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Publicly Funded GMO Research Facing Destruction In Italy
ChromeAeonium writes "Shortly after the events in Rothamsted Research in the UK, where a publicly funded trial of wheat genetically engineered to repel aphids was threatened by activists with destruction and required police protection, another publicly funded experiment involving genetically engineered crops faces possible destruction (original in Italian). The trial, which is being conducted by researchers at the University of Tuscia in Italy on cherries, olives, and kiwis genetically engineered to have traits such as fungal disease resistance, started three decades ago. When field research of GE plants was banned in Italy in 2002, the trial received an extension to avoid being declared illegal, but was denied another in 2008, and following a complaint from the Genetic Rights Foundation, now faces destruction on June 12th, despite appeals from scientists. The researchers claim that the destruction is scientifically unjustifiable (only the male kiwis produce transgenic pollen and their flowers are removed) and wish to gather more information from the long running experiment."
male kiwis produce transgenic pollen
In NZ, "kiwis" are only either the people (New Zealanders) or the birds, but never the kiwifruit plants! Very confusing...
/MC
Population is not a concern. The only reason why we have hunger is due to corrupt governments not because we can't produce enough food. We throw warehouses of bread out daily in the west. Western "food pantries" and the like are picker with what they will accept and won't accept than I am at the grocery store. Seriously, I volunteered at one and things that I'd have no problem buying at the grocery store they told me to throw away! Things such as pop tarts that had a hole in the box (not the individually wrapped pastries mind you), a gatorade bottle where the label had fallen off (despite the fact the top of the sealed container clearly said gatorade), etc.
The population will naturally decrease over time in the developing world like it has in the developed world, no need to be concerned. The world is a big place.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
One reason why isolation is neccessary is because GMO plants tend to contain patented genes. If the pollen spreads then random farmers can now be sued by large corporatons even though they did nothing wrong. The only reasonable options I can think of are:
- GMO plants must be cultivated in sealed greenhouses or the farmer needs to take other effective measures to prohibit the spread of pollen to unlicensed farms. Can be combined with the second option.
- If pollen spreads it's clearly the fault of the farmer who grew the plants and thus THAT farmer is liable for patent violation, not the receiving farmer. The courts should find as such. Unfortunately, most farmers are going to settle without going to court so this is not a satisfactory solution. Also, the corporations are going to fight this tooth and nail as it doesn't allow them to pressure people into buying licenses.
- GMO licenses are required to cover the farm and any area likely to be pollinated around it. The lobby won't allow it.
- GMO plants are required to be sterile and pollen-free. This would probably lead to those plants being clones, which is not a good solution.
- Gene patents are declared invalid or unenforcable. Unlikely.
- GMO plants are banned entirely. Baby-and-bathwater scenario.
Do we have any better feasible option than to require the use of greenhouses to reduce unlicensed pollination? I don't think that "you can be sued by a big corporation because of something perfectly legal your neighbor did" is a state we should put farmers in.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
There's even the theory that human evolution is caused, not by mutations, but by DNA swapping by viruses (mostly) and bacteria. Individual genes in humans don't evolve. They go from (very complex) state A -> (even more complex) state B without passing anywhere in between. Why ? Unknown, but if you discount Harun Yahya, the idea seems to be that someone's gonads get infected with DNA rewriting viruses.
And it is quite understandable that it works this way. Humans reproduce once every 20 years (12 years at the earliest, so let's call it 16 years worldwide average, because that's 2^4, which just happens to be an easy number to calculate with). The search space for the protein is ~ 4^2000 (2000 basepairs, discounting the gene's metadata*, and there's loads of them that are much larger). So how long would it take a human race to make a single modification to a single protein ? 4^2000 / avg. number of humans (= 4 ^ 16 say) * 20 (let's say) 4 ^ 2 years = 4 ^ 1986 = 2 ^ 3972 years. Which is *far* longer than the universe has existed.
Needless to say, this points rather strongly to the idea that we, as humans, and even life on earth as a whole, did not evolve due to mutation primarily, but due to GMO viruses, which essentially "share" the discoveries of lower, very short lived protozoa with higher lifeforms like ourselves.
* in reality DNA (in eukaryots, like humans) looks a hell of a lot like a filesystem. Genes have symbolic names (which are just a sequence of basepairs, which then get indexed. Genes can refer to one another using this symbolic name). They have length data, they even have what might be termed permissions ("only translate this gene if protein X is present in at least concentration Y" is one of them). They have small non-translateable programs that get executed by the cell nucleus to do something (in most cases we don't know what exactly) before actually using the gene. They have small programs associated with them that rewrite the gene when executed upon normal cell division. They have small sections that get executed during meiosis (which is the cell division used for procreation, sometimes jokingly referred to as sex division, since that's what it's used for) (an example is code that essentially does this : "mommies_hla_code = hla_code; while(hla_code == mommies_hla_code) hla_code = random(297)", which resets one of the access codes for the immune system, but makes sure that, for the first few months after birth, mommie's access codes will work correctly, and her cells can operate inside the feutus/baby without getting massacred by the child's immune system).
The DNA double helix we all know is a "serialized" form of DNA that isn't effectively present in the cell during normal operation (only during division). Instead the double helix is unrolled and present as a networked structure, which uses molecular "ropes", for example, link the symbolic names of a gene to the actual gene (think of it this way, if you have "int c = 5;" somewhere in the DNA code, during normal cell operation everywhere you find an actual use of "c", e.g. "translate(c)" you would find a physical thread that you can follow to arrive at the "int c = 5;" declaration). There are also a lot of proteins, which we mostly do not know, that execute all those bits of metadata coupled with genes.
The weird part is that we haven't yet found the DNA that encodes the function of the cell nucleus. I mean, given that we've found it in pretty much every other organelle, we're pretty fucking sure we will find it eventually ... but if you want a nobel prize, finding this would probably get you one, especially if it's somehow weird, which is entirely possible.