Insects Rapidly Becoming Resistant To GM Corn

DrHeasley writes "BT corn, which contains the DNA for Bacillus thuringensis toxin, was once hailed as the final solution for insect predators on this valuable crop. Now it turns out that insects, and evolution, are smarter than we thought, and the corn that contains the built in pesticide is no longer reliably protected."

Comments

Jeff Goldblum

[Anonymous Coward]

Life finds a way

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Samantha Wright]

It's been doing this for millions of years. Plants evolve pesticides constantly. There are species of cacti that grow in perfect grids because they toxify the soil against even their own seedlings (a common trick amongst trees, to prevent crowding) and it's why wild almonds contain cyanide. The only real surprise is how fast the insects coevolved—but perhaps, given the rate of adaptation of bacteria to antibiotics, that's foolish of us.

Still, don't take this as an excuse to be ecologically destructive. Species that are already under stress don't have much leeway, and any shot to biological diversity is bad for the biosphere's durability as a whole, excepting perhaps idiotic birds like the kakopo.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Nursie]

The Kakapo makes perfect sense in a place where there are no mammals, specifically rats and foxes. The Kiwi likewise.

It's one of the things that makes New Zealand bird life so crazy and cool. Damn shame those Maori wiped out the Moa, and introduced mammals look to be trying for the rest of the weird ground-birds.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Samantha Wright]

As an evolutionary biologist it is my sworn duty to make fun of helpless species that evolved to fill an ecological niche in the absence of predators. Like Walmart shoppers.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Anonymous Coward]

#correction HUNDREDS of millions of years (if not billions).

I'm rather un-surprised at the adaptation speed of the insects actually.
When studying evolutionary process, we used fruit flies specifically because of the extreme adaptation rates.

The high population size of the insects, coupled with their high mutation rate, and ever-increasing adaptation speed (family lines that adapt faster are a positive selection factor in evolution among many species) points in a fairly obvious direction of their overcoming our ham-handed attempt at creating resistant corn.
The only other real direction I could have seen it going would have been the extinction of those insects that depended on the corn for survival.

My biggest complaint about food crops, rather than their GM-ness (success or failure) is that once we get a "good" strain, we keep cloning it instead of continuing the process via selective breeding. So while each generation of insect improves against the crop, the crop defends damn-near exactly the same way; I suspect that may have reduced the time needed for adaptation as well.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Nursie]

Fair enough, should have read your signature!

Do we point and laugh at the panda also?

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Just so some accuracy can be in here. Life, as in DNA replication, exists for about 3 billion years. The solar system for about 4.5 billion years (our sun is third generation, in other words, 2 solar systems were destroyed before ours was created in roughly the same place), and earth somewhere near 4.4 billion years, although it could have been much smaller than today until about 4.2 billion years.

That "island species" (technically races, not species) die out when reunited with their long lost mainland brethren is not exactly news. It's what's happening to the human species right now. In general, without natural borders, different races are impossible within a species. The fact that we have both global travel and different races is an exceptional situation, and a temporary one (in ~500 years, maybe less, there will only be 1 human race left, unless global travel ends before that time). It is not known which race that will be, but if other island species evolution patterns are any indications, whatever race survives will look a lot like the original human race. It would be interesting to see whether the remaining race would be black or not (if not, that would be a strong indication that the original humans in Africa were not actually black before the races split up. My money's on that they weren't black (cause primates have white skin), but it could very well depend on the exact timing of the split).

My biggest complaint about food crops, rather than their GM-ness (success or failure) is that once we get a "good" strain, we keep cloning it instead of continuing the process via selective breeding. So while each generation of insect improves against the crop, the crop defends damn-near exactly the same way; I suspect that may have reduced the time needed for adaptation as well.

No offence, but this is a trivial, trivial complaint. Don't you think that GM researchers *also* stimulate evolution in those plants ? Also, for extremely obvious reasons predatory species cannot totally wipe out the species they seem to be destroying. Predatory species are fundamentally limited to about 1/500th of the biomass of their victim species (or -usually- much less), except in the extreme short term.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Black Parrot]

Like Walmart shoppers.

We wanted a car/computer analogy, you insensitive clod!

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[ATMAvatar]

Don't you think that GM researchers *also* stimulate evolution in those plants ?

No, I don't. Many if not most GM plants are rendered sterile so that you are forced to purchase new seeds from year to year, thus making further evolution impossible. In the off-chance that some GM plants manage to produce offspring, the farmer involved (intentionally or no) sued and the crops destroyed.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[mrmeval]

I'd be willing to find out the unintended consequences of exterminating mosquitoes, fleas, deer flies, tsetse flies and other human parasites or disease transmitters.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[FirephoxRising]

I'm amazed that anyone is surprised at all. If you have a selection pressure (the BT corn), then eventually (and not that long, insects breed fast) one mutation will arise that allows the insect to eat it, breed and pass on the resistant genes. Soon the new genotype is the dominant one, and the corn is lunch. They'll need to use toxic sprays to wipe out these populations and then stop using BT crops constantly, if you break us the cycle, the BT eaters will have no advantage and possibly be at a disadvantage compared to the other insects, and the population will not be composed of resistant members. The organic movement has been saying that this would happen since they first announced the new GM corn. BT is best used as a spray in combination with other management strategies. Idiots. The amazing thing is that they want to sue neighbouring farmers if the GM genes cross the boundary (when they said it wouldn't) and they are surprised when organic farmers sue them back if they lose their accreditation due to the contamination. Talk about wanting it all ways!

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Dunbal]

The only real surprise is how fast the insects coevolved

Not really. It's kind of like cracking copy protection on the internet. It only takes one. One successful cracker. Or in this case one successful mutation. Having exclusive access to entire crops that other insects can't touch offers a clear survival advantage, so once the mutation happens it's a given that there will be a population explosion of resistant types, within a single or at best a couple generations. Plagues of insects are not unheard of, because insects have phenomenal breeding capability. Well this is a man-made plague of resistant types.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[ZeroExistenZ]

Many if not most GM plants are rendered sterile so that you are forced to purchase new seeds

And now I went on to believe that it was to avoid contamination and halt unforseen outcomes. I don't know how to find back this story of modified crops which contaminated the surrounding fields by pollination and they had a situation going on.

Guess I'm still from the generation where "chaos theory" was theoretical and implications of genetic engineering were investigated in SciFi making people cautious about uncertain outcomes compared to the current one where everything is conspiracy or for economical gains.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[ZeroExistenZ]

Unless the insect that has a mutated gen isn't reproducing and isn't stimulated or motivated to reproduce anymore.

I suggest we play insect-porn on GM-crop fields. So, if there would be any resistant insect.. We'll, he'd be fapping foreveralone, becoming overweight and dieing of diabetes because of excessive plentyfulness.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Ihmhi]

As an evolutionary biologist you would probably appreciate this the most out of anyone.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Xest]

"There are species of cacti that grow in perfect grids because they toxify the soil against even their own seedlings"

What species? I've never heard of this before.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Think about this for a second. How are these seeds grown ? Sterile ? How are the genes developed ? When are they rendered sterile ?

Needless to say, evolution is used in these plants. They introduce a few million random mutations while getting the plants infected with DNA rewriting viruses containing interesting genes (just like in the real world, incidentally, except they are the ones picking the genes instead of random chance). From the results, the extremely large majority is substandard. Then they select the best ones, grow massive quantities of them, and repeat the process (does this process perchance remind you of something ?).

Then repeat this entire shit 500 times, and then finally render the final batch of the plants second generation sterile, which is then sent out. In reality GM "manipulation of plants" is not that different from accelerating normal evolution under specifically chosen circumstances (ie. what humans have been doing to farm plants for 20k years, just better and faster).

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[shoehornjob]

+1 LMAO.... oh wait most everyone in this economy has to shop at walmart at one time or another. And some people who are technically considered at or below the poverty line pretty much have to shop there to make their dollars stretch as far as possible. Bummer.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Halo1]

No, I don't. Many if not most GM plants are rendered sterile so that you are forced to purchase new seeds from year to year, thus making further evolution impossible.

Afaik, these so-called terminator genes were never used in commercially available seeds.

In the off-chance that some GM plants manage to produce offspring, the farmer involved (intentionally or no) sued and the crops destroyed.

Indeed, lawyers are way more effective as terminators. And many GM seed producers do require you to buy new seeds every year and forbid you to keep part of the harvested seeds to plant them again the next year.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[shoehornjob]

Don't we have some predators that these pests can't develop an immunity to? This whole GM crop thing was just a money grab anyway right. More BS if you ask me.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[The Master Control P]

There's no disease pressure to speak of on Western populations, yet the developed West is characterized by zero to slightly negative population growth.

If you want to get Africa's population growth in check, eliminate disease and eliminate famine. One you take away the visible and very real threat of most of a mother's children not living to reproductive age, she'll stop having half a dozen of them.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Anonymous Coward]

That is an interesting view of human reproduction patterns... Time and time again it's been shown how eradicating disease and extreme poverty are the most effective population controls for humans -- apart from some globally catastrophic events maybe.

If you have good evidence to the contrary, please present.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[jythie]

But that might make GMO's seem less evil! Can't have that....

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[jd2112]

As an evolutionary biologist it is my sworn duty to make fun of helpless species that evolved to fill an ecological niche in the absence of predators. Like Walmart shoppers.

Black Friday seems to sugguest the presence of predators among wal mart shoppers.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Lumpy]

They even sue farmers that DONT use GM crops that try and keep seeds. anyone with a seed cleaner is sued out of existence, and farmers that plant non GM crops typically get sued because the wind blew and the GM crops a 1/4 mile away pollinated a portion of his crops.

Monsanto needs to be put out of business, they are the most evil company ever existed next to banks and Dick Cheney.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Lumpy]

http://www.organicconsumers.org/Monsanto/farmerssued.cfm

http://planetgreen.discovery.com/food-health/monsanto-sues-pennsylvania-farmer-for-saving-seeds.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/02/us/saving-seeds-subjects-farmers-to-suits-over-patent.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

I can find you literally HUNDREDS of articles about farmers getting sued by GM seed makers. Only a raving lunatic would say "they dont sue farmers"

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Lumpy]

No it's so that a farmer can wholesale spray his crops hard with a nasty chemical and not have it kill the crops.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[PopeRatzo]

There's no disease pressure to speak of on Western populations

Heart disease from being too fat? Cardiopulmonary disease from pollution? Stress-related disease? Cancer? High Blood Pressure?

I would say there is some disease pressure on Western populations. It's not the same disease pressure as in the Third World necessarily.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[gslavik]

I believe these were some of the older crops before they were rendered sterile. It has happened though. GM-crop companies (Monsato, I believe) have sued farmers under the DMCA for using the produced seeds of plants which Monsato sold seeds for. There was a case where a farmer was sued even though the neighboring farmer used such plants and pollen from those plants got carried over. Here's a recent one: http://nelsonfarm.net/issue.htm

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Anonymous Coward]

Since all of them have an absolutely tiny occurrence in children - cancer being sightly higher than the rest - these afflictions do very little to stem our population growth rate. People who die from these things have often lived passed the age of reproduction. All they do is help to even out the final number.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[bigrockpeltr]

Almonds contain Cyanide???!!!
I love almond flesh
When i was younger i used to eat soo many from any almond tree i can find and never got sick. For any fruit we saw on a tree we just figured if the birds eat it then its safe. Oh well what doesnt kill you, makes you stronger.
Off to wikipedia since i can't just beleive everything I read.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[bigrockpeltr]

ok after reading the wiki article, I have come to beleive that the "wild" almond trees here are probably jsut scattered domesticated variants.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Runaway1956]

Imagine that. We tamper with nature, and nature tampers right back. And, we're kinda stuck with a monoculture. I've read, and even posted on /. a time or two, about the many varieties of vegetables that are virtually extinct now. Potatoes. I think we have maybe 5 varieties, out of hundreds that were common in the 1800's. Just one super resistant blight that targets one currently grown variety can put mankind in real hardship. The strain of corn being cited probably accounts for more than 60% of the corn grown in the US, and possibly 40% or more of the corn grown worldwide. Kill it, and people are going to go very hungry.

Monocultures are so WONDERFUL - for the people who are extorting money out of that one culture!

Laugh at me, one and all. But it is within reason that these monocultures may put mankind's survival at stake one day.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[bigrockpeltr]

and they had a situation going on

Little Shop of Horrors?

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Shadow of Eternity]

Honestly when you have an animal too lazy to fuck it's time to just let them go.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[PopeRatzo]

Since all of them have an absolutely tiny occurrence in children - cancer being sightly higher than the rest - these afflictions do very little to stem our population growth rate. People who die from these things have often lived passed the age of reproduction. All they do is help to even out the final number.

I see, so to really have an effect on population growth, the disease would have to knock you out before you have kids.

That makes sense.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Whorhay]

Actually I would propose that the key to the panda's survival is making them into a popular food source. If we just subsidized the raising and slaughter of Panda and Polar bears companies like Smithfield would rapidly adjust and we'd have millions and millions of them.

Pandas, the newest white meat!

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

How is this relevant to how the plants were created ?

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Hatta]

In general, without natural borders, different races are impossible within a species. The fact that we have both global travel and different races is an exceptional situation, and a temporary one (in ~500 years, maybe less, there will only be 1 human race left, unless global travel ends before that time).

We already have but one race. There is more genetic variation within one troop of chimpanzees than there is among the entire human species. A random african and a random european have as much DNA in common as two random africans do. Race is genetically meaningless.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[rich_hudds]

(in ~500 years, maybe less, there will only be 1 human race left, unless global travel ends before that time). It is not known which race that will be, but if other island species evolution patterns are any indications, whatever race survives will look a lot like the original human race. It would be interesting to see whether the remaining race would be black or not (if not, that would be a strong indication that the original humans in Africa were not actually black before the races split up. My money's on that they weren't black (cause primates have white skin), but it could very well depend on the exact timing of the split).

Why on earth is this dross modded as +4 informative? Slashdot is not what it once was.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[hajus]

Almonds used to contain more cyanide than the domesticated ones today. Occasionally you find a bitter almond. That's the cyanide you're tasting.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[error_logic]

It would be interesting to see whether the remaining race would be black or not (if not, that would be a strong indication that the original humans in Africa were not actually black before the races split up. My money's on that they weren't black (cause primates have white skin), but it could very well depend on the exact timing of the split).

There's more genetic diversity between populations across Africa than the rest of the world. I would think that suggests humans had dark skin for a time prior to spreading out.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[thomasw_lrd]

I don't think it's that much of a surpise they evolved so quickly. Insects are some to the quickest evolving creatures in existence. A lot of them have such a short life span, that they have such a quick reproductive cycle. That evolution is relatively quick compared to any other species on the planet.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Kam Solusar]

most everyone in North America in this economy thinks he has to shop at walmart at one time or another.

Fixed that for you

People in Germany for example don't have to shop at Walmart, because Walmart doesn't exist anymore in this country. Fittingly because they failed to adapt to the new environment.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[errhuman]

No it's so that a farmer can pay big bucks to a chemical company to wholesale spray his crops hard with a nasty chemical and not have it kill the crops...so he can make more money overall than if he didn't spray in the first place. FTFY.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[rev_sanchez]

This argument implies that theses women have access to effective and culturally acceptable methods of birth control that they can use reliably and choose not to use it. I don't know that this is usually the case.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[kilfarsnar]

and they had a situation going on

Little Shop of Horrors?

Worse, Michael Sorrentino.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Anonymous Coward]

So far he is the only person who has provided evidence for his arguments, so I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[sidthegeek]

Why on earth is this dross modded as +4 informative? Slashdot is not what it once was.

You must be new here... Wait, no, you must be old here...

Aw, forget it!

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[dj245]

Not only that, but newborn baby panda is 1/800 the weight of the mother. If human babies were that small, they would be roughly an inch long at birth and weigh 3 ounces. The fact that pandas can only mate 3-5 days out of the year might have something else to do with it. It is really amazing how such an animal with extremely unfavorable survival traits survived for so long.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[tomthepom]

My money's on that they weren't black (cause primates have white skin), but it could very well depend on the exact timing of the split).

Then you've lost your money. Primate skin, especially parts exposed to the sun, is rarely 'white'. Chimpanzees, our closest relatives, have faces ranging from pink to black. Our common african ancestors almost certainly had dark skin pigmentation - lighter skin is a relatively recent mutation.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Nadaka]

Using plants "created" from genetically modified stock without a license is copyright infringement is the genejacked cyberpunk dystopia of the real world because they are a derivative of a creative work.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[spiffmastercow]

As an evolutionary biologist it is my sworn duty to make fun of helpless species that evolved to fill an ecological niche in the absence of predators. Like Walmart shoppers.

Isn't Walmart the predator in that instance?

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[squidflakes]

The rate of insect evolution doesn't surprise me at all. So, hey there fellow biologist buddy! Did you ever work with D. melanogaster? If so, then you'd know how quickly those little bastards can adapt to live with some amazing toxicity, genetic damage, and just plain ridiculousness that some company wants tested.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[jedidiah]

I think it is worse than that. Once you have seeds that are the "property" of a single corporation you have only one entity that is capable of subsequent derivative works. Instead of having "an entire planet of hackers" trying to solve the problem of continued viability, all work is limited to the single corporation that may not feel motivated to plan ahead.

It's the Cathedral and the Bazaar all over again.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[RobertLTux]

"His argument is more compact. In the "fair and balanced" world where facts are equal to opinions, your argument demands much. Trim your argument to 3 words and you will box him in."

i can do it in 2 words

THEY HAVE

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[elrous0]

Ah yes, the Giant Panda--the ursine family equivalent of that retarded cousin who gets pulled over and tells the cop "Yeah, I've been drinking a little, but I swear I wasn't smoking any of that crack I have in the trunk."

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Rei]

The problem is, that the planting procedures for BT corn were supposed to prevent or at least reduce this. Proper BT corn management practice is to have a certain percentage (usually 20%) of your corn as non-BT (called "refuge"), to provide a haven for non-BT-resistant insects to thrive (in far greater numbers than any rare resistant bugs), thus dramatically diluting BT resistant genes and the evolutionary pressure to develop them.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Sentrion]

Neither black nor white. My money is on zebra stripes. What do you mean I'm off topic?

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[ShakaUVM]

>>Only a raving lunatic would say "they dont sue farmers"

Three articles on the same story. The farmers signed a contract with Monsanto, which they allegedly violated.

What is your objection to this?

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[ShakaUVM]

It's not wrong at all. If you want to defuse the "population bomb" in Africa, you need to bring them all up to a middle class standard of living in stable democracies.

This has been repeatedly, around the world, proven to be the only reliable solution to Malthus.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Samantha Wright]

It's still several magnitudes below bacterial reproduction, which was the only well-studied case.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[ChromeAeonium]

Many if not most GM plants are rendered sterile so that you are forced to purchase new seeds from year to year,

Wrong. I don't know if you're confusing GE with terminator traits or hybrids. Terminator seeds are a type of GE seed to prevent cross pollinated seed from escaping. That way, the people who don't want GE traits wouldn't get them, the companies would lose control over them, and everybody's happy. Too bad the anti-GMO movement is bonkers and want apeshit at the thought.

You might be thinking about hybrid seed though. All commercially available GE seed is first generation hybrid seed (they don't need to be mutually inclusive, but commercially they are). The first generation of hybrid seed is good, the second, not so much. The seed isn't sterile, it just isn't very good. Also, farmers have to sign contracts before buying the seed saying they won't replant the seed without paying additional fees. These three thing create the popular, but false, notion that GE seeds are sterile, but really, think about it. How does inserting an insert resistance gene make something unable to reproduce, and if they were sterile, would there be any fuss about them escaping? Amazing that some people like to say they spread everywhere, AND they're sterile.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[jimmydigital]

Wait... so you are saying when I order from Panda Express I'm not getting genuine panda meat?? What a rip off....

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[ChromeAeonium]

Laugh at me, one and all. But it is within reason that these monocultures may put mankind's survival at stake one day.

No argument there but

Monocultures are so WONDERFUL - for the people who are extorting money out of that one culture!

And anyone and anything that is benefiting from the economies of scale. Don't get me wrong, I like biodiversity and polyculture, but lets not think this is a black & white issue. By and large, at least with current techniques, it is going to be the monoculture that is more efficient. This is good for both people and the environment. Given their problems they should be on the way out, but not without developing practices that can get the same yield out of different practices. A good rotation helps too. And it would be nice if more varied crops were grown on a large scale too (quinoa, sorghum, teff, ect).

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Samantha Wright]

Marsupial, not ursine. It's remarkable sometimes how much confusion remains about that.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Shadow of Eternity]

What, you can't tell from the taste? Everybody knows Panda tastes just like bald eagle.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Dixie_Flatline]

I'm not sure it's that much of a surprise. They recently found that spider mites are capable of lateral DNA transfer from bacteria and fungi, which is why you can't really stop them for long. The insects in this article aren't spider mites, I realise, but circumventing the protection of plants is to a certain extent the entire PURPOSE of these organisms. I'm not suggesting that they're also capable of this lateral transfer trickery, but they can run experiments* on these plants a lot faster than we can run experiments on them.

*By experiments, I mean that millions of these organisms can fling themselves at this crop until one of them survives and reproduces. They're effectively running a massively parallel biological experiment. If they're not completely wiped out in short order, they'll pretty much always find a way to win. The only thing I know of that's successfully defeated them is honey. Everything else succumbs in time.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Dixie_Flatline]

I'll amend that: succumbs or adapts. The arms race ever marches forward.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Dixie_Flatline]

Bananas! We may very well see the extinction of bananas in the near future. We bred all the seeds out of them and we grow only one kind.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[CAIMLAS]

I don't know about that. Walmart parking lots after 10PM are pretty damn dangerous places. Quite a few 'natural predators' there.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[mbkennel]

"If you have good evidence to the contrary, please present."

Saudi Arabia. Citizens are quite rich and yet women have lots and lots of babies, far more than others with same per-capita income.

I think this evidence shows the most proximate cause of reducing population growth is women's liberation, which---most of the time---came wrapped up with other benefits of modernity which reduced disease and poverty.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[CAIMLAS]

There are growing disease pressures on the developed world - ironically, becoming more prevalent due to immigration from the 3rd world (such as most of Africa and South America).

Ending famine and disease isn't something you can do by producing more food and drugs. You're looking at the reproduction situation myopically, too: she's not having 5+ kids because she's concerned some won't live to adulthood; she's having 5+ kids because she keeps getting fucked and having babies.

Granted, having children to look after you in your old age is a significant factor, I'm sure. Getting rid of disease and famine is a byproduct, not the cause, of what needs to happen for things to right itself in the 3rd world. Arguably, much of it is a cultural predisposition towards adult irresponsibility (on the male's part) and toward's violence, as well as backwards religious beliefs (like in Togo, where they believe smearing shit on a baby will ward off evil spirits - ie so he doesn't get sick/cry). It's hard to wipe out famine when there's a revolution or genocide every generation, when foreign interests are manipulating your economy and propping up tin-pot dictators, or when the land you're living on doesn't support the specific agricultural methods of (say) Monsanto but for a generation, or when your countrymen are strip-foresting the country...

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[duh P3rf3ss3r]

Oops! Sorry, Samantha but it seems even a biologist can just be plain wrong sometimes. (Don't mind me cuz I'm a biologist,too.) If pandas are marsupials I'll eat my hat...

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Fjandr]

Africa is a relatively minor piece of the puzzle.

It's not being disease- and famine-free that keeps population growth in developed countries small, it's social pressure. Even if you eliminate hunger and disease, the poorest groups still have birthrates far in excess of the surrounding populations. This is true of Western countries as much as any other. The only difference is that there is less abject poverty in Western countries per capita. As a result, it's easier to overlook the root cause by averaging, since averaging can hide a myriad of things that are apparent via other forms of inquiry. Just as one can miss the forest for the trees, one can also miss the trees for the forest.

Chronic famine, disease, and high birth rates are all symptoms of the same problem for the most part. The causal link is not between them; it supersedes them.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[_0xd0ad]

I think the confusion was "cute bears which eat leaves" - of which, koalas are the marsupials, not pandas.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[_0xd0ad]

...and pandas are the ones which eat, shoot, and leave.

Or something like that.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Grishnakh]

I don't shop at Walmart. It's easy not to: just go to Target instead. The clientele is better, the store is cleaner and nicer, and the prices just about as low.

On top of that, Walmart is a supporter of SOPA, so we should all be boycotting them.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[jbengt]

Wrong.
It has nothing to do with copyright.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[a whoabot]

Except that it hasn't been proven. You said that in order to defuse the population bomb you need to bring them all up to a middle class standard of living in stable democracies.

Belarus has no "population bomb" and Belorussians have not all been brought up to a middle class standard of living in a stable democracy. Iran has no "population bomb" and Iranians have not all been brought up to a middle class standard of living in a stable democracy. China has no "population bomb" and the Chinese have not all been brought up to a middle class standard of living in a stable democracy. Russia has no "population bomb" and Russians have not all been brought up to a middle class standard of living in a stable democracy. Vietnam has no "population bomb" and the Vietnamese have not all been brought up to a middle class standard of living in a stable democracy. Singapore has no "population bomb" and Singaporeans have not all been brought up to a middle class standard of living in a stable democracy. Cuba has no "population bomb" and Cubans have not all been brought up to a middle class standard of living in a stable democracy. Albania has no "population bomb" and Albanians have not all been brought up to a middle class standard of living in a stable democracy.

That's a diverse set of countries representing a vast number of people which stand as examples which seem to contradict your claim, and there are many more.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[spidercoz]

It makes me feel good to see all this anti-panda sentiment. Fuck those worthless black and white idiots. Eat a damn fish you fucking moron, then maybe you'd have enough caloric intake to move around a bit. Bamboo? Really? That's like a human surviving on lawnmower leavings. They have to eat all the time just to have enough energy to go to sleep. Natural selection has missed these pathetic excuses for bears for far too long.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Samantha Wright]

Hmm. Okay. "Like Volvo drivers." Does that work?

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Darby]

That doesn't quite fit. Walmart itself is the predator on both Walmart shoppers and their ecosystems. There is some sort of coevolution between them, but it's definitely a predatory relationship of some sort. I don't know enough about evolutionary biology to recognize any analogous systems in nature though. Perhaps you do?

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Samantha Wright]

Oh damn. The error is on me; they're ursidae proper. I blame the koalas. Clearly I am not a taxonomist.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Samantha Wright]

Only in a second-year genetics lab; a simple linkage experiment. I always sided with the worm researchers when picking amongst the big seven models (E. coli, S. cerevisiae, D. melanogaster, C. elegans, R. rattus, M. musculus, H. not-as-sapiens-as-we-thought) but to be honest my area of expertise is in sequence assembly, feature identification, and genome annotation through homology, so I actually enjoy poking around new and diverse species the most. (But if I had to settle down somewhere I'd pick the archaeans first.) I find myself having to look things up every time someone mentions bugs—but yeah, if P elements can distribute themselves across the whole global population as quickly as they did, just about anything seems possible for those little critters.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Samantha Wright]

You may be amused to learn that, often, the first organism to develop a useful mutation is one with other defects because it gained the useful defect through having a higher mutation rate in the first place. In human terms, this means that basement dwellers are a potential goldmine of useful nucleotides. (Or, possibly, the disabled.)

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Samantha Wright]

I answer your question with another: is a farmer a predator of dairy cows?

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Samantha Wright]

No; both lethal clashes and lethal trampling are common amongst panicked and tense herd animals.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[nebosuke]

Many if not most GM plants are rendered sterile so that you are forced to purchase new seeds from year to year, thus making further evolution impossible.

This is a common misconception. The technology exists to sterilize plants (both via genetic engineering and also through non-GM systems such as use of sterilizing cytoplasm), but to my knowledge there are no GM sterilization technologies used in products on the market today.

Farmers don't go back to purchase hybrid seed each year because they are forced to do so. There are non-GM foundation seed lines sold by smaller companies, as well as heirloom stocks maintained by universities and other private institutions. The reason is more that seed from GM seed companies like Monsanto, Pioneer Hi-Bred, and Syngenta is to publically available seed lines what Android is to OpenMoko. I say Android rather than iPhone because the PVPA (plant variety protection act--i.e., patents for plant varieties) allows the general public to use lines whose protections have expired, and the overall effect is somewhat analogous to how Google releases the source to Android on a periodic basis but controls current development.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[painandgreed]

Bananas! We may very well see the extinction of bananas in the near future. We bred all the seeds out of them and we grow only one kind.

Well, Americans only eat one kind, the Cavendish. We used to eat the Gross Mike ("Big Mike") until such a blight did kill them off. There are plenty of other bananas, but they are typically starchy and not what an American thinks of as a banana. However, even if the Cavendish does get wiped out, there is apparently another banana ready to take it's place, but it has a more apple flavor to it. In a generation nobody will know, just as we now only have reports that Gross Mike tasted much better than the Cavendish.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[squidflakes]

I stick with molluska and specifically cephalopoda behavior because it is a great excuse to go diving just all the time, and I think that if I had to watch a single group of complex molecules do their thing all day, I'd go crazy. That and I despise PCR.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[spiffmastercow]

I answer your question with another: is a farmer a predator of dairy cows?

Yes?

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Samantha Wright]

I'm afraid I don't have a reference on-hand; the notes from my first-year ecology class went out with a disk crash some time ago. However, competition in plants for water and sunlight is well-studied.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Samantha Wright]

Then... yeah.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[spiffmastercow]

Ah, I initially missed the word "dairy". It's really not a very good comparison, though.. Walmart does very little squeezing of teats.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Samantha Wright]

Wallets. The milk is green and papery.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Samantha Wright]

I was asked to help work on assembling the genome for the pacific white-tailed shrimp a few months ago. Unfortunately they have 2n = 88 chromosomes, and some have 2n = 92. It will probably be a while before that particular job gets anywhere.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Xest]

Absolutely, I'm just very interested in cacti and have a massive collection including some species not yet officially described so have a decent understanding of the family including some of the quirks of various genus and species within, but have never heard of this hence why I was intrigued to hear more about it. Any chance you'd be able to see if you can find out which species it was?

Part the reason for my intrigue is some species are deemed very tough to germinate, and hence in small pots people get low germination rates, if it's because of something like this then it could open a whole new understanding of germination of some species, but as I say it's not something I've ever heard of. I have heard of it in other plant families though certainly.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[squidflakes]

Penaeus vannamei? I read a study about those and Penaeus japonicus where the older genetic studies yielded a higher chromosome count than the newer studies. Do you know if that was from a poor sample size or just a poor understanding of genetics?

I know that most octopus species have 20 or so pairs, and the same with squid, except for a few outriders in what used to be loligo but I can't remember the new taxa, anyway, they are rocking in the neighborhood of 50 pairs while the incredibly adorable E. scolopes has 12.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[fatphil]

Yeah, but none of those countries are reliable!

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[nebosuke]

The strain of corn being cited probably accounts for more than 60% of the corn grown in the US, and possibly 40% or more of the corn grown worldwide.

Just wanted to clarify a point here: bt11 is not a "strain of corn" any more than OnStar is a model of car. The bt11 gene is integrated into thousands of varieties of corn, from tropical sweet corns to Canadian flints, just as the OnStar system is integrated into many different models and makes of vehicles. These varieties of corn are developed first, without the bt11 gene, and then the gene is later bred into the line in what most companies call the trait conversion process just as base trim levels of cars are developed, and then add-on systems like OnStar and stereo systems are tacked on later as features and options.

Any type of monoculture weakness that could have the kind of impact you're describing would have to be a result of the bt11 gene itself. This kind of thing has happened before in corn, though no case of that has (so far) been associated with GM traits (e.g., T-cytoplasm, which was used to facilitate hybrid production in many different varieties caused susceptibility to gray leaf spot).

In car analogy terms, what you're afraid of would be like the OnStar system itself causing engine problems in every type of vehicle with which it is integrated due to a flaw in the remote engine ignition feature. This is in contrast to a true monoculture situation, which would be like if everyone drove a ford pinto and we suddenly found our highways clogged with burnt exploded wrecks every time an accident occurred. The first situation is easy to fix--just buy the base model instead--whereas the second is trickier if all every manufacturer makes and knows how to design anymore is a pinto.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[kesuki]

in TFA they showed that growers were planting the same GM crop strain every season every year for 7 years in a row, due to subsidies for corn ethanol.

crop rotation is the first thing they teach in how to be a sustainable farmer, because these bugs can fly and their eggs need corn roots to survive.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[kesuki]

the US government requires 20% of the corn to be 'clean natural not GM'

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[kesuki]

"Amazing that some people like to say they spread everywhere, AND they're sterile."

you might be surprised what some people want. seeds that go sterile and no place to get not sterile seeds. that would almost make a bible story.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[kesuki]

fail, give women shopping malls, perfume, air conditioning, and all the modern kitchen tools and a line of credit, and she probably won't even want to dirty herself with sex. of all the women i've met, the more they have to lose the less they care about reproducing the species.

and the same thing applies to men, only the wacos who think they need to appease a god and make babies by the dozen still popout many babies.

i don't like being alone, but i'm 34 years strong as a single un married, un reproduced citizen in part because i do not believe in bringing more children into this world. i don't even think i would like sex, because of how dirty it is.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Samantha Wright]

Actually the whiteleg's (sorry, not white-tailed) genus has been tweaked—it's now Litopenaeus vannamei. Unfortunately the project, which was extremely on-the-side-y (started at the request of my supervisor to help out a lab he used to work at) never progressed very far, so my work on it was pretty much just doing QC on the reads, which were from BGI and therefore crap.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[AK Marc]

Terminator seeds are a type of GE seed to prevent cross pollinated seed from escaping. That way, the people who don't want GE traits wouldn't get them, the companies would lose control over them, and everybody's happy. Too bad the anti-GMO movement is bonkers and want apeshit at the thought.

The question was asked of Monsanto and such of "what happens when your plants cross pollinate with your neighbors, reducing their replantability?" The response was "Fuck you!" only less polite. There's nothing to "prove" the terminator genes wouldn't go dormant and select for the improved gene then wipe out the entire stock of farmer-held seed 20 years later. There were a number of doomsday scenarios thought up by the anti-GMO movement that Monsanto and such would not seriously address. Given Monsanto and crew's track record, that was taken to be an acknowledgement of the likelihood of such events, and not (as Monsanto and co would probably have expected and hoped) a dismissal resulting in abandonment of those questions/claims.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Fjandr]

This solves poverty, which is the root of the problem. Not disease or famine. Those are related symptoms, not causes.

So yes, it is wrong. Eliminating disease and famine won't make people stop having as many babies. Eliminating poverty will. Just like lowering birth rates, reductions in disease and famine are a result of improved means.

It's funny that people latched onto the Africa angle brought up by the person who originally replied to me. Africa is a bit part in global poverty and the resulting population pressures that it creates.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[AK Marc]

Race is genetically meaningless.

Just because the variation is small does not mean it isn't there or consistent. You can identify a person's heritage with great accuracy from their DNA. So your random African and random European will be identified to live in the regions they are from. It may not have "meaning" in that the genetic divergence is much smaller than, say, New Zealand and Australian parrots, but it is real and does exist. There are plenty of markers associated with regions and heritage that could be claimed to define "race", but as you indicate, there is little practical reason to do so, but most of the racial identification is done without practical reason in mind.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[AK Marc]

The "cause" and "effect" haven't been worked out (people are too irrational to get good data from), but reducing disease correlates well with dropping population growth.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Something that would NEVER happen in the real world.

Right. This merely shows that your understanding of evolution was last seen in any serious mind in the 19th century ... In reality most "evolution" is exactly that, genes moving from one species to another, through viruses and other infectious agents. Most genes get "developed" in lifeforms with really, really short evolutionary cycles. Usually not even bacteria, but the most simple prokaryotic lifeforms. Then those genes get transplanted through bacteriophages (or merely bad timing during cell division) into bacteria, which then infect plants and animals and ...

The human genome plays host to no less than 12 near-complete viral DNA codes. That's when you're not sick. It also contains multiple long strands of bacterial DNA.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[ResidentSourcerer]

It's not surprising at all. Read any paper on integrated pest management.

In almost all cases poisons work by blocking some metabolic pathway. However most critters have multliple paths that achieve the same result. So a given poison selects for species that have somewhat higher levels of the alternate pathway.

This has an energy/efficiency cost. The critter doesn't grow as fast, doesn't lay as many eggs. So if you stop administering the agent, the population reverts to the old pathway fairly quickly.

Administering sub-lethal doses on a continuous basis is the best way to quickly evolve an immune response.

In the case, cited earlier, of almonds (actually the whole cherry family) and cyanide: Current thoughts are that this is an anti-browsing feature. But deer will eat cherry leaves -- just in low quantity. But repeated doses will allow deer to build up a tolerance.

Integrated pest management practice is to use a dose heavy enough to get close to a 100% kill. Then, when the critter starts requiring heavier doses, switch to a different agent that affects a different metabolic pathway.

BT corn is exactly the wrong way to do it. Much better to create the BT agent outside of the corn plant, and apply a heavy dose all at once.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Ofloo]

Exactly the only sensible way to fight insects from eating the crops is to, set out insects that eat those insects, .. instead of working with pesticides, they should seriously think about breathing their natural enemies instead. And that doesn't require a lot of time to research, well the how to breath those insects maybe. Yet if the species evolves so might the predator that eats those. The only problem with that is probably that they can't patent it !

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[wierd_w]

While rate of production has net decreased, rate of energy consumption per person has radically increased.

The west has traded one evil for another.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[mrmeval]

We have nascent socialist governments that will take care of that and they do so more efficiently and with less suffering.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[Fjandr]

Get back to me when poverty is solved to the point where we have sustainable population growth. Actually, don't. I'll be long dead at that point.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[mrmeval]

Socialism solves that problem nicely. Dead people don't eat.

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[startslow]

koala

Re:Jeff Goldblum

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

I don't know what crackpot biology book you are reading from, but I'd ask for your money back. You are talking about horizontal gene transfer. Yes it's a real event, and yes it has interesting implications of evolution - predominately in bacteria. But it is not a driving force of evolution. If it were there would be much less genetic variation on the planet.

Depends on what you mean by "driving force". In bacteria and assorted prokaryots ? No, not at all. In plants, animals and humans ? Definitely. Without this, higher lifeforms would not evolve. They have neither the numbers nor the generational speed necessary (for prokaryots 100 billion individuals ? That's about a football-sized part of the ocean. Granted, you only count the first 2-3 meters below the surface. Still, that's one hell of a lot of footballs. Likewise a tree trunk is probably home to at least a few trillion prokaryots. Every single tree trunk in the world. They reproduce about once every 2 minutes. There are 6 billion humans reproducing once every 12 years on average. Yet we are not far behind those prokaryots ... and we can successfully fight them off (or we wouldn't be here) ... please explain why these prokaryots didn't manage to exterminate every last plant and animal millions of years ago ?).

Without lateral gene transfer, it should take the human species > 1 billion years to evolve any new molecule. It is known that in the last 5000 years we've evolved to include almost a dozen new compounds and we sure as hell didn't build them from scratch. With the human lifespan and generation gap (~25 years) that would take a few million years at least, unless there's billions of us living without medical care. Even with billions it would still take hundreds of thousands of years, and regardless of the current situation, human population did not exceed even 100 million until the late middle ages.

We have 12 near-complete and either undamaged or barely damaged viruses in our DNA code. That means they got inserted over the last 10.000 years or less. Modern human history is 170000 years. That is only our species. You could marry a human that lived 170000 years ago and have healthy, normal children (that's what makes them the same species). Naive calculation would suggest a thousand degraded viruses in our DNA.

becoming resistant or...

[Anonymous Coward]

insects that are resistant are breeding more rapidly. Survival of the fittest.

Re:becoming resistant or...

[Samantha Wright]

It's a common abuse of semantics in science, but you're correct. Insects aren't spontaneously becoming resistant, their descendants are being selected for resistance. The belief that major evolutionary adjustments can occur within a single lifetime is an abandoned evolutionary theory called Lamarckianism, the classic example of which is a proto-giraffe's neck stretching out to reach higher and higher leaves, and this stretchedness being passed on directly to the offspring (as if someone who becomes muscular as an adult will pass on their musculature directly to their children!) Incidentally, there actually are two evolutionary elements that function according to a Lamarckian model: epigenetics (censorship applied to DNA that can be changed in response to environmental stressors) and culture (many mammals and birds, amongst others, can pass on innovations to their offspring through teaching.) It appears that an organism that can change itself during its lifetime is preferable to one that must evolve over generations, but the good ol' nucleotide tape is stuck in Mendel mode.

Re:becoming resistant or...

[Samantha Wright]

(Sorry, correction: Darwin mode, not Mendel mode.)

Re:becoming resistant or...

[glwtta]

A perfectly reasonable parsing of the headline is that insect populations are becoming resistant to GM corn.

Re:becoming resistant or...

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

It's not at all abandoned. Google "socialist science" (I'm not joking, nor am I trying to insult anyone) It's still practiced.

Re:becoming resistant or...

[repapetilto]

There are examples of epigenetic modifications of somatic cells (that increase fitness) being transferred to gametes?

Re:becoming resistant or...

[gringer]

There are examples of epigenetic modifications of somatic cells (that increase fitness) being transferred to gametes?

While this TED talk is not talking about transfer to gametes, it indicates that exposure to different environmental factors while in the womb can have an impact on development later in life:

http://www.ted.com/talks/annie_murphy_paul_what_we_learn_before_we_re_born.html

Re:becoming resistant or...

[Fjandr]

But then we'd be left without inane semantic arguments about how there's only one way to understand a given phrase!

Re:becoming resistant or...

[calibre-not-output]

But these changes will not transfer into the descendants of the guy who was changed still in the womb unless they're exposed to precisely the same factors and change in the same way. It's not a "lasting" change like a genetic one.

Re:becoming resistant or...

[Creedo]

But these changes will not transfer into the descendants of the guy who was changed still in the womb unless they're exposed to precisely the same factors and change in the same way. It's not a "lasting" change like a genetic one.

No, that's the point of epigenetics. It is heritable, usually via chemical changes in the mother during development or even the behavior of the mother(see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics). A good example is the tadpole state of certain frogs. They will develop different body forms when certain predators are present. These changes can be passed onto the offspring of the adult frogs.

Re:becoming resistant or...

[gringer]

But these changes will not transfer into the descendants of the guy who was changed still in the womb unless they're exposed to precisely the same factors and change in the same way. It's not a "lasting" change like a genetic one.

Repapetilto was asking about epigenetic effects. I don't think there's enough evidence to suggest that epigenetic effects are transferred through to offspring, but I was giving an example that was almost this situation.

The current belief is that epigenetic effects occur within a generation and do not get carried through to children:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics#Evolution

This section suggests that any epigenetic marks transferred to sperm are removed at fertilisation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgenerational_epigenetics#Removal_of_epigenetic_marks

Re:becoming resistant or...

[repapetilto]

Right, this is pretty much what I thought. I can imagine mechanisms for this to occur (and this is biology so it probably does to some extent, for some species) but didn't think there was evidence for it.

Re:becoming resistant or...

[ByteSlicer]

An example of inherited epigenetic changes:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228434.900-highfat-diet-leaves-its-mark-on-sperm.html

Re:becoming resistant or...

[Samantha Wright]

The results were mostly "scientific socialism"—are you aiming for Soviet biologists or socialist cultural evolution? The Wikipedia article on Lamarckianism might also be of interest.

Surprise?

[cbope]

Is this a surprise, that nature can route around humans? Seriously, this was expected. However, all this means is that Monsato and other evil corporations like it who create GM seeds now have an opening for a new product to develop and sell, for an even higher price. And they will get this higher price because the "old" GM seeds are not successful any more. And the cycle continues...

Re:Surprise?

[jimmydevice]

No surprise, End game is when ONLY patented and copyright Monsanto seeds and plants will survive.
All others eaten or killed by mutated bacteria and virus. WIN!

Re:Surprise?

[wolfie123]

No, lucky/successful mutations can route around certain obstacles. Also, making gene manipulations isn't evil in of itself. I don't see why you needed to make your comment so sensationalistic

Re:Surprise?

[Samantha Wright]

It may amuse you to learn how the Monsanto people "engineered" their genetically modified and patent-protected seeds.

They hit them with random mutagens until they found something that was resistant to Roundup. And then they bred them like pedigree cats to enhance the effect. The grass genome (from which corn, wheat, and a number of other crops are derived) is absurdly complex, believed to contain four to six times as many genes as the human, and comes in five copies. Engineering it is very hit-and-miss. So they didn't even bother. Instead they patented the outcome of a directed natural process. It's like patenting the domesticated cow genome. (The grass-eating variety, not the mother-in-law variety.)

Re:Surprise?

[AHuxley]

Its a surprise to the investors who thought they could sell terminator seeds and use courts to control a revenue stream on a new generation of legally protected crops.
Everything was in place. The changes to US law, the ability of the US to push its new agro products and laws world wide, a wonderful new crop selection and the joy of setting next years seed prices every year.
The critters are doing a select few out of billions of $ of intergenerational wealth - think of all the "trustafarians" who would have been happy on their GMO investment trust portfolios :(

Re:Surprise?

[trout007]

Or we have to grow food underground away from insects using only torches for light.

Re:Surprise?

[repapetilto]

Right, eventually the humans will also be concidered pests and the microarray analyzing robots will inherit the earth.

Re:Surprise?

[Black Parrot]

Is this a surprise, that nature can route around humans?

Insects treat pesticide as damage, and route around it?

Re:Surprise?

[kdemetter]

You are on to something there :

- a patent on GM seeds only lasts for a few years
- It only takes a few years for the insects to overcome the GM corn's resistance
- new GM seeds are invented in the mean time , which are again patented

Using this technique, you could trigger a targeted evolution in insects, making them much more dangerous for non-GM crops, effectively forcing farmers to use the GM seeds.

Re:Surprise?

[TheEyes]

Is this a surprise, that nature can route around humans?

Insects treat pesticide as damage, and route around it?

Considering that it actually does damage them, then yes insects do in fact treat pesticides as damage.

Remember that the Internet meme is an analogy based on nature; saying that, yes, the nature analogy actually does apply to nature is slightly redundant.

Re:Surprise?

[niftydude]

No surprise- it's just planned obsolescence as usual.

Re:Surprise?

[ZeroExistenZ]

microarray analyzing robots will inherit the earth.

Unless you become cyborg and be one of them.

Re:Surprise?

[TBerben]

It's like patenting the domesticated cow genome. (The grass-eating variety, not the mother-in-law variety.)

You mean there's a difference? Mind is blown.

Re:Surprise?

[Hognoxious]

Remember that the Internet meme is an analogy based on nature

It is? Which part of nature? Not stampeding buffalo, I presume.

Re:Surprise?

[Hognoxious]

Wouldn't work like that. Immunity to chemical X gives no specific advantage for attacking plants that don't produce X to start with.

Re:Surprise?

[robotkid]

It may amuse you to learn how the Monsanto people "engineered" their genetically modified and patent-protected seeds.

They hit them with random mutagens until they found something that was resistant to Roundup. And then they bred them like pedigree cats to enhance the effect. The grass genome (from which corn, wheat, and a number of other crops are derived) is absurdly complex, believed to contain four to six times as many genes as the human, and comes in five copies. Engineering it is very hit-and-miss. So they didn't even bother. Instead they patented the outcome of a directed natural process. It's like patenting the domesticated cow genome. (The grass-eating variety, not the mother-in-law variety.)

This is incorrect, my biochem prof many moons ago consulted for Monsanto and gave us a nice lecture on how this was accomplished. Basically, Roundup (glyphosphate) inhibits an enzyme in most plants that is required to synthesize essential amino acids from glycine. It turns out certain insects have an orthologous enzyme that is not inhibited by glyphosphate - this was spliced into the "roundup ready" seeds. This is how the engineered strains can also have high yield; if you simply tried to randomly mutate glyphosphate resistance, chances are you'd also reduce the efficiency of the enzyme itself and produce a pretty sickly crop with poor yields. The problem with weeds is that even a sickly growing weed can mess up your crop.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundup_(herbicide)#Genetic_engineering

Genetic engineering is certainly not elegant, it's mostly cut-and-paste jobs, but you only use directed evolution to fine tune things as it justs gets stuck in a local evolutionary minimum.

Re:Surprise?

[Patch86]

What's surprising is that farmers don't seem to learn (or doctors, for the same reasons). Centuries ago farmers got to grips with the concept of crop rotation; planting the same crops in the same fields every season produces ever deteriorating results. So even if it means planting a less profitable crop type every season or so, it's better for the farm in the long run.

Creatures will form a resistance to pesticides (and for doctors, antibiotics) if they're used constantly. The only way to lessen this problem is to use a constantly shifting pattern of pesticides/antibiotics, making sure to "rest" a given method for a certain amount of time. That way no species gets a chance to evolve towards a serious resistance to any one of them.

Instead, we pick one "wonder method" (the miracle chemical of the moment, or a GM solution, or radiation treatment, or whatever) and use it until it doesn't work any more. And then panic.

Re:Surprise?

[robotkid]

Is this a surprise, that nature can route around humans? Seriously, this was expected. However, all this means is that Monsato and other evil corporations like it who create GM seeds now have an opening for a new product to develop and sell, for an even higher price. And they will get this higher price because the "old" GM seeds are not successful any more. And the cycle continues...

Really, the crux of the problem is that Monsanto has an effective monopoly on GM crops (~90% market share last I checked), and it's operating with as much scruples as any other company in the same position (i.e. Ma Bell, US. Steel, Standard Oil, Microsoft back in the early 90's . . ). As much as I hate people who claim "the free market" will cure all our woes, if we just had 2 or 3 equally powerful GM companies they would actually have to compete with each other on price and features and licensing terms (for example, allowing farmers to save seeds for replanting).

The sad state of things as they are now are the end result of the effective monopoly combined with the unprecedented patent protection that GM crops have been afforded compared to other types of plant breed protection - this
guarantees that every new innovation will be overproduced and overused to maximize profits up until they are completely useless. I mean, we are talking about 15 year-old technology in a field where you have trouble giving away last year's gene sequencers on craiglist because they are so outdated.

Re:Surprise?

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting people mentioning "Monsanto and other evil corps". I mostly agree, but thought this anecdote would be interesting:

I attended a small conference recently. During some talk among several plant biologists/biotechnologist somebody lamented the fact that it was getting so complicated and expensive to do field tests in many Western countries (some times there are 3 bureaucrats looking at every PhD student who is measuring leaf lengths). How could something like that ever be commercialized?

Somebody answered, well, the only companies who can do that are Monsanto, Bayer, etc. It takes tens of _billions_ of dollars to bring a GMO crop to the market, and more than 30% of that is dealing with lawyers. Hence, the strong push of the anti-GMO organisations has not led to a ban on GMO, but to a monopolizing of the market by a few big names.

  Even the research on GMO plants is usually handed to a company once you want to do field trials. At that point, it is not feasible any more for most universities (those in China being the exception). This leads sometimes to all kinds of annoying things like not being able to publish when there a problems.

I am not sure how to fix this situation, as not having any regulation also does not sound like a solution.

Re:Surprise?

[satuon]

I knew it! I knew it! Those dirty insects, they've been in on this thing all along. Prolly' getting a cut of the fat profits, too.

Re:Surprise?

[errhuman]

This is \. Please restate your analogy in car form.

Re:Surprise?

[Samantha Wright]

My sincere apologies. This is what I get for trusting my own professors!

Re:Surprise?

[Samantha Wright]

I should have said "inb4".

Re:Surprise?

[robotkid]

Maybe true, but the thought of three or more companies like Monsanto hiding the truth in secretly patented processes, the genetic mutations cross pollinating randomly reproducing in nature across borders of fields and its a complete mess, nature ceasing to accomodate support of life's natural processes. Who could even estimate what would happen? Evolution ceases? Life ceases? Win Win for everyone except for those of us who actually love life.. fundamentally speaking, no more corn in my mash potatoes. That would really suck.

I think it's like oil companies - everyone loves to hate them but fundamentally our society can't exist without them without making wholesale changes to our lifestyle we are unwilling to stomach. At least we can play oil companies off each other by boycotting whichever one is the naughtiest - imagine how much worse it would be if there were only *one* global oil company. But they are not going anywhere anytime soon no matter how much we dislike them.

It's not that farmers are so enamored with doing business with Monsanto - it's that they find they have no choice in an age where pesticides and herbicides are progressively more expensive and less effective (and I should add more environmentally damaging than roundup even with it's multiple bugaboos). Currently only 1% of the US works on a farm, a figure that dwindles every year, and unless we can convince 20% of our population to become organic farmers like in Cuba we cannot be self sufficient without GMOs.

So I think the conversation that is going on about yes/no to GMO's is misplaced, and that's severely to Monsanto's advantage because the need for their product will only increase with time. The conversation we SHOULD be having is about whether foodstuff GMOs should enjoy patent protection at all (for all the claims that this is just like selective breeding on steroids, those aren't patentable and somehow GMOs are), what type of environmental oversight should be required (did you know that only the USDA has authority to regulate GMO crops, not the EPA?) and whether Monsanto should be broken up Baby Bell style for anti-trust issues. The longer we fret about frankenfoods and avoid talking about the issues at hand, the stronger Monsanto's hand gets and the closer that market share gets to 100%. At which point history of monopolies tells us we are really in for a *** storm, and that's not something that has anything to do with the morality of your average Monsanto employee, it's just inevitable in our free market system.
   

Why is this even a surprise?

[idbeholda]

Everytime we've hailed a one-shot approach to these types of problems, the same thing happens. Look at antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria and the like. Do you really think this is going to be any different?

Re:Why is this even a surprise?

[Samantha Wright]

We didn't expect it to happen so quickly, that's all. Bacteria evolve much more rapidly than insects: E. coli splits once every 8 hours under optimal conditions in colonies of millions of cells, and may mutate up to 0.003% of their genome with each cell division under stress. That's a lot of brute forcing power. Insects, by contrast, have much more elaborate and stringent eukaryotic mutation controls, and most species take a couple of weeks to hatch.

Re:Why is this even a surprise?

[idbeholda]

While that may be the case, one can't feasibly expect only a single compound to work for long, let alone indefinitely.

Re:Why is this even a surprise?

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Yeah, antibiotics will stop working in the future ! OMG ! Let's redo the plague infections from the middle ages today while we can avoid it !

Do tell, what is your suggestion ? (and please, before you go there, the quantity of antibiotics consumed doesn't really matter, as long as we prevent large-scale infections with antibiotics resistence will grow. So the only way we could stop resistence is to protect only 1% (preferably less) of the population, and let plagues regularly destroy their breeding pool (that would be 10-20% of humanity dying if history is any indication). The difference between doing the minimum necessary to protect lives and massive overuse of antibiotics is at best a few years).

Oh and let's not forget that we also must stop any long distance travel, unless you want to be blamed again for wiping out indigenous populations with our resistant genes.

Re:Why is this even a surprise?

[idbeholda]

For starters....

http://en.howtopedia.org/wiki/How_to_Use_Garlic_as_a_Natural_Pesticide

Re:Why is this even a surprise?

[bytesex]

Well for starters, don't use Clavulanic acid on cows. And punish, and then I mean *severely* punish, vets who try to cheat on this.

Re:Why is this even a surprise?

[locofungus]

The answer is to only use antibiotics when they're really useful and necessary.

http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2010/jan/03/norways-mrsa-solution/

Tim.

Re:Why is this even a surprise?

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Farmers used to do that. Net result : about 1% crop yield per square meter compared to what we have today. Do you seriously think a 100x reduction (oh wait, technology advanced ... say 25x) in food supply would be survivable ?

As for using it on humans to prevent disease, that method was in use during the plagues. Fat lot of good it did them.

Re:Why is this even a surprise?

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

The only way to limit resistance, is to not protect the vast majority of the population. That would help (it might in fact decrease resistance). The potential "pool" in which these bacteria live is the whole of the human species. And what matters is how much of that pool is filled with the medicine when it also is in contact with the bacteria. Whether or not that pool is filled in places without contact ... no one cares. As long as you keep protecting the population that contact area is necessarily close to 100% of the bacteria's breeding ground ... and for the bacterium it's "adapt or die" just like it is for us. So far, with 2 exceptions, they've adapted. And I hear that thanks to muslims, those 2 exceptions are in serious danger of becoming not so exceptional at all anymore.

Unless by "only when necessary" means that you let the diseases take their course and only when it is absolutely (and painfully, in most cases) clear that the patient will not recover without antibiotics do you administer them, and then only in a huge dosage, and quarantine the patient for a week after the treatment ends. Of course, mistakes will be made and people will die (though in the very long term casualties will be minimized, I doubt that'll be a great comfort to parents who get to see first hand that the child death rate goes up significantly under scenarios like this. And of course people would die within meters of substances that would cure them, with the cost paid much later by the population as a whole). And of course this is extremely unrealistic in the case of an epidemic.

Even then, over time you're strengthening the immune system of parts of the population unevenly. We all know how that ended last time.

On the other hand, if we make the assumption that medicine will advance fast enough to compensate for resistance, then overusing antibiotics is probably the best tactic. And there's plenty of historical precedent for that assumption, even if it's of course not a certainty. "Adapt or die", up close and personal. Lord help us if another war breaks out though.

Re:Why is this even a surprise?

[idbeholda]

Farmers used to do that. Net result : about 1% crop yield per square meter compared to what we have today. Do you seriously think a 100x reduction (oh wait, technology advanced ... say 25x) in food supply would be survivable ?

Considering how many insecticides garlic contains, and that they can be artificially produced, yes it's a reasonable solution.

As for using it on humans to prevent disease, that method was in use during the plagues. Fat lot of good it did them.

During the middle ages, garlic wasn't used to treat anything. They held it to ward off evil spirits. All this aside, I do like your sense of humor. Have you considered trying a gig in standup comedy?

Upgrayedd'd

[Jimekai]

Monsawndo, it's got what plants crave!

Re:Upgrayedd'd

[trout007]

I'm not a chemist but it says its a isopropylamine salt of glyphosate. Isn't a salt an electrolyte?

Re:Upgrayedd'd

[Samantha Wright]

...yes. It's a pair of stable counter-ions, and they can most definitely conduct electricity. I should probably be getting to bed.

Re:Upgrayedd'd

[Sique]

Actually, RoundUp is a herbicide (weed killer), not an insecticide (worm killer). The article is not about RoundUp, but about the toxins from Bacillus thuringensis (Bt).

Re:Upgrayedd'd

[dunkelfalke]

If we are going to nitpick here, then insecticide is not a worm killer, it is a caterpillar killer (and even that is not completely correct, I know).

Re:Upgrayedd'd

[Sique]

RoundUp ist pretty old, and there are much more interesting resistance stories around RoundUp than this one.

My favorite is the RoundUp resistant strain of the coca plant that gets grown in Columbia: Boliviana negra.

Re:Upgrayedd'd

[Hognoxious]

Isn't a salt an electrolyte?

Lead chloride is a salt but it's not an electrolyte. Not a very good one, anyway.

Re:Upgrayedd'd

[_0xd0ad]

Technically I suppose it's an electrolyte when it's in an aqueous solution, which it would be upon application but would afterward of course dry on the plants and the salt would recrystallize.

Re:Upgrayedd'd

[Samantha Wright]

You're completely right, and I am guilty of not properly RTFSing. It sounds like Bt resistance is naturally occurring and the silly people were just trying to stave off selection for it—and this story isn't even about Monsanto, so there's another derp point for me. That being said, there's always the 'chemical cocktail' problem, and it's hard not to look at a chemical as synthetic and toxic as Roundup and not wonder how much it's contributing to the problem.

Re:Upgrayedd'd

[Samantha Wright]

Most electrolytes are solutions; sorry, that's a bit of sloppy semantics. It's implied we're only considering the active ingredient while it's dissolved in water. We're talking about an energy drink here, after all.

Re:Upgrayedd'd

[_0xd0ad]

Yeah, as a matter of fact it's the electrolytes in the Roundup which kill the plants (just like in the movie - they just needed to breed plants for resistance, I guess).

For some reason I had been thinking of a pesticide/insecticide where you'd typically want it to dry or settle on the plant's surface to make pests avoid it, but Roundup is a herbicide so obviously it has to be absorbed through the plant's pores.

Conviction is a luxury

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know jackshit about biologic or agricultural but I have strong opinions about why this has happened, how it can be prevented, and how our farmers ought to grow the crops.

Re:Conviction is a luxury

[Mitchell314]

Methinks GP was mocking other posters here. I swear sometimes it's as if slashdot would be better off with a crowed sourced sarcasm counter.

Re:Conviction is a luxury

[Crypto Gnome]

...slashdot would be better off with a crowed sourced sarcasm counter.

Personally I'd MUCH rather a crowd-sourced directed-beam sarcasm discharge weapon. As long as I'm at the controls, naturally.

This should not be a surprise

[thephydes]

It only takes a small percentage of resistant organisms out of a population of potentially tens of millions( or should that be hundreds of millions in this case ) to pass on their resistant genes to the next generation and the "killer" gene in the plants is overcome. The only surprise here is that it hasn't happened sonner.

Who was saying that it was the final solution?

[Hartree]

Maybe marketing types. But I seriously doubt many entomologists or crop scientists were saying that this was the "final solution" to rootworm or any other pests.

In fact, they've been advising using non-bt planted in a certain number of acres near the bt ones to slow down the development of resistance.

All these Monsanto people are idiots - easy fix

[mykos]

All they need to do is make the corn produce MORE toxins than it already does, duh. They should hire me.

biology = hacking

[Anonymous Coward]

The longevity of the utility (usefulness) of an adaptive modification (e.g. endogenous pesticide) is inversely proportional to its distribution, either geographic or temporal.

so an adaptive modification that is consistently found in a small geographic area for a long time will take a decent amount of time for predators/pests to circumvent it.
and an adaptive modification that is quickly and widely distributed will result in predators/pests quickly circumventing that defense.

you know how most of the exploits are against the most widely distributed, and centrally controlled OS?
it's like that.

Thanks, Monsanto!

[93 Escort Wagon]

Organic gardeners saw this coming from the get-go - I remember a Mike McGrath (then editor in chief of Organic Gardening) editorial predicting it. Heck, we'd already seen this happen with badly managed organic farms - back in the 1990s, resistance had been seen in Diamondback moths on Hawaiian farms that sprayed B.t kurstaki repeatedly rather than just when monitoring indicated a need for spraying.

The continued usefulness of organic/botanical pesticides has, in large part, been due to their lack of persistence in the environment. Inserting those genes into plants is basically making the pesticides persistent, which (obviously) leads to much quicker development of resistance on the part of the pests.

The part of me that's a cynic wonders if this is what Monsanto had in mind all along... one less organic competitor to their stable of proprietary chemicals.

Re:Thanks, Monsanto!

[Patch86]

The problem is, business sense prevails. If you're a farmer, and your neighbour farmer is growing Monsanto GM crops, which are $10 per unit more expensive but yield twice the profits, what do you do? Even if you know it's short term, and that Monsanto are going to sell you something different in ten years (just as their competitors are catching up), do you really sacrifice the profits you could be making today?

Re:Thanks, Monsanto!

[Charliemopps]

Um... I don't think Monsanto is in the least bit worried about Organic food.

Re:Thanks, Monsanto!

[the eric conspiracy]

The summary is a troll, of course. No biologist or even halfway educated layperson would make the statement that that BT toxin is the final solution to insect predators.

Re:Thanks, Monsanto!

[ChromeAeonium]

Yes. There is no single solution. Insects and pathogens evolve resistance to sprays and to genes. This has been happening since evolution began, and will continue to happen. The problem isn't any one technique, it is an over reliance on any one technique, and that we need ever improving integrated pest management practices that incorporate a wider range of defenses.using differing modes of action.

That's what drives me up the wall with all these people here and all over the internet thinking this is more 'proof' that genetic engineering is somehow bad. It has nothing to do with the plant being GE or not. Look at wheat and hessian flies. No genetic engineering there, but the pests still built up a resistance to the wheat's defense. There's a reason breeders are still breeding insect resistant varieties of various crops. Pests and pathogens developed resistance to the last generations. The Red Queen's Race is run in agriculture too, just faster.

I'm shocked!

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean life is adapting to an environmental pressure? Don't these insects realise they're in breach of Monsanto's patents?

Re:I'm shocked!

[Crypto Gnome]

Surely them insects had to reverse-engineer the toxins before developing a successful workaround?

Lawyers Rejoice.

Except for the fact that insects have no money.

Re:I'm shocked!

[arekq]

Here's a thought: we should ally with insects to demolish the patent system. :)

Re:I'm shocked!

[Issarlk]

That's nothing a bank can't fix. We could save the economy, we just need to lend a few trillions to insects and get them back in a lawsuit.

Re:"What could POSSIBLY go wrong?"

[siddesu]

Not really. Umbrella corp. were the good guys. Monsanto will set them up with the zombie virus in the sixth episode, which will be a prequel.

Re:Evolution, smart?

[Crypto Gnome]

Seriously folks, stop bagging the man.

Crowd-Sourcing *obviously* wins out in the case of small-team-of-scientists vs almost-infinite-hords-of-breeding-bugs

Maybe some of the worms were already resistant

[erice]

We didn't expect it to happen so quickly, that's all. Bacteria evolve much more rapidly than insects: E. coli splits once every 8 hours under optimal conditions in colonies of millions of cells, and may mutate up to 0.003% of their genome with each cell division under stress. That's a lot of brute forcing power. Insects, by contrast, have much more elaborate and stringent eukaryotic mutation controls, and most species take a couple of weeks to hatch.

Which probably means that some small fraction of the population was already resistant when the "experiment" began. No need to wait for a lucky mutation. Just apply strong selection pressure and the trait quickly spreads.

Re:Maybe some of the worms were already resistant

[robotkid]

We didn't expect it to happen so quickly, that's all. Bacteria evolve much more rapidly than insects: E. coli splits once every 8 hours under optimal conditions in colonies of millions of cells, and may mutate up to 0.003% of their genome with each cell division under stress. That's a lot of brute forcing power. Insects, by contrast, have much more elaborate and stringent eukaryotic mutation controls, and most species take a couple of weeks to hatch.

Which probably means that some small fraction of the population was already resistant when the "experiment" began. No need to wait for a lucky mutation. Just apply strong selection pressure and the trait quickly spreads.

BT crops were first introduced in 1995 and there has been a steady stream of resistance reports since the early 2000's so it's just been a matter of time before the worms got it. There's even a paper here from 2003 where it was empirically determined that approx 1 in 1000 insects already carried a resistance gene in the wild before any selection pressure.
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~fgould/pdfs/Burd2003.pdf

will the bugs race the patent?

[dutchwhizzman]

I wonder if the patent will be useless before it expires. Monsanto, eat your heart out, you just got outsmarted by a couple of bugs. Who are you going to sue to get yourself out of this?

Homo Sapien Hasn't Evolved Against GMOs

[Anonymous Coward]

There is some research indicating health issues associated with certain GMO corn. Of course it's difficult to say much with certain Food Libel Laws being what they are, but suffice it to say that if there's a reasonable concern that GMO foods could be harming people and if their efficacy at improving our agricultural processes is in question then we should probably slow down on implementation.

Re:Evolution, smart?

[Black Parrot]

Now it turns out that insects, and evolution, are smarter than we thought

Did they really just write that, really?. While we're at our peak of evolutionary misconceptions, why not sign it all away to Intelligent Design and say god wanted a better insect because it was christmas and Jebus didn't have any friends to play with.

God is only inordinately fond of beetles, not insects in general.

Re:Like it matters..

[repapetilto]

Your comment was so vague that either:

1) You don't know what you are talking about
2) You are delusional and think the what you just posted was offering useful information
3) You're social circles do not contain anyone who argues with you
4) etc
5) Some combination of the above

At least offer a link to a "journal" article so we know what you mean.

NSS

[pbjones]

No Shit Sherlock!, You mean that they did NOT expect this to happen? gosh! /sarcasm

Re:You really don't see where this is going, do yo

[Anonymous Coward]

Opponents of GM, answer me this simple question : what exactly do you think Gaia is planning for us ? Don't you think it might be a global famine with death tolls that'd make all wars combined look like the devil's nap time ?

No, I don't. Gaia can't "plan" a damn thing since the earth isn't sentient. As for the super famine, that's been predicted for decades and it hasn't happened. There's always a famine somewhere, but developed nations haven't had that problem. The Green Revolution was amazingly successful and has allowed the world's population to reach 7 billion. Yes, millions die from famine, but they are in backwards countries such as North Korea, Somalia, Ethiopia and are attributable to either bad weather, or bad government, or both.

Quit trying to terrify people with bogus prophecies of doom.

Evil government!

[thule]

How is Monsanto evil in this case? One of the big reasons cited in the article for farmers abusing the BT corn is the market price of corn is very high. Not mentioned in the article is the reason why it is so high. My cousin informed me that he is going to sell off the bit of corn they don't use for cash this year. Why? The government has been subsidizing the corn/ethonal in at least three different ways, exaggerating the price. Why wouldn't a farmer plant and sell of as much as he can and cash in on the high prices? The only reason they are able to do this in the first place is the high yield of corn crops since the 1960's (150-200 bushels and acre compared to only 50/acre years ago). Would we even consider burning corn in our cars if we were not able to realize current yields? If the government wasn't distorting the price, then normal supply in demand would limit the interest in planting too much corn and flooding the market.

Re:Evil government!

[dtmos]

high yield of corn crops since the 1960's (150-200 bushels and acre compared to only 50/acre years ago).

Quite true. See Figure 1.

Re:Evil government!

[thule]

yup! Thankfully! I suppose it is better late than never.

what about human biology

[FudRucker]

what does this stuff do in the human stomach & intestines? does it cause problems with the natural beneficial biological cultures & enzymes in the human digestive system? (i bet it does)

Re:what about human biology

[jbeaupre]

Bt is a toxin from bacteria. And specifically toxic to insects. It probably doesn't alter the flora of your gut any more than the thousands of other trace chemicals found naturally in all foods (including organic).

Yoghurt has a bigger effect. A dose of antibiotics is like a nuke compared to the 3-stooges slap fest effect other trace chemicals have on your gut. And we survive both just fine. The human digestive system is amazingly robust.

Yes, you've identified a risk. But put it in perspective.

Not Monsanto's only large GMO problem

[plsenjy]

A couple months ago I drove Dr. Don Huber of Purdue from the airport to a field day (ag industry for product demo) being put on by my family's non-GMO seed firm in the Upper Midwest. He of course had already been hearing of this problem for a while (the plant pathology/development community is pretty small, and when something new crops up everyone is in the loop) but was (and still is) much more concerned with a different pathogen that's been cropping up slowly for the past few years at higher and higher rates. Personally, I am not a seedsman and can't explain it very well, besides saying that it's a bacteria that he has been linking to Roundup Ready plants (Roundup Ready is a gene that Monsanto inserts in all sorts of plants in order to make them resistant to a pungent herbicide, Roundup) that causes infertility in everything it touches and we're unsure of how to deal with it. This website explains the problem pretty well (ignore the activism associated with it, it should just be used as a teaching point) http://action.fooddemocracynow.org/sign/dr_hubers_warning/

What's really chilling is that our non-GMO firm does very well outside the US. This is because most country's will not allow GMO's to be planted in their country due to their lack of long-term testing of effects on humans. I can't remember the exact regulation but in the EU they only allow something like 10-15% of their foodstock to be GMO. In Japan they're not allowed to be planted at all. My dad (the non-GMO seedsman) always likes to tell this anecdote - that when asked why they won't plant any GMO corn, the Japanese grainsman says, "We are conservative with our food. We want to see what it does to your children's children before we'll even consider it."

Re:Not Monsanto's only large GMO problem

[c6gunner]

Yes, I agree - the fact that most of the world would rather depend on random mutations over scientifically tested modifications is quite scary.

Re:Not Monsanto's only large GMO problem

[hibiki_r]

Random mutation? That's not how now GMO breeding works at all. Proper breeding technology requires no trans species genes at all. Taking existing seeds and using modern mechanisms to figure out their genotypes and trying to obtain natural cross breeding that generates better yielding crop is perfectly legal in most places that are against GMO. In fact, it'd be very difficult to breed edible corn at all without doing such things.

If you looked at the beeding process of a seed company that deals in GMOs, a very large percentage of the process is still the same tried and true mechanisms that have been followed forever, just with more expensive methods of determining the best seeds.

Re:Not Monsanto's only large GMO problem

[plsenjy]

Who said anything about random mutations?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_selection

Re:Not Monsanto's only large GMO problem

[ChromeAeonium]

You mean Dr. Don 'No you can't see my data but you should totally believe my wacky claims' Huber? Wow. Has he released has data yet? Didn't think so. Why should I believe anyone who hides their data?

This is because most country's will not allow GMO's to be planted in their country due to their lack of long-term testing of effects on humans.

So its just a coincidence that they can't compete against countries like the US, Canada, and Brazil in terms of large agronomic crops and want to protect their own industries without breaking WTO laws? That has nothing to do with science and everything to do with politics. Ask any European plant biologist about GE crops. They'll say the same things American ones do.

We want to see what it does to your children's children before we'll even consider it

So, you can't find any differences between the Ge and non-GE plants (besides the epsps or cry1ab or bar or CMV coat ect) but you expect there to be some long term effect, though strangely breeding, hybridization, mutagenesis, ect is exempt from this? That's what we call magical thinking.

Re:Not Monsanto's only large GMO problem

[c6gunner]

Who said anything about random mutations?

Who said anything about artificial selection?

Re:Not Monsanto's only large GMO problem

[c6gunner]

Proper breeding technology requires no trans species genes at all.

The phrase "trans species genes" is a modern boogyman; it's a fictional distinction used primarily to scare little kids and the ignorant. It's intended to evoke an emotional reaction through the visualization of mutated monstrosities and similar regressive nonsense. It appeals to the same instinct which has retarded innovation since the dawn of man.

If you looked at the beeding process of a seed company that deals in GMOs, a very large percentage of the process is still the same tried and true mechanisms that have been followed forever, just with more expensive methods of determining the best seeds.

If you look at the space shuttle, a very large percentage of the construction process is still the same tried and true mechanisms that have been followed when building toaster-ovens. Just more expensive.

Diversity

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is not within GM itself, the problem is with the reduction of diversity this tends to generate. If plants are identical, insects only need to adapt to one type of corn, once done, its all fucked up. I assume using more traditional methods would yield a gradient of genetic variations over time (which is what evolution is about) and thus less subject (taking corn as a whole) to this things.

It's a surprise because god is on their side

[Colin Smith]

Clearly god wouldn't have changed the insects if the farmers were on god's good side, so they must have done something wrong. I suggest they sacrifice their first born to get him to change the insects back.

Obligatory Darwin quote

[goodmanj]

As Darwin himself said: "Well, *duh*. What did you expect?"

Re:You really don't see where this is going, do yo

[Fjandr]

It's unlikely to be a famine of epic proportion, but I'm a fan of cyclical famine. It has the great upside of limiting population potential. So no, sane people can disagree that this is a problem that needs to be "fixed" permanently.

Micro scale, yeah, famine sucks. Macro? Not so much.

Refuge row regulations

[dbc]

My brother is a farm manager in Iowa, and he told me that Iowa has regulations where either 10% (or 20%, I forget which) of your rows must be "refuge rows", that is, if you plant a GMO variety, you need to plant non-GMO refuge rows in the same field so that the insects (or fungus or whatever you are fighting) has some place to go live where it then should not develop resistance. Overall it is still a win, because the GMO rows are more productive, and you can plant your refuge rows on fence rows and turn-around rows that never yield as well anyway.

So... does anyone know of other states have refuge row regulations? Or is the % of refuge rows just not sufficient?

Re:Refuge row regulations

[will_die]

It is not a state requirment it is a federal requirment (FDA IIRC) that if you plant GMO you have to do 20% refuge rows.

Re:Refuge row regulations

[dbc]

Interesting. So then this would say that either: a) 20% is insufficient, b) the whole theory behind refuge rows is wrong, c) there is widespread cheating on refuge rows. I'm putting my money on 'b'.

Re:Refuge row regulations

[gtirloni]

Except we do not want the insects to vanish from Earth as that would impact biodiversity. We just want them to stay away from that corn field (or at least keep it to a minimum that they coexist).

Rate of evolution - guesstimate

[Alain Williams]

To try to get some insight on how many genetic changes there are in insects I churned a few numbers:

1. * Life cycle time is takes a full year for most insects
2. * Number of offspring per female 100 - varies a lot
3. * Number of insects per acre is 10^8 (100 million)
4. * Number of acres grown under GM crops 3x10^8
5. * Mutation rate is about 10^-8 per base pair per generation
6. * The number of genome base pairs 1.4x10^8 (fruit fly)

Multiply that and you get 10^18 insect offspring per year; a mutation rate of about 1 per individual per generation. So the number of mutations is a very large number. This means a large number of ''natural experiments'' done, one of which may result in an insect a bit more resistant to a GM crop, this will give the insect an advantage and so be able to have more offspring all of which carry the advantageous gene. So advantageous genes spread rapidy, through sexual reproduction are combined with other genes and the best combinations flourish.

WARNING: very rough calculations, most insects die before they have the chance to reproduce and so most mutations are 'lost'. The numbers that I obtained are very likely wrong - but even if each one is wrong by a factor of 100, it doesn't make a huge dent in a very large number.

Re:Rate of evolution - guesstimate

[The Master Control P]

Under the assumption of constant average population, you can simply assume 2 offspring per female (that there are actually ~100 and ~98 die means, like a high-gain amplifier with a highly attenuated signal, there's a lot of noise).

Re:Rate of evolution - guesstimate

[Alain Williams]

It is 2 that succeed in reproducing, the other 98 die ... but the 98 were still born and the ones that have better genes are more likely to be amongst the 2 rather than the 98.

Wow. so we were eating a corn with a pesticide

[unity100]

built into its genes ?

and this is safe, because nothing has happened, YET ?

Insects mutated/adapted to this in just years' time. What makes us exceptions despite we are living on the same planet ?

Re:Wow. so we were eating a corn with a pesticide

[JoshuaZ]

Most plants have pesticides built into their genes. Almost every single crop has naturally occurring pesticides. Worst, as humans over time have bred for hardier crop, we've often been increasing the production level of pesticides without realizing it. In that regard, GM crops with pesticides are great- we know exactly what pesticides there are and in what levels. Note also that there's a heavy preference for pesticides produced by plants as opposed to ones sprayed on since when you spray a) much of it is wasted and b) in practice one requires a lot more pesticides than just letting the plants do it. For these purposes the GMOs are essentially functioning like very carefully bred plants. There are other problems with GMOs (TFA discusses one of them) and the problem of how many of the GMO crops are sterile are obviously severe but building pesticides into genes is not a serious worry in this context.

Re:Wow. so we were eating a corn with a pesticide

[unity100]

Almost every single crop has naturally occurring pesticides

yes. the keyword is NATURALLY. ie, like as in evolution. not direct genetic manipulation. any genetic manipulation that has not passed through the timefilter of evolution is a risk. that filter has filtered out what manipulation can exist without breaking things and what cannot.

Re:Wow. so we were eating a corn with a pesticide

[ChromeAeonium]

If you really believed that, you wouldn't eat any crop that you didn't co-evolve with, because there's a lot more . I assume you don't eat New World/European/Asian (minus whichever continent you ancestry traces back to) crops. Also, we've been consuming cry proteins for some time as they have been used before GE crops, and all plants have a form of the gene that confers resistance to glyphosate anyway, the one that gives resistance to glufosinate is just an enzyme (you eat tons of those every day with no ill effects), and virus resistance crops have less of the new protein than a non-GE version (because the protein comes form the virus itself, so the non-resistant one has orders of magnitude more of the stuff). Your argument, though common and popular, holds no water.

dear idiot

[unity100]

those random mutations have happened over millions of years of time, evolving to be not in conflict with the entire biosphere it inhabits. break the chain somewhere, and youll get corn growing out of your ass.

Re:dear idiot

[c6gunner]

those random mutations have happened over millions of years of time, evolving to be not in conflict with the entire biosphere it inhabits.

As the laughing-AC has already pointed out, this is sheer, unadulterated bullshit.

re: Insects Rapidly Becoming Resistant To GM Corn

[microphage]

Well DOH, it's called EVOLUTION by NATURAL SELECTION. You bump off 90% of a population and the remaining repopulate the ecosystem only with increased resistance. And as a side effect the resistant genes migrate into other species ...

Farmers won't follow directions / traditional ways

[WillAdams]

From the article:

>neglected to plant non-Bt corn within Bt fields or in surrounding fields as a way to create a "refuge" for non-resistant rootworms in the hope they will mate with resistant rootworms and dilute their genes.

  - I knew farmers would be resistant to the need to do plant such sacrificial surrounding crops --- I'd love to see Monsanto sue the farmers who didn't follow directions for destroying the value of their research. Of course, one hopes the lawyer defending the farmers will devalue said research by pointing out that Monsanto didn't expect it to be effective for more than a hundred years or so, as compared to the 10,000 or so years people have been farming.

>result of farmers who've planted Bt corn year after year in the same fields.

  - but I'm surprised that they're giving up the well-documented benefits of crop rotation --- please tell me that ``organic'' labelling indicates that farmers do sensible things like crop rotation.

William

Stop using the GM crop and it works again?

[wdef]

If insect evolution works like bacteria (and I don't know if it does), then if we stop growing this GM crop altogether for long enough, then insect DNA should "forget" how to defend against this toxin. Nature abhors waste, so useless genes tend to get jettisoned from the gene pool given enough generations with no selection pressure to keep them in. At least, this is what happens with antibiotic-resistant bacteria: if an antibiotic is not used at all for long enough, bacterial DNA "forgets" how to make the cell line resistant and it once again becomes vulnerable. Resistance is the reason penicillin became a lot less broadband than it originally was, and the resulting relative lack of use might mean it should become more effective again.

This of course assumes that resistant strains have not already entered the wild and become widespread. With bacteria that is particularly problematic since bacteria can transfer resistance between different types of bacteria in a contagious fashion. An GM crops also have a habit of entering the wild, in which case we will be less able to reduce the exposure of insects to that crop, which might keep their resistance maintained. Disclaimer: I am not a biologist.

Re:You really don't see where this is going, do yo

[Issarlk]

> Since we can't actually feed the world without GM

It's amazing luck we somehow survived unti GM crops were available. And I wouldn't like to be starving, in countries were GM crops are illegal.

Re:Farmers won't follow directions / traditional w

[Cassini2]

Monsanto makes money regardless of whether the seed works. Monsanto's contracts specify that once you purchase Genetically Modified seed from them, you must keep purchasing seed from them.

If the Genetically modified seed quits working, the farmers have to pay Monsanto for seed anyway.

Sugar, spice, and everything nice

[tepples]

Immunity to chemical X gives no specific advantage for attacking plants that don't produce X to start with.

Especially when you need more plants with chemical X so that you can make more Powerpuff Girls.

Re:You really don't see where this is going, do yo

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Rich countries outlaw GM crops, and become net importers of food instead of exporters ... and since food is extremely inelastic, this results in relatively large price increases for food ...

Add to that the fact that the human population is still growing exponentially.

Not the only GM problem

[OrtCloud]

Google "Superweeds" (plural)

Re:Not the only GM problem

[ChromeAeonium]

Do you realize how stupid of a term that is? They are resistant to one type of herbicide, not 'superweeds,' and if you don't use that they of herbicide are of no affect to you. That's just a made up bullshit word to scare people who don't know how many weeds have built up resistance to herbicides in the past and don't understand that it is over reliance on a single herbicide (not the fact that the resistance in the crop to the herbicide is conferred via genetic engieering) that produces resistance to evolve in the weed population.

Nothing smart about evolution!

[Tharsman]

There is nothing smart about evolution; this is not "insects evolving to become immune." None of these poisons are 100% effective (not the ones we think can't kill us overnight anyways.) If there is a 1% survival rate, due to random variations throughout the species, all we do is drive all other members of the species extinct and give room for the very tiny minority to reproduce freely, without food competition. Given insect rapid generation cycles, it can take less than a year, or a handful of years tops, for the insecticides to become useless.

Worse of all: we will keep using the poisons, despite potential slow and cumulative human side effects.

Re:Nothing smart about evolution!

[gtirloni]

It's not smart now we all know how it works. Let's get you back a few million years ago as a bacteria and let you be smart there :)

Re:Nothing smart about evolution!

[Tharsman]

we all know how it works

No, we all dont know (unless by "we all", you mean a very small circle of people that actually know.)

There are a LOT of people that believe in the theory of evolution but are still a bit ignorant on it, and think it is about adaptive mutations. Like exposing you to cyanide will mutate you into a cyanide imune human, not understanding that any humans that happen to survive cyanide poisoning happened to, by just random birth "mutations" or "defects" or "features" be able to survive the poisoning.

Evolution is about the extintion of huge chunks of the species, distilling them, so to speak. (not re-explaining it for you, but for those that still think it's about living organizms mutating to survive.)

There can be only ONE

[PortHaven]

Isn't that essentially the survival of the fittest concept. At one point, our planet will successfully evolve a single dominant organism.

Oh don't give me that symbiosis crap. That only exists until a species appears with the combined abilities.

I wager, eventually either us or ants will evolve into a form of life that is capable of both photosynthesis and consumption. Likely vibrant & small within it's youth. And large and sluggish as it ages. Eventually, serving as an additional food source for the younger generation.

There can only be ONE!!!
(All others must be consumed or pushed to extinction.) ;-)

Re:There can be only ONE

[the eric conspiracy]

I, for one am ready to acknowledge the dominance of our new cockroach masters.

Re:You really don't see where this is going, do yo

[errhuman]

That the growth rate is slowing down tells you it isn't exponential. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_population_growth_rate_1950%E2%80%932050.svg

haaa ha

[cekander]

that's a nelson laugh, a la the Simpsons.

Not a surprise. Works as designed.

[gweihir]

The business model here was not that of a final solution. It was just one that looks good and can replace all other corn (hence a monopoly strategy aided by biotech patents), but then begin to require pesticides again. Of course while this new corn now only requires the same amount of pesticide as all the other corn needed before, the other corn will now be annihilated by the upgraded pests and replaced anyways. Everybody loses big-time, except the pests (who do not care) and the people with the biotech patent.

Quite impressive actually. Also quite impressive is the stupidity and number of the people that fell for it.

Re:Not a surprise. Works as designed.

[the eric conspiracy]

What is actually more impressive is the stupidity of your argument. If the GM corn pest resistance becomes ineffective there is of course no reason to continue purchasing it thereby harming Monsanto's revenues. And the so-called upgraded pests will not have resistance to the new pesticides used in conjunction with non-BT corn.

.

Re:Not a surprise. Works as designed.

[DragonWriter]

What is actually more impressive is the stupidity of your argument. If the GM corn pest resistance becomes ineffective there is of course no reason to continue purchasing it thereby harming Monsanto's revenues.

Well, there eventually becomes a reason not to purchase that GM strain (which, if Monsanto is lucky, is near or even after the time the patent expires), but by then Monsanto should have a new strain out that produces a different pesticide in order to be effective against insects that are resistant to the pesticide produced by the old strain.

Its essentially a probabilistic form of planned obsolescence.

Re:Not a surprise. Works as designed.

[the eric conspiracy]

More hopefully the farmer will actually engage in the growing practices recommended by the EPA and Monsanto which are generally effective in preventing the insects from acquiring resistance.

If you read the article the places where insect resistance are occurring is where farmers are just ignoring basic stuff like crop rotation etc.

I'm sorry, that's impossible.

[CannedTurkey]

Evolution is only a theory.

Read the article not the troll summary

[the eric conspiracy]

From the article it appears that this is due to farmers not following EPA and Monsanto recommendations and engaging in practices such as replanting the same corn variety many years in succession in the same field.

This is of course stupid and will lead to problems no matter what crop you are planting as pests for that particular crop will accumulate over time in that replanted field.

Good, so now what?

[Billy the Mountain]

Can we go back to the old corn now?

BT corn - BT.com

[Silfax]

I really need to get new glasses (or change default fonts) -- i read the BT corn an BT.com -- and thought why would insects need to become resistant to British Telecom??

Black primates

[erice]

The fact that we have both global travel and different races is an exceptional situation, and a temporary one (in ~500 years, maybe less, there will only be 1 human race left, unless global travel ends before that time). It is not known which race that will be, but if other island species evolution patterns are any indications, whatever race survives will look a lot like the original human race. It would be interesting to see whether the remaining race would be black or not (if not, that would be a strong indication that the original humans in Africa were not actually black before the races split up. My money's on that they weren't black (cause primates have white skin

I'm going to guess that you've never a mountain gorilla in person. They are black. In fact their skin is so dark that it is difficult for the eye to focus on. Chimpanzee's are also black though not to the abyss level of gorillas. Off hand, I can't think of an African primate whose exposed skin is not "black". Macaques are "white" but these extremely numerous and wide spread monkeys live in Asia, not Africa.

Re:Like it matters..

[repapetilto]

See, here is someone who appears to know what they are talking about. Thank you.

But will it stop the lawsuits?

[sl4shd0rk]

GM foods are mainly litigation tools to further the market dominance of corporate controlled food stocks. Even if insects/bacteria begin affecting them, I doubt Monsanto will stop suing family farms out of existence, and that's the worse than insects. If you think patents and copyrights are absurd now, wait until there are only two or three companies growing the entire world's food supply. Support your local farms if you are lucky enough to have some. The GM food thing needs to stop.

* - http://www.raw-wisdom.com/organicsvsgmo

Re:But will it stop the lawsuits?

[ChromeAeonium]

GM foods are mainly litigation tools to further the market dominance of corporate controlled food stocks.

That's moronic. Genetic engineering is a way of plant improvement, just like any other plant improvement method. If companies producing these seeds weren't providing a better seed, then they wouldn't have so much of the market share.

Even if insects/bacteria begin affecting them, I doubt Monsanto will stop suing family farms out of existence, and that's the worse than insects.

Yes, because obviously the best way to make money is to destroy your customers. That's why restaurant supply companies are trying to get rid of all the family run restaurants that make up their biggest customers./sarcasm

If you think patents and copyrights are absurd now, wait until there are only two or three companies growing the entire world's food supply.

Monsanto doesn't grow food, the produce seed. There's a big difference. If you don't know that, you probably aren't too well informed on this issue.

Support your local farms if you are lucky enough to have some.

What makes you think your local farmers don't use GE seed? Mine do.

The GM food thing needs to stop.

What? Even if we accept that Monsanto is evil, ect, what does that have to do with the science of genetic engineering? It'd be like saying Merck is evil, therefore you shouldn't get vaccinated.

http://www.raw-wisdom.com/organicsvsgmo

Now there's a reputable source.

Sue the little bastards

[minstrelmike]

Seems to me all Monsanto needs to do is sue the corn borers. They aren't legally allowed to eat that corn. That'll fix 'em fer sure.

God like aspirations...

[Julz]

We're playing god far too much. What with this and anti-biotics in animal feed. Oh and wait lets not forget Fukushima while we're mentioning more god like dablings. And while we're at it why don't we also forget to maintain the damn things or better yet pretend we maintained them and then blame nature when it all goes pear shaped!

Can't wait to see what 2012 brings. I just hope we can learn to work with nature a little more instead of against it.

wtf dumbasses

[Mana Mana]

> xbiotech xscience xhealth xcollapse xstrawman story

Missing? xmonoculture (!)

Well, I guess we're doomed then

[Rogerborg]

Because as we all know, the Slashtard Collective knows far more about this than the actual scientists working on it, who never saw this coming and have therefore just been sitting pat rather than working on new solutions to feed the world.

Re:You really don't see where this is going, do yo

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

So you mean that lowering the food supply, so rich ecologians can driving cars while feeling good, combined with dozens of policies to redirect all sorts of resources from food to ill-fated inferior products has not resulted in exponential population growth.

Seriously ?

Strange ...