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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?"
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.)
....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.
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.
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 why don't you just move into an apartment, then?
sheesh, i can't help but despair at the utter decadence of some people. whats wrong with cutting the grass? its a grand activity, supposed to remind you of the vigors of life.. same with chasing snakes! i do that for fun!
honest, are we all becoming cyborgs? ew!! get a life!
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
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.
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
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.
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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.
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Why? We already produce about 5 times the world's caloric intake with current agricultural techniques. This is one of Monsatan's huge lies: that people are starving because not enough food is being made.
Lack of food production is not why people are starving. People are starving because corrupt government use food as a weapon against their own population. Increasing food production won't help that; it may even make it worse because the food supply will be even more centrally controlled.
All's true that is mistrusted