. In many species only the most suited do breed.
Sticking spider genes in people so they piss cobwebs is not natural and only attainable by GM.
Do you now see the difference? No? ok. Selective breeding and selection is like writing user level software. GM is akin to rewiring your motherboard like on Cray computers and hoping your box will run Longhorn better.
People move to country and way out to suburbs to be "closer to nature". Then they destroy it.
So you produce that grass that stops growing after 2" - it gets used everywhere - it's genes get out so it competes with and mixes with the general gene-pool for grasses around the world. Maybe because it needs less nutrients (since it's only renewing itself instead of actively growing) - so it out-performs all other grasses.
Grass around the world stops growing - ruminants have nothing to eat - so they strip the leaves off every bush and tree - then they die. Six months later, we all die of starvation.
Good idea!
www.sjbaker.org
Does anyone ever stop and think, "gee, where did all the fireflies go?" ... I could go on.
or the frogs, chipmunks, birds, salamanders, butterflies,
How many people know what a firefly is these days? We've decimated our ecology by removing the natural vegetation from our front and back yards in some stupid quest for the perfect lawn: uniform, monoculter, weed and pest free.
Then we wonder where all the wildlife went (we killed their homes and removed their food) or why the summers keep getting hotter every year (we've replaced shading, cooling trees with lawn and concrete, or why the air quality sucks so badly and little Timmy has lung cancer and has to breath from a fucking oxygen tank (we've polluted our lawns with chemicals pushed from an industry that doesn't give a fuck about your kids - only your money).
These genetic monstrosities (if they were ever to become even remotely possible) do nothing to restore the ecosystem that we and our animals friends rely on to survive.
Get educated about the environment and the small part you can do to restore the remaining fragments. Even your little patch of lawn can make a difference.
wild ones
green landscaping
plant conservation alliance
The problem with the Terminator Gene is that there was talk of (and specimens of) versions of it where the plants that have it cannot produce offspring on their own, but they can cross-pollinate with plants that do not have the gene to produce offspring that do have the gene.
The plan was that you could introduce plants with the gene in an area, let nature do its thing, and suddenly have all the farmers in the area be forced to buy seed from you every year instead of using seed from last year's crop.
Yes, Monsanto has publicly said they will never release their sterile-seed technology to the market, but only after major international outcry, the fact that they even gave this plan serious consideration, let alone fleshed it out and let the world know they were thinking it, shows that there are some exceptionally evil people at the controls of that corporation.
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.
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"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"
Actually, believe it or not, many of the brightest people in biology take the job with the work they most want to do, and only look into what money it pays after they more or less made up their mind. The result? The happy and smart people don't make as much money, but their ok with that. I mean, really, if you had to decide between an extremely boring job that will change nothing plus an extra 10,000 dollars, or a job that might solve an important question, get you a noble prize, and is extraordinarily interesting to boot? No contest. There is no noble prize for topiary design. Besides, no one can get a Biology degree with D's in biology.
If you're thinking about the environment, why not just stop mowing? Some benefits of a naturalized lawn are:
Less maintenance once it's going (In fact, the modern grass lawn oringinally became desirable because it is so hard to maintain... it required a lot of xervants, and so showed off wealth.)
Eliminates the need to water during drought
Decreases erosion
Provides habitat and food for wildlife
Looks a whole lot better than uniform blades of grass, in my opinion.
If you want a place for your kids to kick a ball and run around, go to a park. Realistically they spend about as much time playing in the yard as most parents do maintaining. Kids can still play in a naturalized yard, in fact it can be more inspiring to their imagination.
A small area of "traditional" mowed lawn can be left for barbecueing, kids running around etc... but acres of lawn to mow is really just wasteful.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
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).