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Bio-Engineered Rice Uses Human Genes
gliph writes "Yahoo news has a piece about a small biogenetics firm that is using genetically engineered rice containing human genes to help fight diarrhea. From the article: 'Ventria's rice produces two human proteins found in mother's milk, saliva and tears, which help people hydrate and lessen the severity and duration of diarrhea attacks, a top killer of children in developing countries.'"
Reading the headline, I was sure this is fake news. Come on, Condoleeza and human?
Now I don't need to worry about dirrhea when I eat rice!
Scientists need to learn that just because you can do something doesn't mean that you SHOULD do it. However much it might help the PR of the administration, reengineering Condoleeza Rice to give her human genes is going way too far. This madness has to stop.
Eat uncooked flour dissolved in a little water.
Eating cooked rice also helps stopping diarrhea. Normal rice, non genetic modifications whatsoever.
These simple old tricks come all the way from my grandmother, and i've used them often enough to know that they work (either that or it's the placebo effect in action).
So why exactly do we need frankein-rice for?
What about the ethical aspect of putting human genes in rice? Wouldn't people who eat that rice be eating a part of a human? That's kind of freaky to think about.
The symptoms here are caused by things like inadequate access to clean water and lack of means to purchase food that gives proper nutrition. Hmmm, why don't people who live in places with clean water supplies (i.e., Northern California, Most of Western Europe) eat bioengineered rice? Could we solve the actual problem (working on issues of economic equality and proper utilities and civil infastructures) instead of feeding poor people? A very bigoted solution to our global problems.
I'm not entirely sure. However, crapping my pants sucks and if they can make rice to help with that, I'm not sure I mind in the least bit.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Soylent Green.
U.S company avoids human trial testing in states, instead using children in Peru.
FTA
>"Earlier this month, a Peruvian scientist sponsored by Ventria presented data at the Pediatric Academics Societies meeting in San Francisco. It showed children hospitalized in Peru with serious diarrhea attacks recovered quicker -- 3.67 days versus 5.21 days -- if the dehydration solution they were fed contained the powder."
--- I've completed diagnosis of your problem and can classify it as a YOYO...You're On Your Own
So far I've only seen posts in the line of "what for?" "it's not needed" and complaints about the ethical aspect. It's very easy to complain about the ethical side of things when you have your business well settled, but in developing countries, mere survival may be more important than that.
When clean water is not always at hand, diseases such as dysentery are easy to catch. Although this rice is no cure, it can help prevent the loss of fluids associated with this disease and help save lives.
So, what are these ethical issues you were referring to again?
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
You know what helps people hydrate? Water. Clean water and food can prevent diarrhea. All that money going into genetically engineered crops. Why not fix the socio-political problems of these regions so the infrastructures -> people can become healthy?
Oh yeah... no profit in that. Hell's gonna be standing room only.
That's the questions. Not whether that rice has super-human powers. Is it fertile? Can the farmer put away some of his harvest for next year to plant a new crop or is the outcome of the rice sterile?
If it does, is he allowed to? May he actually plant that rice without a new license for next year? No kidding, some (very popular) sorts cannot be used anymore because the company holding the rights (yes, there is rights and patents on food. Go figure) doesn't allow using it anymore.
This malpractice is getting more and more common to make farmers dependent on industrial seeds.
So that's the questions I'd prefer to have answered. Not what the wonder-rice could be. I'd be interested in the question what it IS.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
...fag.
THINK OF THE PLANET!!1! =
"THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!2!" =
"THINK OF THE TERRORISTS!!3!" =
you're a tool.
Tool.
Yeah, why produce GM food to produce proteins that we need, when instead they can go and insert these genetic modifications into humans and then we won't need to turn to certain foods to get the benefits. The benefits can be directly enjoyed without doing anything.
The necessity to eat certain foods could be overcome if this technology could be inserted directly into the human body, in addition to genetic modifications to help those with nut allergies etc. to overcome their problem. (Or at least in the next generation of children that they have...).
..IS PEOPLE!!!
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Do they call it Soylent Green?
Does this remind anyone of the Steven Wright line about rice?
"I'm going to court next week. I've been selected for jury duty. It's kind of an insane case -- 6000 ants dressed up as rice and robbed a Chinese restaurant. I don't think they did it."
No ants involved this time around, but still...
I, for one, welcome our sentient grain overlords.
This tagline is umop apisdn.
Let the torrent of lame Soylent Green jokes commence.
Office Space trivia game - play it now douche hole.
Mmmm, tastes like people. Soylent green anybody?
Philosophy.
1:133 people in the US have Celliac Disease - inability of the gut to absorb nutrient. #1 symptom = Diarhea. Diarhea wipes out the villi in the intestines, which is your body's system for up-taking nutrients from foods as they pass through the gut. No villi - no nutrients:: You Die.
I've seen no study to verify mammary colostrum and human tears have any propolactic effect on villi, but paired with rice its a good starter. Celliac Disease causes the body's immune system to adversely react to a protein found in wheat products - gluten. Celliac's are able eat rice without the toxic effects of other grains.
There is no cure, no treatment, no therapy for Celliac Disease. The only thing that can be done is remove gluten from the diet. The damage to the villi can be reversed in most cases and health maintained with a disciplined gluten-free diet for Life.
The GM rice/human DNA engineered grain could only reverse the death rate in developing countries if the GM DNA provide an immunity. The villi are delicate structures which regenerate all the time in health people. They are wiped out when anyone gets diarhea. That's what diarhea is, loss of villi, medically.
If the GM rice passes immunity to the villi, they have a treatment for every 1:133 American's living with the disease. Not bad market.
Now introducing... White Castle RiceBurgers! They contradict themselves...
No wonder Microsoft and Google have stopped advertising here.
For most of human history there has been destitute poverty for a large number of people.
With the gradual discovery and transformation to Competitive Free-Market Capitalism, initially in the UK starting several hundred years ago and then in her allied and close countries followed by the rest of the world, the problem partially solved.
Many attempts at eradicating poverty have existed... Technology, communism, etc. But only Capitalism has been so successful by requiring equality and justice in trade and society as a whole, and making slight over production the norm, instead of under production. Thus leading to the solution of poverty for the masses.
However, Most haters of Capitalism ignore the fact that no other system has eradicated poverty as much as a Just, Equal, Competitive Free-market Capitalist Society, where people are free to invent and solve problems and go about their own business of creating wealth from their hard work, and keeping their wealth.
This is the solution to most of poverty. And it seems that the solution to the rest of poverty has not yet been found.
See links:
The Morality of Self-Interest and the Facts that Support It: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
The Historic, Economic and Philosophic Case for Laissez-Faire
What is Capitalism?
The Destitution of Pre-Capitalist Europe
Poverty is caused by; war; lack of equal justice; barriers to free trade; very high tax (stopping from people keeping the wealth that they themselves have created); subsidies (causing those competing with the subsidised or those forced to give the subsidy to become poorer); and many more reasons.
And if you repeatedly harvest grains with human genes in them, does that make you a cereal killer?
so ... umm... its still vegetarian, right?
Damn, I *REALLY* could have used this stuff about an hour ago. Ugh. :(
Seriously.
Shut. The. Fuck. Up.
It's easy for you to bitch and moan and fear-monger about the ethics of human DNA in some rice, from your computer chair in your air-conditioned first-world home or office. Meanwhile there are people - real, live people - people with thoughts, and feelings, and whose well-being you'd place at first-priority, whose well-being would be your tantamount concern, whose well-being would trump these silly goddamn over-analytical beardo quack ideas and "what ifs" -- that is, if you weren't such a fucking unthinking monster -- and these people are shitting themselves to death. And even though you and I both laughed as kids when we played Oregon Trail and learned what "dysentary" meant, one of us has managed to grow up, and figures it'd be best if we could put a stop to this horrible pain and suffering in the real world. Meanwhile, the other one is playing Armchair Philosopher, talking about lines being crossed and the ethics of eliminating suffering , without knowing the first thing about what he's talking about. Jesus Christ.
Have you heard about a little invention from the very late 1700s called "vaccinations"? Is this "ethical" in your eyes? Was it "ethical" for Louis Pasteur to inject human beings with (residual amounts of) COW DNA? Or should we have put a stop to this and let smallpox continue to ravage the globe? What about blood transfusions? That's OMG human DNA as well. Or, wait, are you one of those fucking quacker-flappers, like that lady who made an entire campaign out of "HIV does not cause AIDS", then gave AIDS to her daughter (by not taking any preventative measures during pregnancy)?
Look. I'm trying not to be too much of a -1 Flamebait -1 Troll -1 Confrontational Asshole, but what is your deal? If someone you loved (assuming you are actually capable of feeling empathy, or anything beyond Moral Sense [c.f. Twain, "The Mysterious Stranger"]) was locked in a room, in a hotel you did not own, which was currently on fire, would you worry about the ethics of breaking the door down? Would you tap the fireman on the back as he was about to take an axe to the door, and oh-so-wisely, intellectually bleat^H^H^H^H^H state that it was a violation of ethics to be destroying property that wasn't yours? Would you then put on your Humble Pious Face, with your head solemnly cast down, and proclaim your grief for the impending loss of your wife / child / mother / father? Or does this garbage only spew forth from your mouth when it's other people's children whose lives are at risk?
So much idiotic diarrhea dribbling out of your mouth - I'm sure this isn't the only completely moronic thing you've managed to come up with in your blessedly short existance. Maybe you could use a DNA injection. I know I'd gladly sodomize you. I mean "innoculate" you - I get those two words confused =)!
MODS: -1, Whatever me all you want. I prefer not to intellectualize idiocy (such as the Parent post), so if you're going to mod me down for calling bullshit when I see it, mod me down, for calling bullshit, when, I, see... it. </Shatner>
Soviet Russia, rice IS you!
It is my philosophy that one positive, fulfilling life is better than ten poor, miserable lives. I, Distantbody, wish sincerely that organizations would STOP prolonging peoples lives if those lives are not likely to utter "contentment" on their deathbed.
Since rice is typically grown in said developing countries there's a fair chance that they will have access to it.
someone had to say it
Engineering is the art of compromise.
"genetically engineered rice containing human genes"
So, it tastes like chicken?
What we need next is a rice plant that can generate some caffeine in rice.
Yeah, and Starbucks is going to sushi when it does.
Soilent rice is made from PEOPLE!
In the not too distant future, next Sunday A.D.
Wow, this totally reminds of that company which markets it's baby formula to the poorest of the poor. Oh wait, what did that article say?
"Ventria hopes to add its protein powder to existing infant products."
I'll grant that their intentions are good but they sure as shit are misplaced. People whose children are dying from diarrhea don't need to go out and buy products that contain protiens to lessen the effects of it. Especially if the use of that product was in some way responsible for their condition.
Despite what the article says I'm sure that the firms selling infant products are very interested in this as it could possibly extend the life of the "consumers", allowing them to consume more. It has already been shown that these companies don't care if some GMO ingredients get mixed in with their products. Especially if this product is to be sold where there are few laws regulating such things and the target market is inadequately educated on basic nutrition let alone GMOs.
What does Jobs tell his follower not to eat ?
Anything comming out of Microsoft Cuisine, of course, because it's pure eeevviill !
(Sorry, I couldn't resist)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
So if I decided to have bunches of children without any means of supporting them, would someone please bail the little tykes out? Thanks! Gee, if we were having children at the rate of the ones needing help, we'd be a lot closer to the fix they are in instead of being in a position to render them aid. And once they are slightly better off, they'll be in a position to upturn the apple cart for everyone!
1. Boil Rice for 15 mins on a hot stove
2. Serve with some Fava Beans and a nice Chianti
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
There's an Indian restaurant down the road that does nice stuff but the aftermath is horrendous! They should buy heaps of this stuff!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
We oppose this rice thing, whatever it is again. We were really looking for a new wedge issues, the current ones aren't working so well for us. - The Republican party
This is another solution - vaccinate against the organisms that most often cause dysentary.
Not really. Vaccination is much more difficult than you imply, especially because the organisms that cause most of these diseases are bacteria and eukaryotes. Much harder to vaccinate against than viruses, and much less effective when you do design one that "works".
"In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe." -- Carl Sagan, Cosmos
I have a big issue with genetically engineered grains. All grains are wind pollinated. Pollen can travel quite far before fertilizing the female of a compatible plant species. Organic corn growers are already having big issues with this. You can't have heritage grains and pure strains when people are mucking around with wind pollenated plants.
I don't know how far they have tested this, but medicine and science has had several disasters with medications given to one generation and the disastrous results showing up in subsequent generations. Why can't we stick with things that humans evolved on and eliminate the crud like high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, genetically modified foods, olean, etc? Our bodies don't know what we're eating anymore.
---- I'm out of your mind!
"Everything tastes more or less like chicken."
The grass is always greener on the other side of the light cone.
soylent rice is people!
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore."
Meanwhile there are people - real, live people - people with thoughts, and feelings, and whose well-being you'd place at first-priority, whose well-being would be your tantamount concern, whose well-being would trump these silly goddamn over-analytical beardo quack ideas and "what ifs"
These people are not going to be helped with bioengineered rice. The problems in the third world are political chaos, war, lack of family planning, lack of education, religious fundamentalism, and others. Poverty, disease, high mortality, child labor, homelessness, and migration are symptoms of that. You can't fix the problems by treating the symptoms, and even if the first world made it its top priority to help the third world, it couldn't being to alleviate the suffering. The only way this is ever going to get fixed is to address the root problems.
Every dollar you invest in attempts at quick fixes like bioengineered rice is a dollar you aren't spending on fixing the fundamental problems. It's actually worse than that: if you give these people crutches like bioengineered rice, they're even less likely to do what's necessary to modernize their infrastructure, and you make them dependent on high-tech products and imports.
It's well-meaning idiots like you that focus on the short term and keep meddling in those societies (creating corruption and dependency in the process) that are responsible for a large part of the suffering in the third world. Europe and the US developed into modern societies with long life expectancies without such meddling, and these nations can and will as well if we give them access to world markets and let them compete and develop freely.
With human genes in your rice, it's very possible.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
President Bush was right...the human/animal hybrids are coming! (well, human/plant...but you get my idea!)
But seriously, I'd like to offer some words of wisdom:
We hold life to be sacred, but we also know the foundation of life consists in a stream of codes not so different from the successive frames of a watchvid. Why then cannot we cut one code short here, and start another there? Is life so fragile that it can withstand no tampering? Does the sacred brook no improvement?
Chairman Sheng-ji Yang
"Dynamics of Mind"
Why do you insist that the human genetic code is "sacred" or "taboo"? It is a chemical process and nothing more. For that matter -we- are chemical processes and nothing more. If you deny yourself a useful tool simply because it reminds you uncomfortably of your mortality, you have uselessly and pointlessly crippled yourself.
Chairman Sheng-ji Yang
"Looking God in the Eye"
The United Nations? Surely you jest. They are the least likely to get into a region and fix the infrastructure let alone have any effect on the socio-political structures in place. If anything they will exaggerate the problem.
This leaves most of the real work to private organizations, the ones who have been doing the bulk of the charitable work in Africa and similar areas. Since most of them do not get government money they need solutions that work and work in conditions less than ideal. This is where enigneered food stuffs come into play.
Claiming water is the best way to hydrate people is like claiming a drowning man is going to be wet. Its a big "DUH" yet completely misses the point. This paticular rice is a solution where the obvious solution isn't practical or available at the time. Dry goods are many times easier to transport and store. What has to be done until the infrastructure is in place is to prevent as many complications as possible. Rice is a great medium. A little of it goes a long way.
The problem with saving many people of the world today is ignorance. While we like to pretend the leaders of these 3rd world countries are ignorant the bulk of the ignorance is here at home in the western world. The very same people who would harp about religious ignorance are the very same ones who fly off the handle at any foods that are engineered. They have little information, rely on innuendo and partial truths, and then use hyperbole and fear to make their point seem valid. Trouble is their ignorance kills people in the countries that can use the help.
Look, we can think good thoughts all we want. We can forever look for a better solution. Unfortunately most of these people don't have the time to wait and good thoughts don't keep them fed and healthy.
Whats next? Claiming that irradiated food is bad? How about the scare tactics that surrounded homoginizing? (sp?)
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
>Ventria's rice produces two human proteins found in mother's milk
I always wondered where rice milk comes from. Now I know.
I, for one, welcome our new white overlords.
A community-oriented lyrics site
Soylent Rice
It's weird to see how 'ethics' is used as a cheap and easy excuse for not doing the right thing; how can it not be right to save the lives of children?
But of course, this is not about save the lives of poor children - it is just yet another way to earn money from the poor. If we really wanted to put an end to unnecessary suffering, it would be far more relevant to try ending poverty; it is after all not as if we in the western world couldn't it if we really wanted to.
However, there is a more sinister side to the debate about genetically modified plants: gene pollution. It works like this: you grow your modified plant, the bees (or wind) comes and takes pollen away, and some of it pollinates wild plants - or the neighbor farmer's unmodified crop.
In the first case wild plant species now carry the modification, and it may or may not pop up later in circumstances that are very unfortunate. In the second case the farmer's crop is suddenly 'illegal', because it now contains patented genes that he has not paid any ryalties for using.
Now that's the REAL ethical challenge when it comes to genetic modification.
Soon, it really is going to be Uncle Ben's rice!!!
You're wrong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulin#Timeline
"Human insulin is now manufactured for widespread clinical use using genetic engineering techniques, which significantly reduces impurity reaction problems. Eli Lilly marketed the first such insulin, Humulin, in 1982. Humulin was the first medication produced using modern genetic engineering techniques, in which actual human DNA is inserted into a host cell (E. coli in this case). The host cells are then allowed to grow and reproduce normally, and due to the inserted human DNA, they produce actual human insulin.
Genentech developed the technique Lilly used to produce Humulin. Novo Nordisk has also developed a genetically engineered insulin independently. Most insulins used clinically are produced this way, for they avoid most of the allergic reaction problem."
Ventria's rice produces two human proteins found in mother's milk, saliva and tears
So its made from German porn?
This cartoon shows what this does to your family tree. http://www.unripe.com/pages/cartoon%2016%20family% 20tree.html
I think the real lesson is that you're a crybaby.
WAHHH!! WAHHHH!!! WAHHHHHH!!!!!
"What ifs? Is that meant to be imply some negative connotation to perfectly reasonable and serious concerns?"
No, but the concerns mentioned aren't reasonable or serious, they're idiotic and ridiculous.
And I will happily denounce idiotic and ridiculous postulations with no hesitation.
Really, this has already been done before. A company called 'Monsanto' (too lazy to look up a link), has been making genetically modified foods for years now. They also happen to make Roundup-brand weed killers (and pesticides, too).
Their crops are engineered to be resistant to the Roundup products; specifically, they bill them as 'Roundup-ready'. They have also been attempting off and on to engineer crops that do not produce reusable seeds -- in other words, farmers who buy these crops cannot harvest part of them to use to plant again next year, they'll have to buy them new every season.
Once you get past the idea of the corporations using genetic engineering to fleece us (surprise), putting human genes in a plant is no different than putting the genes that produce ampicillin into a bacterial plasmid (or human insulin, so on).
The problem is that the public is basically ignorant of the mechanics behind it. Especially with rice, the chance that this is going to manage to spread outside these crops is very, very remote -- and certainly not to other things, like wheat or corn. I will be the first to say that nobody ever seems to want to do long-term trials of this stuff before releasing it, which I think is sorely needed, but once again, leave it to the media to sensationalize anything.
Just slap 'bio engineered' and 'human genes' into the same headline, and the conservatives will be screaming (probably the liberals too, as a matter of fact).
If firefighters fight fire, and crimefighters fight crime, what do freedom fighters fight? - George Carlin
Well. Said. And better than I put it. I think I was still oxygen-deprived from my laugh at the statement about /. debate being just the same as academic discourse, so I sorta bungled my reply to this statement of the Parent. I meant to make clear that kenzels asked himself/herself "what if... this all goes wrong", then formed an elaborate delusion that left with him/her weeping for the world - instead it reads like there's an actual rhetorical "what if" in his/her post. Sigh.
:-D
I shouldn't bother with this "his/her" stuff - this is Slashdot, after all. What's a "her", anyway?
But anyway. Yeah. Well, well said. I only hope someone comes up with a postulation for you to denounce.
Ventria Rice is PEOPLE!!!
-
Soylent Green is PEOPLE! /Obligatory
Windows has detected an undetectable error.
So when I eat this rice I'm really drinking someone's mother's milk? Eww!
Bio-Engineered Rice is made out of people!
It would be better if it was bio-engineered soybean.
BOOB RICE!!!11!
That was one of the best posts I've read in a long time. I normally refrain from contentless "mod parent up" posts, but I'll break my rule here.
Sadly, I don't get mod points anymore (apparently somebody didn't like my moderations too much), but if I did, you'd have gotten some.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Cauliflowers make great brains for frankenstein foods.
To err is human. To forgive is not company policy.
In developing countries, now you don't send out for rice -- rice sends out for you!
- For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
Hey man, you're right, we should just stand idly by while millions of children die. Why didn't we think of this solution before?!?
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
Can we get these genes into beer? It would make my Sunday mornings so much more pleasant.
...
...
Soylent Rice IS *People*!!!
At what point does it become cannabalism? Eating your nails? Blow job swallowing? Swapping saliva? Eating rice with 2 genes? How about rice with 20 or 200? Why grow the rice when we can just screw and make people directly and eat the meat?
All DNA is fundamentally the same. This just happens to be a base sequence that causes the creation of proteins usually produced by the human body rather than traditional rat, cow, slug, corn, or eveen rice proteins. Can someone explain _why_ this is going to cause the end of the world? Are people aware that it's standard practice to replace, for example, e coli base sequences with human ones so that the bacteria produce human proteins?
I'm appalled at the level of unscientific FUD that is out there. If slashdotters don't think scientifically, what will the general public do? Ban DHMO (http://www.dhmo.org/)?
You don't need religion to let a book tell you what to eat. (over 7000 hits on a single chapters search).
People eating people, for the sake of the children...
Nothing to see here. Move along.
We don't need to save children in the undeveloped world. We need them to die. There's too many of them, and we're seeing the results of overpopulation. Oh, yes, I am a big meanie. It's true - if I were them, I'd feel differently - and maybe the undeveloped world will have the last laugh when we run out of oil.
Of course, if I were employed to dream up nightmare conspiracy theories, I might come up with one that the reason why the industrialized world is sending all this free food & medecine to the undeveloped world is to wean them off of their own methods of production, however weak they are, and make them dependant on us (slashdot users? no. I mean the industrial world). Once that has happened, they can be controlled by threats of removing that food. Or, even better, we just pull the plug, wait a year for the corpses to rot, and move on in and build Starbucks and "green" housing, and "restore the jungle".
Because even the ones that sound good may eventually wind up bad.
To what the GP post said:
Shut. The. Fuck. Up.
I'll add:
Grow. A. Fucking. Brain.
genetic engineering is just so dangerous.
e s/yuan.htm
http://www.worldfoodprize.org/Laureates/04laureat
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuan_Longping
...the "latest"?
Here I thought it had been around since the 1980s (in name, at least). Surely there have been plenty of bad ideas that blah blah good at the time since then?
Anyway, I'm very glad you learned how to be patronizing and condescending. I'm sure it makes you the life of the Mad Cow conventions.
FUCK ALL OF YOU NUTBAG ENVIRONMENTALISTS.
Thank you for listening, have a nice day.
"Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted! Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING."
Yes, I know. I was fucking WANTING to yell, assholes.
FC Closer
How well will this be received? Will people who eat rice avoid it? There's a lot of vegetarians out there, will this altered rice be considered valid vegetarian or is it now tainted with animal kingdom DNA and they will refuse it?
The biggest block to this ever reaching third world countries is GreenPeace and the like. http://www.aworldconnected.org/article.php/934.htm l "Unfortunately, thanks to anti-biotechnology activists, the rice is still not available to those who need it. And even if it were, these unfortunate children would probably still go without. Activists would likely reprise their 2002 tactics, which convinced Zambia's government to reject 26,000 tons of US corn that had been sent as food-aid because some of it was genetically modified (GM)"
We are all just people.
Speaking of "arrogant and short-sighted"....
/. even bothers to provide links to the articles is beyond me. It's easy to see how urban legends get started, and how fanatics can start paranoid panics and protest movements based on no information.
Jeebus, please! The article is only a few paragraphs long.
They are processing the rice into a POWDER form which acts as a medicine and/or nutritional supplement ("nutriceutical").
They are NOT transporting rice.
Third-world farmers are NOT unable to grow the rice because it's sterilized, they're unable to grow it because it's NOT RICE -- it's a powder; it's a medicine.
Why
Soylent Green is People!!! PEOPLE!!!!!
Interesting fact: 60% of genes are conserved between a fly and a human. They share a "core set" of genes, meaning they code for the same proteins, etc. Between humans and cows, it's probably even more, considering how much closer evolutionarily cows are to humans compared to flys.
That being said, the poster who mentioned insulin brings up an interesting point. Using "human" genes (and you know, I'm sure there is some animal, or many even, that share our gene coding for insulin, which is used for blood sugar homeostasis), can help people, like diabetics. There certainly are ethical boundaries that should not be crossed, many ethical questions that must be answered, but this is true with many things. Should we splice the atom? Should organic farmers use weeding methods detrimental to their workers instead of herbicides? Should we continue using conventional farming techniques that hurt the earth? Should we genetically engineer corn to make it's own pesticides to increase yields and feed more people even though we don't fully know the environmental consequences? A doctor has two patients that will die on him, and he has to chose one to operate on. Which should he save?
Furthermore, to the poster who mentioned that the root of the issues aren't being addressed. While bioengineering food may not address the root of the issue, how do you expect biologists/genetecists/researchers to address these issues? Unless these people become politicians or human rights advocates, they can't do anything. Bioengineering is their SPECIALTY, and it is what they can do to help others. Politics should be left to the politicians (and those of those in the US need to write to our senators, etc).
Admittedly, some of these people are working for companys like Ventria or Monsanto, and their intentions may be less than wholesome, but you have people like Ingo Potrykus and his Golden Rice II, now making enough vitamin A (about 2 servings of rice a day) to help those who have vitamin A deficiency in lesser developed nations. You have people at public universities, who in the US receive intellecual proprietary control over their products, working to solve these problems without looking for profit like Monsanto, and you have organizations like PIPRA trying to organize the public sector to rival the private sector.
Honestly, I believe our opinions tend to be too black and white. This is wrong, therefore it shouldn't be done, and that's write, we HAVE to do that. I don't think anything is so clear cut, and that answers lie in between. We're going to need some GE, and we're going to need some politics, and we're going to need some good old grass roots movements to motivate the government, etc.
The company is manufacturing a drug (which they want classified as a "medical food" for FDA purposes) by tweaking the genes of a rice plant. The rice is ground up to make the "medical food."
The big controversy here (per the article) is growing this stuff out in the open where it could potentially cross-polinate or otherwise impact rice crops intended for food.
The rice itself isn't to be used as food. It's just a big open-air drug factory.
The preferred solution is to not have a problem.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This is going to sound cruel but, we don't need any more people on the planet. Especially, the weakest people who nature would have killed off anyways. We are really throwing a monkey's wrench into the evolutionary machine, with saving the world's weakest people and allowing them to further breed. Go ahead and mod this down for being "racist"
"If half of this funding was given to a country in the developing world..." it would disappear into thin air, as has happened time and time again.
Rice is people!
How much do you want to make a bet that if millions of rich white children in North America and Europe were dying of diarrhea, that there wouldn't be any sort of controversy or "ethical debate" about this technology? Not only would it be widely accepted, we would probably have government regulation that would REQUIRE it!!!
It is so nice to be part of the richest 1/5 of the worlds population that can make some decision on some knee-jerk hippie bullshit, force it on the rest of the world, and then claim the moral high-ground as a "progressive" or "bio-ethicist" when millions of people could be saved.
"organic" food is all the rage in the first world, because in a consumer society when luxury goods can be mass-produced for the common man, labor intensive and and supply-volatile goods are the last remaining form of conspicuous consumption. Avoiding "GM" foods, or buying "Fair Trade" coffee, or whatever, is now the way to show your higher social class. Bougiouse class posturing is pretending to be some sort of "progressive" "globally conscious" movement, when we are really just telling the third world "eat cake"!
We have been putting little bits of genes into all manner of stuff for years. The possible outcome of stopping diarrea without access to Immodium (TM) is impressive though.
However, I'll only really be shocked when my rice starts begging for mercy.
Soylent Rice is people!!!
If you want to make things a bit more solid use the BRAT diet. Bananas, Rice, Apples, Toast. Any combo of those will do the trick.
Timing is everything
Look at it this way: You're a two year old. I'm the wise old grandmother who babysits you.
That's typical parochial Western bullshit. People in developing nations aren't two year olds and you aren't their wise old grandmother.
Are you saying that nobody should give bio-genetics firms any money, because it's just a waste?
I'm saying that people should concentrate on those things that we know increase life expectancy the most, like building sewers. On the other hand, selling proprietary US crops to these nations makes the primary problem worse: poverty.
Furthermore, we know that nations can develop without "bio-genetics", 20th century medicine, or high tech because almost all nations that are prosperous today have done so.
What they're doing is scary because they're using genes from the human immune system to produce a sort of natural antibiotic. The problem with traditional antibiotics is inevitably some jackass decides to use it absolutely everywhere and bacterial resistance rapidly emerges. So when these human immune proteins are produced over hundreds of acres, day in and day out, how long before resistance emerges? What happens when bacteria develop resistance to a part of human immune system?
Bioengineering is dangerous because of unintended consequenses. A lot of times the food proves safe but it takes a lot of time to arrive at that conclusion.
Besides Oral Rehydrations Salts already provide an effective and inexpensive treatment for the problem. Many Humanitarian organizations like UNICEF already use them extensively.
Now I'll back a 3rd candidate.
Just as the subject is written, do you?
Your concern to genetically-modified (and patented) varieties of crop is a legitimate concern -- intellectual property can travel by wind and "taint" a neighbors substrate, causing a tournament for the forced subjection to a foreign private law. Recently as of February of 2006, CONGRESS was receiving a Bill from that HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES as H.R. 4167, the "National Uniformity for Food Act." Despite the misleading title of the Bill, among the content was that whomever bought any food were not allowed to know of certain ingredients or qualities on its nature.
How this all sets is, as of recently, it is a known fact that "Aspartame" causes cancer; its an artificial sweetener in many beverages, mostly in them branded as diet drinks. Another recent discovery is at microwave-popcorn factories, where everyone working among the "artificial butter flavoring" had all caught severe allergies and atrocious lung cancers. It was such a dangerous cancer that the remedy for one worker was a lung transplant! The chemical that caused the damage is "Diacetyl" and also is used in various brew of beer and who knows what else.
That Bill would allow those corporations to simply use any ingredient, method, or application of artifice to provide an incomplete and misleading report to the Contents of all packages lading the product assembled of them. It's no different than postal fraud, when someone intentionally mis-presents the contents of a parcel, where harm can be incurred by the worker that moves said parcel (even from grocery store to their domicile and house). I don't drink diet beverages, but I know some people that do. Nearby me is a box of microwave-popcorn, where on the Contents is no list for the ingredients of the artificial "light butter"; there is information on oiled popcorn kernels, but nothing on the butte flavoring -- into the trash it will all go.
If there ever was false advertising for a product, the above Bill would only try to seal someone's prior and future effort at fraud; brought from the end of genetically-engineered and patent crap and into the lives of people.
References are...
thomas.log.gov (Four versions of 4167 to this hour)
MSDS for butanedione
DRAYMANS.COM on Diacetyl
Ambulance-chasing lawyers
RENSE.COM on the Bill(a conspiracy theorist/fact never hurt anyone to prove)
oh no! I found this PrionPlanet.com article, therefore there shouldn't be anything to worry about this Bill or aritificial butter flavouring. Keep grazing the grocery aisles, and take your monthly shots (money-pill/vaccine shots)
without prejudice
Storm
Heck, two hundred years back, most newborns died before reaching maturity. Perhaps we shouldn't have bothered with all this foolish developing of medical science?
So-called champions of evolutionary theory who think that human activity is somehow beyond the scope of nature, (that it's even possible to throw in a monkey wrench), are a combination of myopic, blithely thoughtless, and generally ignorant. --The very same thinking which once lead to eugenics and gas chambers.
So either you're stupid or you're evil.
Take your pick. And then please do make an effort to grow your mind beyond the boundaries of high school philosophy. We saved your pathetic life, after all. You owe us.
-FL
A month or two ago, I apparently ate/drank something bad. Within two hours after eating, I had to take a rather, rapid crap. Okay, fine, so I ingested something bad, but now it should be all crapped out. I figure it's nothing too abnormal. Boy was I wrong. Next meal (regular fairly balanced meal with carbs/meat/veggies), same thing. About an hour and a half to two hours later, I run for the porcelain throne and empty my bowels. Okay, this needs some active countermeasures. The next meal I eat something simple like cereal in milk. Like clockwork, and hour and a half later, the gates of hell have opened from my sphincter. Okay, so for lunch I have some basic plain rice, with chicken broth. Hour and a half later, I need to change the roll of toilet paper. Now it's starting to hurt from crapping so much, and it feels like the epicac skit on Family Guy http://www.bofunk.com/video/2592/family_guy_puke.h tml, except from the other end. At this point I was scared to eat. This goes on for another day or so, and another roll of toilet paper or so.
Yadda yadda yadda, I then took some Chinese herbal stuff, and I was fine. Could have been coincidence, or the stuff may have actually worked.
Just saying basic simple carbohydrates/starch/rice doesn't always help.
So, if a Caucasian impregnated her, would the act have been white on rice?
If she took the fetus to term/delivery, would it be brown rice or "dirty rice" (think ethnic foods...)
And, I happened to have a high school schoolmate named "Gene Rice"... The things technology can do with/to names...
And, for a REALLY tacky one, I'd hate to be the admin official to advocate dropping EMP or grid-killing devices over Zulus... That would be REAL shocka-zulu
(Ducks for flying chairs, ordnance, taser darts...)
LOL slash image word: accords
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
And now, the poor farmer has to buy this GM crap, he has 5 times more kids than he ever can feed
Farmers can prevent that, you know. It's called keeping the snake in its cage.
Then what do we do when they continue to have 15 children each
Taking away the tax deduction for children 4-15 will help men put the dcik down. It could be worse (China and its one child policy).
What's the difference between rice and pigs? Just because pigs are autonomous and have brains?
Yes. Over 1,650 biblical years passed between when Adam was granted dominion over Plantae and when Noah was granted dominion over Animalia.
if GM crops are so substantially identical to the originals tha no labeling is needed when they sneak them into my food, how is it that they are at the same time unique enough to be deserving of patents?
For the same reason that water purified by a patented process may not need the process disclosed on the label.
Going back and reading it, I have verified that Bush vowed to eliminate ANIMAL/human hybrids, and said nothing about hybrids with NON-animals. Ha! Those clever scientists have figured out a way to snub him once again. Of course, we'll be sorry we ignored his warnings when, someday, we're all enslaved by a race of self-harvesting "ricemen".
Hmm,
Could we please pass a law to keep HUMAN genes inside of - oh, I dunna know, HUMANS?
I just have this natural repulsion to trans-genetic pathogens rotting of human skin, poisoning people, etc.
DDT, Agent Orange, and Asbestos all seemed like great ideas at the time, too!
Do you really want to eat a plate of string beans with a little bit of Aunt Sally's genes in them?
Eeeewww!
First of all, I don't "take this personal" (Nice grammar btw. What are you? A hillbilly Nazi?)
Secondly, yes actually, you damned bone-head; Nazi eugenics theory was formed on exactly the same dumb ideas you espouse, so I don't see any inaccuracies on my part.
Third, I didn't see you contest that you defeated infection as a child through the use of anti-biotics. If you did, it means that YOU used medical science to overcome 'Nature', and probably should, by your own terms, have been cleansed from this Earth by fever, strep throat, the common cold, or whatever. Except. . , let me re-read your half-baked little response. . , you do think that medical science is a good idea. So what then? Only when it applies to you and not the third world? I guess you can't see the inconsistencies in your own logic. No surprise there.
If we allowed nature to run it's course, eventually we would have weeded out all children who are susceptible to this form of disease and we would remain with a healthier population in general.
That's right. You wouldn't be here. But we didn't let 'nature run its course'. We gave you a chance to live and experience life in this world because this world is capable of sustaining you, there's no reason not to let you stick around, hillbilly grammar and cold-blooded ignorance and all. --However, if things tighten up, I'm sure you'll find yourself dying quietly somewhere. Nature can take its course without any pre-emptive help from the damned Nazis.
Is it fair for society to have to absorb the costs of another un-fit, unproductive citizen? Whether you like it or not, every sick person who is not producing something, drains society.
You mean like your grandparents?
Newsflash: There's plenty of healthy people draining society far more effectively than those who are not 'producing something'. --We've got Bush and his cronies along with the a-holes at Enron and similar jack-asses doing infinitely more damage to society and the world than your ailing mother, (who I'm sure you'd be happy to put down for the good of mankind).
Your thinking is overly-simple and deeply flawed.
-FL
I'd like to know what the long term effects of this material will be - every action in a human body has a counter-action or regulating action of some type. Production of protein X is regulated by presence of enzyme Y, both of which have a non-trivial effect on production of "unrelated" protein Z.
What happens in rice when these proteins are produced? Does it alter the chemistry of the rice significantly? Does it boost levels of some chemicals that we didn't regard as important up until now? What happens when we introduce these enriched chemicals into the human body? The immediate effect is to increase the rate of absorption of water, but what else will happen without the usual regulators or counter reactions? Are we going to see increases levels of calcification of bone, tumour in brains and damage to optic nerves?
If you boost the caffeine and sugar levels of the body, the body responds by lowering its own energy production. Then the caffeine wears off and the sugar is metabolised, leaving the person feeling tired. If you introduce too much of this milk protein into the body, what similar effect will it have on the human?
What will happen to the rice when these genes mutate? This generation of rice produces human milk proteins, will the next generation produce poison?
Props!
Aw crap, ninjas!
There's a difference between insulting somebody and stating the obvious. If you don't like the obvious being stated about you, you might try changing yourself.
-FL