Slashdot Mirror
Hidden Viral Gene Discovered In GMO Crops
Jeremiah Cornelius writes "Researchers with the European Food Safety Authority discovered variants of the Cauliflower mosaic virus 35S in the most widely harvested varieties of genetically-modified crops, including Monsanto's RoundupReady Soy and Maze. According to the researchers, Podevin and du Jardin, the particular 'Gene VI' is responsible for a number of possible consequences that could affect human health, including inhibition of RNA silencing and production of proteins with known toxicity. The EFSA is endorsing 'retrospective risk assessment' of CaMV promoter and its Gene VI sequences — in an attempt to give it a clean bill of health. It is unknown if the presence of the hidden viral genes were the result of laboratory contamination or a possible recombinant product of the resultant organism. There are serious implications for the production of GMO for foodstuffs, given either possibility."
Can't be all bad.
In French "Podevin" or "Pot de vin" (jar of wine) means "bribe".
I would have expected this guy to side with the GMO companies.
Now even the scientists are anti-science!
The clone wars have...
But is it found in non-GMO plants? We've seen latent genes from virii in many plants and animals.
What do you have to say now, Mark Lynas? Maybe you should have waited another couple of weeks ...
licet differant, aequabitur
The danger with GMO crops is what we don't know about gene splicing and the like. This is a prime example of my point. Despite all their supposed safe guards, genes with unknown potential have entered the food chain. This might be the next BSE in the food supply.
this has been kicking around for ~20 years. have we seen health effects that can be attributed to this particular gene sequence yet?
btw, slashdot, you're a bit slow on the uptake with this one. this story has been on my facebook feed for a couple of days.
My first thought is to ask whether it's a product of the genetic modifications, or if all plants have some of it. Is the cauliflower mosaic virus used in genetic modification?
If there is indeed unexpected, and potentially dangerous, DNA introduced during the genetic modification process, that's definitely a factor to consider in regulation. But if it's just something you'll find in any (ahem) garden-variety tomato, then it's merely an interesting tidbit of evolution.
Because.. SCIENCE!
I'll just link to this post that explains what the news reports misunderstood. It contains quotes from the original authors of the study whose results are misrepresented here.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
If GMO is so safe, why do the food-industry fight so hard to avoid labelling the products?
is knowing I can grow an entire maze with just one seed.
Is it one of them corn mazes?
This space available.
There are many questions one should ask:
* 1. Why is that viral gene in there?
* 2. Was it put there by accident or by purpose?
* 2(a). If by accident, how, when, what happened?
* 2(b). If by purpose, why, and by whom?
* 3. How come the American scientists never detected this viral gene?
* 3(a). Was it because of incompetence, or was it because the American scientists were not allowed to publish their finding, if they had found it before the Europeans?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Queue conspiracy theory #843842: They're planning to wipe out the human species, one modified corn husk at a time.
So lets see... two FRENCH researchers found something bad in GMO crops? And that it's either lab contaminants or something legit, and they published anyway? Wow, they're trolling the world.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Suck it you Monsanto loving Nazi bitches. FUCK YOU.
Yes, ban this pseudonym for speaking the truth and rubbing it in your fucking faces.
-Q'plah my fellow luddites.
...Will also screw those eating their products.
Seriously?
According to the source linked by TFA:
Multiple variants of the Cauliflower mosaic virus 35S promoter (P35S) are used to drive the expression of transgenes in genetically modified plants, for both research purposes and commercial applications.
So, right away we learn that it wasn't a "hidden viral gene". Its known and expected that P35S would be present.
A bioinformatic analysis was performed to assess the safety for human and animal health of putative translation products of gene VI overlapping P35S. No relevant similarity was identified between the putative peptides and known allergens and toxins, using different databases.
So again, nothing that might be been produced (but in fact have not been seen - hence "putative") by this gene's presence was found.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
How cum the Europeans find this stuff out and we can't.
No, I am currently alive. I wish to remain that way, until either my mind or my body decides that unable to continue doing so.
As such, I attempt to avoid what toxic and poisonous substances I can.
Just because my life is finite does not mean I go around huffing gas and drinking bleach.
When I purchase fresh produce, I do with the assumption that it is not, in fact, going to poison me any more that providing fuel and nutrients to my cells. Aging is poisons, you see.
You are correct in one manner though;
I am worried about a grain of rice. A grain of rice that came from a crop. A crop that could be feeding hundreds, if not thousands of people.
A grain of poison, in a grain of rice, feed to hundreds of people.
Sounds pretty scary in that case.
I'm not a tinfoil hat type who won't touch GMO because of any silly number of silly new age concerns or paranoid fantasies. But, that doesn't mean people don't have aright to know what they eat. Sure labeling won't solve problems like in TFA, but anything additional that informs consumers is a good thing. And knowing the potential pitfalls of different food choices should be a right. The current inability of shoppers in the US to know what foods are GMO means consumers have no choice. It also leads to suspicion and support to the luddite part of the anti-GMO crowd.
Labeling is the first step to educating the public on GMOs and what they provides as well as potential impacts worldwide from GMO such as increased yield (with less chemicals) on one hand, and things like genetic diversity concerns and the role of seed/pesticide suppliers and patents on the other. The reason labeling here is so opposed by the industry isn't because of some conspiracy or concern that customers will decide to stop eating their product, or radically change their diet. Americans have known what we eat and its volume are deadly and McDonalds hasn't been shut down.
Instead the reason behind non-labeling is to keep the status quo, labels on food mean questions, questions lead to competing information and the rise of the conspiracy theorist. Not having to label is just the path of least resistance. But keeping a few loud mouth idiots quiet isn't a good reason to not engage honestly with the public about a very profound change in the way we produce food, and quality to support a growing population.
and unintended consequences.. and if we are talking "germ line" modifications, and post-release, then whatta ya' gonna do ? A *fine* ?!?
F* this
Contamination of a organisms genetics with pieces of virus DNA happens in nature ALL THE TIME. It is only because this is a GMO crop that it was tested, and found.
When the testing is finished, this may well be found to be a bit of perfectly natural, happened in the field, no-scientists-required genetic mangling.
The only difference with GM is it is done in a carefully controlled manner with a known goal, and carefully tested to determine any unwanted side effects. Random, uncontrolled genetic modification, whose consequences are totally unknowable, is completely natural.
As it is, one of the later posters linked to an article that actually looked at the research paper in question. It searched the known genomes for known toxic genomes, and found nothing. It found one possible thing that might be allergenic, looked at it further and ruled it out as well.
In the end, they found a possible cause for a GMO to be less effective - stunted growth, late flowering - and concluded that this is something that geneticists should look out for.
To finish, we have yet another study that shows how GM is completely safe. And how the media is totally untrustworthy when it comes to providing information. OH, and the article makes my point about natural virus proteins, too.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
every plant and animal anyone has ever eaten contains multiple copies of viral genes. this sounds like silly FUD stuff
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jan/22/reduce-food-waste-campaigners
So we're starving and GM crops will save us..?
Not, you know, refraining from throwing out one third of our food. That's just insufficient??
The next obvious step is to label ALL food with the exact sequence of the plant/animal. Educated consumers will then easily be able to determine the safety and even the flavorfulness of their food. Don't like that pesky CMV promoter? Don't eat it. This is a much superior proposal to the worthless "GMO" label, that only tells you if some scientist did something (no telling what). And, you'll find out what all of those changes inserted with "natural" techniques involve -- most of which are far more "interesting" than the GMO modifications. Might take some space on the label, of course, but use a small font.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maize
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maze
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maize_maze
There are many questions that can be answered.
In this particular case by reading The Fine Article.
Even better, TFA can point out better questions with salient answers.
Who knew?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
It's highly likely intentional. The CaMV 35s promoter sequence is widely used in transgenic plants to drive expression of the desired transgene.
See:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v313/n6005/abs/313810a0.html
http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/17770331/reload=0;jsessionid=SY64O3k1HZ5Ld0j3FpKq.20
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC401147/
To give a little bit of a simplified background, there are three critical elements in gene expression:
PROMOTER
TRANSCRIPTION FACTORS
GENE
PROTEIN
The PROMOTER is a genetic sequence that comes UPSTREAM of a GENE which is recognized by TRANSCRIPTION FACTORS
TRANSCRIPTION FACTORS bind to PROMOTER sequences and start the transcription of the GENE found downstream of the PROMOTER into mRNA
The mRNA of the GENE is then transported out of the nucleus to ribosomes to be translated into functional PROTEIN products
What the authors of this paper believed was that the sequence of the CaMV 35s promoter is similar to a viral protein used by many RNA viruses to protect their RNA from degradation (P6) so *IF* the CaMV promoter sequence itself is translated instead of the downstream gene (this is assumed to be possible, has not been observed) they hypothesized that it *MAY* have some functionality of the P6 protein. The odds of the CaMV promoter itself being translated into a protein are so remote that the possibility that it makes the (infinitesimal) odds that such a protein product would be functional seem astronomical be comparison. Furthermore, the authors never actually showed that the CaMV promoter is ever translated nor whether its translated product is functional, they merely compared the potential structure and sequence of the translated product to databases of known allergens and toxins and found.... nothing.
What a load of FUD.
1: Monsanto put it there
2: On purpose
2b: Monsanto put it there to control the world
3: American scientists did not test the GM crops.
3b: neither, the crops were untested.
Actually, 1 and 2 are bullshit (most likely), but if you've followed the GM and anti GM saga (or just look it up) you'll find my answers to 3 and 3b are accurate.
I have the same issue with the current generation of GMO that I have with radical politics. The existing systems have evolved methods of dealing with various issues that we humans may perceive as problematic (largely we see them this way due to them causing suffering to fellow humans). They deal very well with what is thrown at them while it's within tolerable levels. To change this requires some level of evolution. Evolution takes time, perhaps sociological evolution is more rapid than genetic, although on a philosophical basis I'd claim that we don't have the capacity to even measure these things let alone compare them. So I suppose it's more correct for me to say "adaptation takes time".
Keeping with the analogy GMO is akin to radical politics is akin to revolution. Now name me any one revolution that wasn't accompanied by great suffering. Arguably the suffering is the cause and not the effect. I'd suggest however that the true cause surely has to be a radical change somewhere in a balanced system. So I'd suggest we should concentrate on evolution, not revolution. While I myself cannot think of ways to mitigate against such an effect and still indulge in genetic modification I'll not try and claim such mitigations are impossible. Although the people judging the value of the "advances" (and hence the required level of mitigation) will likely not be the same as those suffering the consequences.
So basically the above is why I tend towards a radical left-wing conservative view. I see where I want us to be, I also see how we must take baby steps to get there or risk creating more problems than solutions.
1. It's a part of a gene. It was cloned because of the promoter sequence that drives the expression of the transgene. (Viral promoters are very convinient - small but powerfull). Along with the promoter the transgenes carry a portion of a viral gene. Not sure why. Most likely because regulatory elements necessary for the promotor to work are embeded in the coding part.
2. It is on purpose. They need it to drive the expression of the gene that they put into the plants.
3. They didn't have to. They and everybody else new about it all along. I don't realy understand why it had to be "detected". It was there by design that is published in many research papers.
The paper quoted in the summary is useless junk.
While you'd have held my interest if your argument was, "In nature's humble opine, there are too many great hominoid's for the balance of present resources and ecosystems." , the convenient renouncing of a former cheerleader falls south of the too-good-to-be-true bar. Npsqiz tbzt, 'if there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, then someone will do it.'
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
The problem is not the modification of the genes themselves, which is what selective breeding does, it's the lack of testing of the modified genes on animals and then on humans.
A lot of modifications are being added to "turn off" crops without specific promotors. Mostly to keep revenue - otherwise you could just keep the seeds from the crops and grow your own second and subsequent crops from the first batch. But nobody knows if those "silencers" may have other impacts on humans.
Because the FDA doesn't test that.
I'm not saying it's bad, just that we literally do not know if it does have an actual impact on humans, or if subsequent materials in the environment may cause it to behave differently. That could be harmless. Or it could be bad.
Here, hold this nuclear hand grenade. It's safe. Trust me.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Cauliflower mosaic virus infects various different plants that you eat (yes, even non-gmo "organically grown" ones) including turnips.
You already get fully formed protein VI in any of them you eat that were infected. So, this isn't something new. We've been eating the protein they're upset about for millenia at least.
The sequence for protein VI overlaps part of this 35S promoter that's used in some genetics work. It's not normally expressed (changed from DNA into the active protein) and in fact they couldn't find any evidence that it ever was.
So, they asked the question "what if" this thing we never see happen did by some miracle happen. And when they did, they still couldn't find anything that looked dangerous. But, being scientists, they said they couldn't absolutely, completely, absitively and posolutely rule out any effects on the plants themselves.
So, there you have it. The thing we never see happen, even if it did happen is the same as something that already happens all the time for the past millenia with no known ill effects.
Did a search on the thread on the keyword 'Illuminati'.. was disappointed..
Hahaha, they EAT it! They really eat it!
May Maisy have an amazing maize maze, Aunt May?
Because they're pushing this kind of ignorant anti-science propaganda.
Well, aren't we bright!
After all those degrees, and all I achieved was a mutated humanity.
1. Why is that viral gene in there?
When you insert a new gene (such as an herbicide resistance gene in Monsanto's Roundup Ready crops) into a plant, you also need to insert a piece of DNA called a promoter that tells the plant to turn the gene on. The scientists who created the GMOs chose to insert the promoter from the cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV), as it is particularly good at this task and is very well studied. This promoter also happens to include part, but not the entirety, of gene VI from the virus.
* 2. Was it put there by accident or by purpose? * 2(a). If by accident, how, when, what happened? * 2(b). If by purpose, why, and by whom?
As stated above, the fragment of gene VI was placed into the GMOs on purpose. Because fragments of genes are generally inactive, the presence of the gene fragment is not expected to be problematic and showed no evidence of causing problems during the testing of the GMOs. Furthermore, because cauliflower mosaic virus is a naturally occurring virus, the full gene VI can be found in many non-GMO crops (for example, see this 2004 study).
3. How come the American scientists never detected this viral gene? * 3(a). Was it because of incompetence, or was it because the American scientists were not allowed to publish their finding, if they had found it before the Europeans?
These findings were not published before because we already knew that many GMOs contain a fragment of CaMV gene VI. In fact, in the Podevin and du Jardin study, the authors "found" the gene VI fragments by simply querying a database. A more substantial finding would have been if they found evidence that the gene VI fragments are actually made into functional protein (a prerequisite for the gene VI fragment to cause any deleterious effects), but this study did not investigate this issue. Rather, the study simply looked at what proteins might be produced in the worst case scenario and concluded that any possible proteins made from the gene VI fragments are unlikely to be human allergens or toxins. The authors speculate these possible proteins could be harmful to the plant itself, but because many of these GMOs are very productive plants that produce high yields in commercial settings, this possibility seems unlikely.
1) Because a virus put it there. I'm no expert on the matter, but from my knowledge genetic engineering is usually done by isolating a desirable gene, replicating it in bacteria (or virus), then having a virus with the gene insert it into the target cell. Which then develops to a full blown organism with the new gene, hopefully. Of course, it's possible that the virus could have put other junk in there. I would like to point out that detecting viral DNA in any organism is by itself no cause for alarm. Hell, our own genomes are chalked full of garbage that viruses put there. Since that garbage doesn't really affect our survival or ability to reproduce, it hasn't been 'weeded' out. Same with plants.
2)That is unknown, though unlikely on purpose. For one thing, genetic modification isn't an exact science. It is possible that the gene in question had nothing to do with a lab; Monsanto's crops come from controlled strains. As we know quite well, if there's a big genetic change in a population when it's bottlenecking, it could easily spread throughout the entire population, and retroviruses are capable of (and often do) inserting extra sequences in the genome. It probably was accidental lab contamination, or a bad reverse transcription that added more than the scientists expected.
3) Now this is getting closer to the disciple I study and work for. First off, there is no table of contents in a cell that tells you what genes are present. And there is no label on a gene that says what it is, what it does, or even if it does something useful. Now, to put it into perspective, maize (corn) has about ~32,000 genes. All full of nothing but A's, C's, T's, and G's. So it's not something you can tell a couple interns to read through and report back if something doesn't look right. So this is a job for computer programs. That can run for up to days to finish. And require trained workers to both know to look for it, as well as actually look for it. Hence stuff like this is *very* *very* *VERY* easy to slip under the radar.
[/astroturf]
Not that I'm saying Monsanto is a nice hippy company with the well-being of society as its bottom line.
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
The issue here is not whether all genetic modification is safe, it is about the misleading reporting of a scientific article. The scientific community do have ethical concerns about safety, which is why such studies are performed in the first place.
In this particular instance, they were screening for toxins that could be produced in error by a sequence. In the particular gene they were looking at (one commonly used to promote expression of proteins for another inserted gene), they couldn't find any. This doesn't automatically make it safe, but it rules out a set of potential issues.
And remember, such allergens/toxins can be produced in non-modified organisms, which is why we even know about them in the first place.
Horrific mistakes in the safety protocols used to produce early oral polio vaccines for Africa gave us the disaster of HIV and AIDS, when viral infections previously found only in apes were introduced into the Human population in massive numbers via contaminated vaccines. What could NOT have happened naturally, because of the vanishingly small probabilities of inter-species communication, happened all too easily when man engaged in scientific engineering. By the way, claims that the link between OPV and AIDS has been 'disproven' are laughable, but the vaccine business is very effective at hiding the tremendous list of occasions when vaccines have been found to have viral contamination. There is even a video available where one of the 'fathers' of modern vaccination science is recorded howling with laughter, as he describes cancer-causing vaccines from the West that were provided to the Russians during cold-war times.
However, compared to killing kids with Human growth hormone extracted from corpses, giving cancer and HIV to people receiving contaminated vaccines, and giving haemophiliacs blood contaminated with HIV, mistakes with GMO are at a whole other level of risk.
It is a bit like the lunatics that say "nuclear weapons are good because they've kept the peace till now". It isn't the price you are currently paying, but the price you will pay in the end. The total cost of nuclear weapons MUST include the day they are used as an acceptable 'military' option, like Obama's death drones are today. Likewise, the total cost of GMO must include the unexpected horrific mistakes that could never have occurred with natural evolution.
The scum that tell you that GMO science is no different than thousands of years of Human selective plant breeding are fully aware of their lies. No amount of selective plant breeding would ever move the genetic material from animals into plants. GMO science is 'hacking' in the clearest sense, where Human perception of 'meaning' is used to drive the hacking choices. Now, I seem to recall that most of you here do NOT believe in 'intelligent design', so obviously your understanding of evolution is that it is based on 'random' occurences that have significant likelihood. On the other hand, GMO engineering IS intelligent design, and can create outcomes whose probability of occurring naturally would be almost infinitely unlikely.
Without 'intelligent design', there is NOTHING to protect naturally occurring life from attack vectors created by GMO engineering. Or do you think life just magically happens to have inbuilt resistance to GMO attack strategies, just because it scares or depresses you to think otherwise?
When we placed the HIV virus into the bodies of hundreds of thousands of Africans, the outcome was hardly surprising. This is the power of Mankind's scientific knowledge, and engineering prowess. Afterwards, the best we can do is play the "it wasn't our fault" game, which hardly ensures lessons will be learnt from the contaminated OPV fiasco. The GMO companies work even harder to ensure a "never blame us" culture in the scientific regulatory bodies, using their immense financial clout to distort reality, and buy fake scientific consensus. When you hear "we all agree" from the mouths of government approved 'scientists', you better believe that science is the last thing on the minds of these people.
Soviet Russia was a rational and scientific nation- that gave the world some of the most polluted places on the planet. All you can trust a scientist to do is to do 'science'. If it had so happened that nuclear science in the 1940s had discovered that a single H-bomb would have been powerful enough to blow the whole planet to smithereens, the nuclear scientists would have completed their research un-fazed, and happily delivered such a planet busting device. It is mere happy coincidence that the most powerful nuclear warheads made by man deliver such a small punch.
So GMO risks everything, and for what? Better crops? Nonsense. We know enough about farming and p
We're sorry, but you know the rules. Only one question per post..
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Never been known to fail..."
Were these crops developed using gene cannons? They are not exactly precision instruments.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Sadly, your comments will be ignored, and the distorted half-truths will spread, and still be repeated a decade from now. The fear of GMO will spread also, much like the fear of vaccines, and just as harmfully.
I wonder if this story is going... to go viral. *is shot*
Correct. What happens when corn that normally didn't have a particular allergen in it becomes the standard then though? All people who previously could eat naturally selected for corn, suffer GMO corn allergy.
Sometimes allergies take time to develop with exposure to. Given 50 years, we might see a specifically high number of people allergic to GMO because our bodies went WTF. This last little bit is highly speculative though, but enough to say pushing the human race to a 100% GMO perfected utopia is not an ideal to strive for. Does not nullify my distrust and dislike of Monsanto and the idea of tinkering with nature.
In other words, this was blown out of proportion by people who don't know much about contemporary biology. This promoter business was something that was pounded into my head in high school, for crying out loud, and while I have forgotten most details, wikipedia and other sources are literally a few clicks away. Yeah, editors are useless here, that's nothing new :(
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Monsanto will be rounding up a posse!
And just how is this reassuring, given that the overall function of the human genome was only recently determined to contain 25-30,000 genes and scientists are still working out how most it works, let alone how natural selection effects selection, epigenetic expression or inheritance, especially wihin cytoplasmic DNA, of which most people aren't even aware?
You have to be truly ignorant of our ignorance to find any comfort in any of this.
What wonderful names for researchers in agricultural field: Podevin translates from french into "pot of wine", and du Jardin translates into "of the garden"
If you live in Pakistan and are a bad guy (TM) your risk assessment should always be biased against vaccines, unfortunate as it may be to the generally good willed people you are about to execute.
Not every vaccine is safe, not everyone should be forced to choose the same as you do in this regard.
So a stray bit of DNA got through without the rigorous testing regime noticing it? That's hardly surprising. It's high time genetic "engineers" reviewed the lessons of software validation. We know that only the most trivial programs can be tested empirically. Serious software validation involves a spectrum of methods that go way beyond testing, including formal proofs (a rare luxury) and, most particularly, code inspection. Nothing beats a human brain (or better still, a team of brains) poring over source code, exploring it mentally, looking for logic errors, or stray elements that just don't make sense. But you have to understand the code you're reading. So I've long been concerned that they just cannot know enough about how DNA works to be able to meaningfully code-inspect the products of recombinant genetic engineering (although in the reported case, perhaps a simple inspection of the sequence would have spotted the viral gene fragment; does anyone even read the sequence before a GMO goes into production?). The great surprise reported in Nature last year than junk DNA isn't junk goes to show how immature the basic science of genetics still is. It's presumptuous indeed to call it genetic "engineering" when they swap sequences (sub-routines) between organisms without a full understanding of how genes are expressed. Empirical black box testing is the only tool available for validating GMOs, but any software engineer will tell you, that's not enough. There can be very little confidence in any amount of testing of such a complex system as a modified genome. See a longer presentation of the argument here: http://lockstep.com.au/blog/2011/01/15/not-ready-for-gm.
That's so true! It's just like the Cane Toad in Australia. It has been very effective at controlling pest insects on sugar cane fields ever since it was introduced in 1935, but the nay sayers are still convinced that the toads are an invasive species that are leading to severe breakdowns in Australian ecology. The nay sayers add to the hype by claiming that the cane toads are a nuissance to areas of human habitation, or even suggesting that there are risk of children or pets being poisoned from contact with toads.
They complain about the imagined threat posed by innocent little toads, but will they admit that they would be willing to go back 80 years and raise cane without the toads? Who could possibly imagine such a world so primitive as to even attempt to raise cane without cane toads? It is totally preposterous! If they weren't growing cane, what else could they have possibly grown in Queensland?
And a warning to those of us who support GMO with our hearts, souls, and wallets: They naysayers actually succeeded in getting the Australian government to ban importation of cane toads just after the initial release until a study could be completed to show that they were harmless. Fortunately for the industry, and the economy of Queensland, the ban was lifted in 1936. The danger posed by fearmongers who do not understand modern science and technology should not be under estimated. Just think - if the naysayers had their way, maybe there wouldn't even be ANY cane toads in Queensland today.
Astounding how we managed to survive for a couple hundred thousand years without having a clue about the human genome. Not to mention an equally long stretch of time that our lesser ancestors held sway.
During that time we've eaten just about everything, interbread just about every plant and animal we could, promptly eating anything that resulted.
In the last couple thousand years we've ingested chemical about as fast as we could invent them, as long as the donkeys or lab rats didn't die when we try it out on them.
It's time for you to exist the basement and learn about life on earth.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
There are many questions one should ask:
* 1. Why is that viral gene in there?
* 2. Was it put there by accident or by purpose?
* 2(a). If by accident, how, when, what happened?
* 2(b). If by purpose, why, and by whom?
* 3. How come the American scientists never detected this viral gene?
* 3(a). Was it because of incompetence, or was it because the American scientists were not allowed to publish their finding, if they had found it before the Europeans?
Here's another question you can add:
* 4. Why the fuck don't we test GMO crops for 20+ years before we start feeding them to people, and esp. children?
The answer to this and all your other questions is "we're morons, but profit is king". I'm all for science, and I realize genetcially modifying foods is what humans have always done, but never at this speed until recently. Personally I don't take drugs that haven't been on the market for at least two decades... I'd like to be able to take the same stance on GMO foods, but the lobbyists don't like the idea of giving me the information I require to make decisions regarding foodstuffs by requiring "This Contains Genetically Engineered Food" on labels.
I stay up to date on bioengineering and other life sciences, but it seems that most people don't understand that we really are fucking idiots when it comes to this stuff. It's like blindly copy & pasting huge swaths of code and changing a few numbers in a complex genetics program because it seems to have some of the results we want, but we really don't know if it has only the results we want, we don't really know what the fuck we're doing. We're like those fools who know just enough about computers to be dangerous, only instead of frying their systems we risk harming millions or billions of humans. ::sigh:: It's "patience" that's the virtue, not "patients"... If I ever tackle a problem that's beyond my power / knowledge, where I don't know exactly what I'm doing then I step back and say so, do more research, I don't just plow ahead heedlessly thinking: "What can possibly go wrong?!" then push the uncertain code into production...
I wouldn't want to eat food that's made this way!
Ugh, Humans, what a crap species: Brains just the right size to end all sentient life on the planet, and with just enough motivation to do so accidentally. There's the answer to your Fermi paradox, folks.
This is Slashdot. We hate technology and science.
1. The way you insert a gene into a living thing is you use a virus.
2. See above
3. It was. The French scientists are lying when they say they "detected it." What they actually did was read research American scientists did.
The important question to me is has this gene actually done anything bad. The answer is I highly doubt it. I suspect Europe's equivalent of Monsanto has simply figured out it can make a lot of nasty-sounding press releases about it, and thereby keep Monsanto out of the market. This will also allows them to keep their African neighbors dependent on them for agricultural technology because if the European public won't buy GMO products then Africa's agriculture can't use sell American-derived crops in Europe, which makes it virtually impossible for them to use American agricultural techniques.
If you want to know why I'm so skeptical the answer is simple:
We've been eating this shit in America for decades. Over-eating it. We're fucking fat. We didn't get that way eating Heritage tomatoes from the locally-grown food co-op. If this kind of thing actually has bad health effects they will show up in our numbers, yet instead of looking for said bad health effects in our numbers the Euros are going through our research line-by-line for things that cannot be disproven without years of studies.
No shit in a totally new technology you found something, that if weird things happen, could kill people., The question is do weird things happen? Europe is not willing to spend the money to find that out, but I have no doubt their researchers are going through these studies again trying to find another way GMO crops will clearly kill everyone.
Honestly, slashdot.. fuck you. I'm not old, but too old for this shit. Yeah I missed the fucking subject. Just say "error" and highlight the fucking field (like the rest of the world).
Look we have this poison that will kill any plant it comes near, and leave nothing but a barren wasteland of dead dirt...
Now look, we made this corn that you can douse in the previously mentioned poison, and it will continue to grow despite the fact that everything else that comes near it shrivels up and promptly dies...
Of course it's safe to eat, and causes no long term health problems... It is as good for you as the non-poisoned variety, we designed, and tested it...
Bull Fucking Shit...
They're untested you say? No they aren't.
And thats why I didn't bother to read the article, post several flames, and proceed to read the +5 informative replies that change my perspective on this virus DNA injection thing.
I still dislike Monsanto on philosophical grounds ;)
... and millions of people have died and become gravely ill because of it. You're not going to tell me that because lots of people ingested harmful chemicals and developed cancer and terrible, terrible conditions because of it, the human race as a whole should keep on ingesting (patent-able!) feedstock from a company that's so interwoven with the government that it's earned a basic degree of effective immunity for its actions.
I've had one friend die from lung complications and another deal with lifelong diabetes and a skin condition due to exposure to chemicals Monsanto and Dow were contracted to develop. I do not trust this company with turning my food into closed-source fodder made to sell RoundUp. If there were lean, open biohacking firms that were able to operate, I would support proper testing of their GMOs and I would trust the community much more than I'd trust such a vile group as Monsanto, but the fact is that the patents and legal restrictions bought off by Monsanto make that impossible.
But I really did start reading the article. I stopped when I saw the reference to the Seralini paper that's been widely discredited. If you want to have a reasonable discussion and cite scientific papers, great! But citing propaganda isn't science. It's junk.
Greed clouds ones ability to think rationally, that goes for Corporations as well. Furthermore, this isn't some smartphone app that has buggy code, crashes, and causes some geeks to be annoyed. We're talking about possibly dangerous genes being transferred from plants to humans and causing long term genetic problems through the generations because of gene transfer.
It's not a problem one can easily dismiss nor is such concern about corporations messing it up irrational, it is in fact highly rational based on the track record of such entities whose only concern is maximizing profit.
doesn't the Monsanto patent expire soon? could that have something to do with it?
When you insert a new gene (such as an herbicide resistance gene in Monsanto's Roundup Ready crops) into a plant, you also need to insert a piece of DNA called a promoter that tells the plant to turn the gene on. The scientists who created the GMOs chose to insert the promoter from the cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV), as it is particularly good at this task and is very well studied. This promoter also happens to include part, but not the entirety, of gene VI from the virus
And from this observation--that part of a gene was left intact in order to act as a promoter to express a desired gene--TFA jumps to the conclusion that this gene could interfere with RNA silencing/human health/OMG the world is going to end. Assuming that the promoter is somehow translated into a gene product, which would be an aberration unto itself, you have to jump to the conclusion that 1) the partial gene would produce functional gene products, 2) in sufficient quantities to affect a human and 3) that they would survive digestion with enough potency to impact human health. I don't claim to be an expert, but outside of prion diseases, most food-born illnesses are bacterial because proteins and RNA don't survive the gut.
There are certainly legitimate concerns over GMO, but articles like this promote FUD in the public that you're going to get AIDS from drinking Pepsi because the high-fructose corn syrup was derived from GMO corn. I am constantly having to talk family members off the ledge because they think GMO = poison because words like "transgenic," "gene," "viral DNA," etc. sound scary when what is in fact far scarier is "Monstanto IP lawyer."
Actually, I wrote my thesis on life experience.
The PS5S is not the hidden viral gene. Gene VI is the hidden viral gene and it was just discovered to be contained in PS5S.
You know, irony is not easily understood online.
n/t
Not a virologist, but your response doesn't sound kosher. I don't see anywhere in your references, or any scientific citation linked by anyone at this site, anything at all to suggest that Gene VI insertion was at all Intentional.
I somehow doubt that it is...but, of course, that would make transgenic technology far less precise than biotechnologist would love people to believe--
which it is not.
Anyone making an analogy that we have been ingesting CaMV with veggies all along, so it must be safe--is drinking Cool Aid, We certainly weren't ingesting Gene VI in a transgenic crop carrying antibiotic resistance markers, EPSPS's, Bt, and random superfluous other pieces of DNA
Gene VI isn't just a simple protein; it has multiple functions. Since Gene VI alters RNA silencing and transactivates (http://www.pnas.org/content/86/23/9203.full.pdf) the products of each individual transgenic crop are unpredictable and unknown--could be mutant proteins, toxins, allergens or be harmless. No one knows. And anyone who tells you that they can rule out a food allergy by doing a bioinformatics search for protein homology, has never once worked with a food allergy patient, because the inconvenient truth is that the gold standard of food allergy diagnosis is a placebo controlled blinded food trial... in real life. There are no in vitro tests or homology tests that are precise enough to predict food allergy..... which is why each transgenic crop needs to be uniquely labeled with some sort of a code enabling tracing it to its specific genetic modification.
I doubt any calculations can end in a result that indicates that junk food is cheaper than fresh fruit 'n vegies, plus the required quantity of natural balanced protein sources, prepared at home in healthy portions.
The problem is that maybe the people you are referring to lack motivation, were badly brought up, born into families of multi-generational violence/substance abuse/ignorance/welfare/etc, have mental health issues, etc,etc & thus are domestically dysfunctional.
Quite, though I'm not convinced by the first link's suggestion that this could be a human health issue. As a scientist I've got to say it's not a great article, there's a rather obvious attempt to shoe horn a health scare into the analysis, to say nothing of smearing a regulatory body. (The latter in spite of a full public disclosure.)
As for the substance of the science. Yes, gene VI is toxic to plants but it's toxic when expressed inside a cell, so while it may be a danger to an infected plant it's got serious hurdles to leap before it gets expressed in a mammalian cell. I'd also note that while ribosomes are highly conserved, plant and mammalian ribosomes are not identical, so even if the protein was expressed in a human cell it's by no means certain to be functional. Moreover, it appears this isn't even the full length Gene VI, so it would by no means be functional even in plants.
At most there's a risk to the GM crop in the form of a reduced viral resistance, that's a threat to Monsanto's bottom line more than anything else.
On the whole I'm not impressed with the editorial commentary by Latham and Wilson, there's more than a whiff of axe grinding and self promotion. "Independent science news is clearly a misnomer". I hope they've written this letter to the journal in question, rather than jeering from the sidelines.
It's time for you to exit the basement and learn about modern genetic manipulation and how it differs from random evolutionary effects shaped in large populations by selective pressure.
Not everyone who is cautious of "The latest thing"(tm) is a luddite. Some of us work with these things and know also what we DON'T know and some times that can be a bit scary.
The EU is wise to adopt a caution-first approach in general with its treatment of GMO foods. The more we study, the more we learn. You, apparently, do not, as you've already decided what the outcome is.
Is it true that the only/easiest way to kill a cane toad is by putting it in a plastic bag (carefully, you don't want too much of their toxin on your hands) and popping it in the freezer?
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
Here's another question you can add: * 4. Why the fuck don't we test GMO crops for 20+ years before we start feeding them to people, and esp. children?
Does that go for all new cultivars, or GMO ones? If it goes for all cultivars, how would that have effected the green revolution? If it only applies to GMOs, why?
I'd like to be able to take the same stance on GMO foods, but the lobbyists don't like the idea of giving me the information I require to make decisions regarding foodstuffs by requiring "This Contains Genetically Engineered Food" on labels.
Why not get the producers of non-GMO products to label their products in stead? They should have something to gain by doing it. Or learn for which plants GM cultivars are used, and only buy organic versions of products that contain those plants? AFAIK, only a handful of species have GM cultivars which are used in production, so what you ask for is possible today, and it only requires little effort.
Dang it--there you go using "Science" again. Why can't you be a good little leftist and repeat your sunday school--er, I mean GMO protest chants again.
Can somebody tell me if the CaMV promoter is a JUMP statement in DNA? Also is there a return as well?
So your theory then is that we're still here, therefore nothing is dangerous?
Will a cauliflower virus attack my smelly feet, or what?
Just maybe it might make cauliflower edible
mosaic cauliflower -- that new purple stuff is the result. Next thing you know they'll make white lumpy beets or something.
Quite, though I'm not convinced by the first link's suggestion that this could be a human health issue. As a scientist I've got to say it's not a great article, there's a rather obvious attempt to shoe horn a health scare into the analysis, to say nothing of smearing a regulatory body. (The latter in spite of a full public disclosure.)
Though the issues are not always the same, European scientists are susceptible to the same pressures as those in the U.S.—pressures brought to bear by political and economic interests. In this case the authors of the original article—Podevin and du Jardin—are, respectively, Italian and Belgian; both are employees of publicly funded institutions. As for the source of the first cited article—Independent Science News—it must be said that though they may be "independent" in some sense, they do have an agenda. Other articles linked to on the same page include "Feds grant $500k to genetically engineered livestock research: Terminator for Animals?", "Insecticide 'unacceptable' danger to bees, report finds", "New links between pesticides & Parkinson's", "Obama Administration Snubs Risks, Moves Forward With GE Salmon Approval" and so forth. These may all be unprejudiced articles containing nothing but true statements, but they do show a certain direction of interest.
As I said, there is substantial prejudice in the European Union against all genetically modified crops. This prejudice is fueled by economic interests that want to discourage the import of cheap produce from the United States, and are reinforced by draconian regulations of the European Union and the various National Governments, as well as media propaganda.
I am personally only familiar with Germany (where I was born and still have relatives that I visit regularly), but the people here have been brought to believe that any genetically engineered plant is pretty much the same thing as poison. Germans are willing to spend extra money for food labeled as "Bio", which could be translated as something like "organic". However, the "Bio" label actually means something in the EU, unlike "organic" in the United States. Produce marked as "Bio" must conform to strict government regulations (e.g. you can raise only 12 pigs per (some unit of land I can't remember). This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it shows that the entire attitude to food consumption and agricultural regulation in the EU is substantially different from that in the US.
What's unfortunate is the destructive effect of popular attitudes and governmental policies on scientific research. I doubt that it would be possible for any European scientists to publish a positive finding in regard to genetically modified crops and continue to receive any kind of public or private funds. The same is, of course, true of other "hot" buttons—such as "climate change" (Klimawechsel). The news media constantly push this issue not only as established fact, but as an imminent threat. The effectiveness of the propaganda was brought home to me when, during a conversation with a stranger—an elderly woman—at a bus stop, I chanced to remark on how much colder it is in Munich in January than in Texas. I was instantly subjected to a diatribe about Klimawechsel, and how the presence of a mere 2 cm of snow in January was a dire symptom of this threat. I did not dare disagree. It's snowed a good 12 centimeters since then; I hope she's happy. I had to shovel the snow out of my aunt's driveway...so I am somewhat less than happy.
I lament the global decline of science, though it is only one symptom of the decline of the West. Yeah, Spengler was right.
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
I trust that your pseudonym—Giftmacher("poison maker") is not too accurate, that you aren't actually engaged in the manufacture of poisons, eh? Visions of chemical warfare arise in my brain...
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
I highly recommend The World According to Monsanto (book or documentary). it puts this in perspective and attempts to illustrate how this company plays the long game and has historically caused massive human suffering. From Agent Orange to Round-Up ready, this company is dangerous.
Not a virologist, but your response doesn't sound kosher. I don't see anywhere in your references, or any scientific citation linked by anyone at this site, anything at all to suggest that Gene VI insertion was at all Intentional.
The point is that the 35S promoter and gene VI overlap in the viral genome, or to put it another way the same bit of sequence has multiple functions (this is common in viruses, which tend to make very efficient use of their genetic material).The sequence in question is at about 10 o'clock in this circular genome map:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CauliflowerMosaicRNA35S.png
The fine inner broken ring is the 35S transcript, and the promoter is at its 'blunt' end. This aligns with the 'sharp' end of gene VI ('TAV', in red).
If you use the promoter in a GM plant (as is commonly done) then you're inevitably also bringing along a fragment of the gene, since it's actually the same sequence. This is not the same thing as inserting the entire gene, of course, though the fragment may have some subset of the gene's multiple known functions. The DNA construct used to make the GM plants is not designed to express this fragment, but there's a possibility than once inserted in the host genome (depending on the surrounding sequence elements), the fragment could be expressed from some other promoter, making a protein that is eventually eaten by us.
That's so true! It's just like the Cane Toad in Australia. It has been very effective at controlling pest insects on sugar cane fields ever since it was introduced in 1935, but the nay sayers are still convinced that the toads are an invasive species that are leading to severe breakdowns in Australian ecology.
Of course, the major difference between cane toads in Australia and P6 in RR crops is that you can go to Australia and see cane toads, where all the people who have looked for the truncated P6 mRNA or protein that could, possibly, under very bizarre circumstances, be expressed in RR plants have failed to find it.
So, maybe a better comparison would be to suggest that importing the cane toad itself would be fine, except that some of them might be infected with Cane Toad Lungworm. Cane Toad Lungworm might then figure out how to infect humans and kill all our babies. RR crop: good; occult P6 fragment: bad. Cane Toads: good; Cane Toad Lungworm: bad.
This is easy to answer by reading the linked paper:
1. No viral gene is there. The *promotor* of a viral gene is there, and it is there to promote the expression of something else.
2. On purpose.
2(b). By Monsanto, to promote the expression of whatever transgene. Some promotor is necessary to make the transgene work; without it, the gene would sit there doing nothing. Properly speaking, a gene without promotor isn't actually a gene.
3. They knew the promotor was there. What they apparently overlooked is that this promotor overlaps the protein coding sequence of another gene. (Sounds weird, but weird things happen in viruses.) So if the promotor was actually expressed (ususally it isn't, it only causes the expression of stuff near it, and the linked article contains no indication that it is; they are simply *assuming* it *could* be), it would produce a fragment of said other viral protein.
3(a). Incompetence. More precisely, nobody actually cared. And indeed, why would you care what protein a sequence would code for if it was expressed when it isn't?
Not a virologist, but your response doesn't sound kosher. I don't see anywhere in your references, or any scientific citation linked by anyone at this site, anything at all to suggest that Gene VI insertion was at all Intentional.
one of the clever things about viruses is that, unlike more complex eukaryotic systems, their genes overlap. That is, the same segment of DNA, read 'forward' may be part of one protein, but read 'backward' be part of a completely different protein. Or the tail end of one gene may be the non-coding promoter for a completely different gene. That's the case for CaMV: the promoter overlaps with a fragment of the P6 coding seqeuence. CaMV's entire genome is so well known that it's mapped in Wikipedia. They've been working with the virus genome since at least the 1970s. And, as others have pointed out: plenty of the non-GM crops you eat already include the full length, transcribed, and functional P6 protein.
Car analogy: this is as new and surprising as a turbocharger. A turbocharger may shorten the life of your engine, and would wreck your hand if you managed to get it down into the works.
Its known and expected that P35S would be present.
It is only supposed to be present in the lab, the actual crop you grown isn't supposed to have it. They use it during development only.
So again, nothing that might be been produced (but in fact have not been seen - hence "putative") by this gene's presence was found.
... in some databases. It is not certified for human consumption, and they are not scrambling to get that certification. So what TFA is saying is that on paper it looks okay but needs proper testing to determine if that is in fact the case.
Monsanto screwed up big time. They put something in our food that isn't known to be safe and that wasn't supposed to be there. The proper thing would be to destroy all affected crops and produce, but that would be expensive and Monsanto would have to pay vast compensation so instead they are just hoping that it turns out to be safe, or if not that they can bribe the relevant people.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
This is the single most insightful observation in the entire GMO debate. If GMO is the better way, then naturally, the proponents of GMO should want to label their products as clearly and obviously as possible.
Yet what we see is the exact opposite. In fact, they spend millions fighting against this very proposal. If that doesn't raise an enormous red flag, your brain is malfunctioning.
And it's common in nature, in fact the human genome is full of them.
Is it true that the only/easiest way to kill a cane toad is by putting it in a plastic bag (carefully, you don't want too much of their toxin on your hands) and popping it in the freezer?
False. Like any squishy animal, they die when you drive over them, and that's pretty easy. Alternatively, set fire to the area and they'll suffocate and burn. Easy as arson!
(No, I'm not suggesting you do that. I'm suggesting that your question is utterly foolish as even a moment of thought would reveal.)
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
Is it true that the only/easiest way to kill a cane toad is by putting it in a plastic bag (carefully, you don't want too much of their toxin on your hands) and popping it in the freezer?
I'm sure stepping on them is pretty easy. They aren't that big or dangerous.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
I do wonder how this is news. There does not exist such a thing as a cell that's not infected with any virus. Just doesn't exist. So one has to wonder why this is news in the first place ?
So yes, they have an agenda.
(in human cells, we have so far isolated 21 viruses. Those are not viruses that you have been infected with, or even viruses that all humans are infected with, although there's probably several of those in pretty much all human cells as well, like bof. But the 21 viruses are built in to human DNA. That means one of the species that was a precursor to the human species got infected with those viruses and they've been replicated down, all the way, into every human alive. 21.
The same, obviously, happens to plants. And genetically modified plants are ... not an exception to this. Magnificent discovery !
The reason you're not sick from all these viruses is simple. Think Darwinism. Once a virus has "won" and has infected a decent percentage of all humans alive. Then what is it's "fitness" function for evolution ? Why, the one from it's host species. So these viruses actually help (in fact there are more and more scientists claiming that these viruses are the real way humans evolve. Because if you calculate the odds of a beneficial mutation in humans, you always end up with astronomical odds against (lots of basepairs, random mutations, and very long generation cycles means mutation doesn't work). So how do we ever get beneficial mutations ? Viruses copy genes around from cells that do have good odds for beneficial mutations into our gonads, and the kids get those viruses, and the beneficial mutations, as a result of that infection. Nobody's seen it happen, so it's a theory only, but then again, nobody's seen beneficial random mutation happening either, outside of the movie theater. Negative random mutations, yes, we've seen plenty of those. Positive ones ? Zilcho).
Very squishy (you'd probably have to do a two-footed jump to kill them) and smelly though. It'd take months to get the stench off of your boots.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
In addition to that, I dislike them on moral grounds :)
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Neither is rational logic, especially for pseudoskeptics.
Captcha: iceberg
We don't need any of the above questions answered now. All we need to know is: 1. Should we be allowing this stuff into the food supply? The answer clearly is NO. Once we get rid of it, then we can start to asses blame and sue Monsanto out of business. Answering those questions first is like trying to assess blame for a fire while the house is still on fire.
Consider Olestra chips. Everybody "knows" it causes cramping. Except blind studies show it causes slightly less cramping than normal chips.
Meanwhile the chip contribution to obesity and diabetes and heart disease continues unhampered.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Why did nobody tell me my car contained gasoline??!!!
GOD DAMN IT! It wasn't on the window sheet!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Actual measurement shows people living longer, healthier, and better lives.
This is due to progress, which is due to greedy profit motive.
Requiring 20 years of testing delays introduction of new, beneficial things. For your theory to be useful, the average thing introduced would have to be more harmful than the average beneficial thing is helpful.
If not, you're murdering people, net effect. Guess what history shows? You'd be murdering people hand-over-fist.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
"The first genetically modified plant was produced in 1983, using an antibiotic-resistant tobacco plant. In 1994, the transgenic Flavr Savr tomato was approved by the FDA for marketing in the US" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_food#History
It took 11 years between the first GMO ever produced and the first GMO approved by the FDA. If you only count from the FDA approval, you should be able to start eating Flavr Savr tomatoes by next year.
If you think we're living because of monsanto crops, you're mistaken. sustainable solutions (and life as we know it) has existed for thousands and thousands of years without them.
We haven't had a global population of 6.7 billion for thousands of years. This isn't life as we have known it. The global population was a bare 3 billion in 1960. Global Population
There are less than one million full-time farmers in the US
Farmers represented over 50% of the US labor force as late as 1870. In the modern world it is hard to keep workers on the farm. It is a hard to protect agricultural land. It is hard to compete with first-world agricultural exports.
Climates change. Cultures change. Traditional solutions do not always work.
Both the US General Accounting Office (in a review of FDA procedures requested by Congress) and the FAO/WHO have confirmed that long term studies of the effect of GM food on humans are not feasible, for reasons including: there is no plausible hypothesis to test; very little is known about the potential long-term effects of any foods; identification of such effects is further confounded by the great variability in the way people react to foods; and epidemiological studies are not likely to differentiate the health effects of GM foods from the many undesirable effects of conventional foods.
Wiki
We don't test anything for 20+ years before we deploy it, partly because that would prevent any progress on such areas (yes, profits are important to progress.) Including drugs which we KNOW are doing abnormal things to the body: that's the point is to modify the body. GMO, on the other hand, we have little indication that it's doing anything that regular foods don't do.
It's like blindly copy & pasting huge swaths of code and changing a few numbers in a complex genetics program because it seems to have some of the results we want, but we really don't know if it has only the results we want, we don't really know what the fuck we're doing.
That's what we have always done. Since the dawn of recorded history. Aside from fish, we've domesticated nearly everything you eat. The difference is that now we actually know what we're doing in terms of genetics, wheras before it was completely blind.
Studies on metabolites have shown that GMO foods are much closer to the "natural" strain than the "natural" strains are to each other. If you eat GMO corn, you know it's the same thing as the line of corn it was derived from aside from the specific genes added. If you eat a different line of corn, there are literally thousands of metabolites that are different. If you fear uncertainty, you're better off eating GMO lines of foods you're comfortable with than lines created by more traditional techniques.
It's just a DRM scheme to stop pirates from stealing the intellectual property in the modified genome...
Organic has specific meaning and criteria in the US.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Do the same people who stridently assert that labels for GMOs are not required think the same after this?
This is probably the tip of the iceberg.
The diversity and expression of human opinion is essential to human survival.
Maybe it's becasue american Scientists aren't alarmists? Eating it won't suddenly make your cells express it; which is where the danger is.
We have a pretty good idea how the stomach works.
Regarding GM food, Europeans have been lied to about it for decades. Certain Alarmist group in Europe wield their ignorance and stupidity with great influential power.
Just like a different set of group do here in the US.
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NO they can't becasue the article doesn't really address them in any meaningful way.
And ti clearly overstate the Landes Bioscience article.
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And since they tried to hide GMO products by activly working to keep GMO off the labels, then they are responsible for trying to cover these issues up.
No 3 and 3b are not accurate.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16001857
I wish this 'Scientist don't test GMO' nonsense would stop. Seriously, you look like an idiot.
Do you know what isn't tested? non GMO food; even though there is bacteria in the soil which does gene swapping between animals and plants. OMG it all going to END!!!
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So all change is bad and you wont to live in 1935, got it.
Yuo example in no way applies to the conversation.
Cane toads tests after introduction.
Cane toads were shown not to work, and introduced anyways.
The science was, at best, primitive by today's standards.
In all ways its a completely different scenario. But don't let thinking stop you from your FUD and stupidity.
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I here you have to stake them through the heart, stuff their mouthy with holy wafers, and then shoot the with three silver bullets....maybe that's the yeti.
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people who dislike things on moral grounds often(as in nearly always) stop thinking about the issues in any critical way.. so, be carefull
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"Not a virologist,"
Don't let that stop you from a length posted that's under scores your massive ignorance on the subject.
You not only don't know shit about virus, you also don't know shit about genetics, ingestion, correct scientific analyses, testing, don't know what gold standard means or what a placebo effect is.
Are you a monkey just pounding out random scientific phrases that seem correct?
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I'm particularly interested in what will happen to the EFSA if their claims turn out to be bogus just after Monsanto is sued into oblivion. My guess is: nothing. That seems to be the modus operandi of any group that seeks to destroy something they disagree with. It has a "Rules for Radicals" ring to it. Destroy your opponent in the court of public opinion with the vulture media as willing accomplices. This is a very scary trend.
" First off, there is no table of contents in a cell that tells you what genes are present."
no, but there is a database that already lists what in in. In fact, this who article this is based on came about NOT from discovering it in a lab, but by looking at the database of whats in it and then creating a scare article.
So, no it didn't slip under any radar, and was tested several times in the US in 04-05.
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'Not sure why'....
This is EXACTLY the problem. We are in the stone age of genetics and the ignorance and hubris of the pro-GMO types will damage our food crops in ways we yet don't know.
But we all know that Monsanto, famous make of 'terminator seeds', etc., selling seeds that grow plants that need ever increasing amounts of pesticides (due to ever increasing tolerance of pests...the cycle continues...sigh...), made by, you guessed it, Monsanto...really just wants to control the world's food supply...
Oh, I mean, 'feed the world'...yeah, right. You believe in fairy tales too, don't you?
"* 4. Why the fuck don't we test GMO crops for 20+ years before we start feeding them to people, and esp. children?"
becasue that's a stupidly long time.
If you think that should be the case, then you should be advocating that all food b tested becasue there is bacteria in the soil that does gene swapping between plants and animals.
If we did that, mos people would die, but hey, whats a few billion death in the name of too much safety?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Bingo...we are in the stone age of genetics, and idiots with just enough knowledge to appear sentient, are promoting GMO junk for the sake of profit and the future goal of controlling the world food supply...When anyone can tell me the PRECISE, EXACT function of EACH and EVERY nucleotide in a genome, (over millions of years) etc., then I'll be convinced that you have SOME knowledge about what the hell is going on.
Blindly cutting and pasting snippets usually just produces a mess that your visual cortex can make out as a few recognizable patterns, etc. It is more likely junk, rather than a piece of art. You're simply playing the odds and hoping for a piece of art that you can look at, recognize a piece of it, and say, 'oh look, that's what I wanted to appear', while not having a clue what the other stuff is doing, long term effects and changes, other unknown infinitely subtle changes, etc. I'll take mother nature's genius over millions of years, over a bunch of 'geez whiz' scientists over a few decades, in a heartbeat. GMO advocates are akin to the idiots of various other early science disasters, such as using unlimited amounts of X-rays on pregnant women in the early days when x-rays were discovered, etc., etc.
In the last couple thousand years lots of people died because of wrong habits. Google for lead poisoning and the Roman empire, for an example.
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The article does not "state that plant viruses commonly infect animals" as you say. Instead it points out that plant viruses can exchange genes with animal viruses. Viral coding, it turns out, is open source and freely distributed. Viruses swap genes in their common hunt for advantage over the rest of us. This has been recognized in standard science for decades.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
I wish the same could be said for America, but alas, the huge Agro-Business lobby and money squashes anything even close to dissent. Hell, states now have laws that make it a felony, I believe, if you merely talk about about the food industry in print, radio or tv. Look how Oprah was attacked by the beef industry.
There is a push in the US, locally by people to try to change this attitude. I personally think it is killing us as a society, the obesity in children and oncoming storm of diabetes coming on is sign of that to me.
The trouble is...the US Federal Govt is in cahoots with big Agro-Business. We have a very small and dispappearing local farmer population, the govt funds and promotes largely the wrong kind of foods to be made cheap to the masses (why not subsidize vegetables rather than just feed corn?)..and those in charge of the Fed policies on farming and food are comprised of a revolving door for people from Agro-Business into the FDA and USDA and then back to those same industries.
I for one, am a bit scared about the mono culture they're developing for our food system. We saw a bit of the problem in the past year or so, with droughts in some regions, and ALL food prices spiked quickly. We are in danger due, IMHO, due to now having enough diversity in our food system, different strains of crops, animals...etc.
There is a movement, but it is slow going and against heavy opponents that have a lot of $$ and total influence over the government at all levels.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
No 3 and 3b are not accurate.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16001857
I wish this 'Scientist don't test GMO' nonsense would stop. Seriously, you look like an idiot.
Do you know what isn't tested? non GMO food; even though there is bacteria in the soil which does gene swapping between animals and plants. OMG it all going to END!!!
Did you actually read the link you posted? It clearly indicates that testing was done by Slovenia. I'm not necessarily saying that it IS the end of the world; but I am saying the government organizations in my country that are charged with ensuring food safety have not done any tests - so we don't really know if it's safe or not. At best it is suspicious that Monsanto has not been forthcoming and pushed the government to perform such testing and publish the results. If they had nothing to hide, it would go a long way to free them of their terrible reputation.
In countries where testing has been done, there have been negative results; such as the one leading to the article we are commenting on. Imagine that.
That way...everyone has a choice, and let the market speak for what they want?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
The moment you buy something like "Cauliflower © 2013", you should probably switch supermarkets.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Seriously? Maybe you aren't in the US and seeing the rampant obesity, the rise of type II diabetes, even in children, and recent reports coming out predicting that our children today are projected to have lower life expectancy than their parents, this mostly due to our 'modern food system' we now have in place.
Also, it seems that all this industrialized food system we have, and all the GMO's are not helping world wide hunger as projected.
It also looks like it might come back to bite us in the ass since the over use of GMO's like with soybeans that are Monsanto herbicide resistant, are selected for Monsanto Roundup resistant weeds (Johnson grass being one of the main culprits they're trying to eradicate).
The too..there is the potential danger of having such a mono culture of the food system....without having diversity in the plants and animals we raise, we're in danger of them being affected by some type disease and we don't have other variations of the foods/animals out there to help balance out if we lose one of them to disease.
Oh well, if that happens...that WILL help cure the obesity problem we have quickly, but...it won't be pretty.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
My problem is...why not mandate labelling GMO foods, and let the people vote themselves with their wallets which way they want to go?
Why is this such a problem to the purveyors of GMO's?
I mean, choices is the ideal way, right? If there is a GMO squash and one that is not in the same store, why not let me get traditional one and you can be free to get the modified one?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
One, grow it, but you have to guaranteed it won't spread to traditional crops. And don't persecute the farmer that wants to use traditional crops and save his own seeds...if someone the GMO does spread and 'infects' his crops.
Second....mandate labeling of foods if they are GMO or not. How bad could that be? I mean, we require labellings for nutrition, we require labellings of seafood for country of origin, what could possibly be wrong with requiring GMO labeling, and let the consumer make his own purchasing and consumption decisions?
Freedom of choice is good, no?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Freedom of choice is good, no?
Not when it impedes your bottom line.
Labeling is fine and fair. They don't want to simply because of greed. GMO is cheaper to produce, and they don't want to pass the savings onto you the consumer. They know consumers will choose non-GMO and they won't be able to charge as much for it.
To their credit, it's not logical on the part of consumers for reasons discussed throughout this thread, so it's not exactly like they're trying to get away with a malicious omission. They're not putting poisons in there and refusing to tell consumers. So I understand why they don't respect consumers enough to inform them, but the main drive is profit.
Left out: consumers will choose not to buy GMO because of FUD, which is irrational, which is why I understand the lack of respect from farmers and food producers. They see GMO and assume it's going to kill them, like they think vaccines will give their kids autism. It's quite clear that's what's happening, it's not that consumers are generally fine with GMO but would demand the cost be lowered to reflect the lowered cost of production. The consumers are, indeed, a bit crazy, which allows the farmers and food producers to justify their greed.
* 4. Why the fuck don't we test GMO crops for 20+ years before we start feeding them to people, and esp. children?
My kingdom for a mod point.
Genetic manipulation of food is, unquestionably, introducing new things into the human diet, and we have no idea what long-term effects there may be. Even if it's all harmless, as we may find out 50 years down the road, we don't know it yet.
So at this point, they are taking a risk with the public health. I find it highly disturbing that so many posters on /. dismiss these concerns so readily as Luddite thinking. Rushing a new technology to the public without adequate safety testing is about the farthest thing from scientific. Unless they think scientists never make mistakes....
That I'm right, and you don't like it, doesn't mean I'm a troll.
If the consumers vote GMOs out..then the companies can move to something else more profitable.
We label seafood for country of origin, and I use that because I want to buy only US fish (and some salmon from Europe). I should be able to buy GMO or non-GMO if I please, just let me know which is which in the store.
Hell, we list ingredients...GMO is kind of like an added ingredient to basic foods, so, should be labeled as such.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I really don't want to defend monsanto, but if my understanding of genetics is correct, they sometimes use viruses' rna ability to change DNA and piggy back the genes they would like to add to the sequence. So, maybe that's why there's a virus in there.
The EU strictly regulates any and all GMO's and many are outright banned. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_genetically_modified_organisms_in_the_European_Union
it looks like they got it right. And it's one of the main reasons why I don't want to live in the US.
Insert_Ending_Here
The real question is, what happens when you try to boil them in a shallow pan of water heated really slowly?
I've had one friend die from lung complications and another deal with lifelong diabetes and a skin condition due to exposure to chemicals Monsanto and Dow were contracted to develop.
Who are these friends and what are these chemicals?
I agree with you for the most part in that we should not blindly trust a company that is so in bed with the government, but you've got to back up your claims with some evidence.
"It's a tarp!" -- Dyslexic Admiral Ackbar
That's interesting. It would have been informative if you had cared to share what that meaning is, or what agency or regulatory body makes the relevant rules.
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
I wish the same could be said for America, but alas, the huge Agro-Business lobby and money squashes anything even close to dissent. Hell, states now have laws that make it a felony
I see that you are unclear about the meaning of "prejudice". And you want to more of it. This would be funny, but somehow I can't laugh anymore.
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
1) Your statement re. RNA surviving digestion is scientifically false. Layman's version rebuttal, don't have a link to the original handy. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2011/09/21/what-you-eat-affects-your-genes-rna-from-rice-can-survive-digestion-and-alter-gene-expression/#.UQBb7SdEFMU
I find your cavalier attitude re. public health frightening.... Prions ( abnormally folded proteins) + amyloid-- shouldn't scare us? Take a peak at the number of amyloid associated devastating diseases. ... just as scary as AIDS.
I simply think they are a bunch of no holds barred corporate bastards, like many other big corporations there. It has got nothing to do specifically with food -- I don't care one iota for whether the food is genetically modified/engineered or not. All I care about is whether it's safe to eat and doesn't have excessive side effects to its production. Fucking up farmer's (or anyone) just because they've got broken legal system behind them is not being a good corporate citizen. That's all there's to it.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
"During that time we've eaten just about everything, interbread just about every plant and animal we could, promptly eating anything that resulted."
That's all well and good for the human race but that process didn't exactly work out for all the individuals who did the eating or were offspring of the breeding.
Is there really a need for a citation supporting the idea that humans have died sampling unknown plants/insects/animals as food sources through trial and error over the course of the evolutionary existence of the species? Or that the results of interbreeding haven't always resulted in viable offspring?
Millions seems like a fairly conservative guesstimate to me.
The point is that mankind has learned to avoid mass poisoning itself when evaluating new or novel foods.
Its not likely that serious risks of GM foods would be totally missed, in an era when the legal consequences
reach far beyond the individual with actual symptoms.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
'Organic' in the US has a definition - I highly doubt its as strong as Germany's 'Bio' (example: I'm unaware of a animals/land unit ratio) - its 'Natural' in the US that has no standard, enforced definition and is up to the manufacturer's whim.
Fuck, I've put an apostrophe in a plural form. I'll go kill myself or something. Sorry about that, everyone. I thought I was better than that. It's a disease of some sort, a U.S.-based pandemic, no less.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
"why not mandate labelling GMO foods"
Because Monsanto has a much bigger lobby than you. This would hurt their profits and they have an easy case to make. There is widespread fear and paranoia about GMO foods but there simply isn't any rational basis for it. So why wouldn't officials take their bribe money?
I'm not saying GM foods are harmful but it is quite likely dangers would be missed. It happens constantly. The pharmaceutical industry produces substances that prove to be very harmful all the time.
Trillions. Trillions of people have died from GMOs. Millions every day. Thousands every second.
Cancer, skin diseases, diabetes, liver disease--none of this existed before GMOs. And handguns.
I'm curious about the following:
1) If nobody has noticed this until now it shows how little we really know and understand about the process
2) If Monsanto did know before this why didn't they publish it in their tests?
3) If Monsanto missed this in their tests what does that say about the thoroughness of their testing?
Keep in mind Monsanto is the "2 week turkey bake" company known to lie, obfuscate and fraudulently claim non-existent benefits. When they came out with the recombinant bovine growth hormone they said "any residuals were destroyed at normal pasteurization temperatures". Then someone looked at the details closely and found they had pasteurized it for half an hour. That is the equivalent of baking a turkey for 2 weeks and claiming no e-coli or salmonella were found. No shit Sherlock. You have a lump of charcoal.
You trust Monsanto at your own risk. They have bad science down to a science.
Or could it be that it was already there?
Remember, a good deal of our own DNA originated with some virus. No doubt it's much the same for everything.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
And once that protein is broken down into its component amino acids by our digestive tracts, what difference does it make what it started as? We already digest proteins from all manner of random sources, including natural variations.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
EFSA never met an Agri chem it did not swoon over. The panel members of this organisation would have a difficult time distinguishing between corn and cotton, let alone comprehending the significance of this development. They seem to view their mission as to suppress any natural, safe alternative chemo preventative plant compound, such as resveratrol, by preventing the seller from making health claims in spite of massive evidence from double blinded, peer-reviewed, published clinical and in vitro trials, while allowing pharmas to say basically whatever comes to mind about their toxic, ineffective drugs.
And how exactly do you do research without "a certain direction of interest," pray tell? Or is your own research entirely aimless?
Wake me up when "scientific research" is anything but a bunch of petty office politics, infighting, and backstabbing about who gets tenure, time for research, who published more articles with a higher impact factor or some other garbage metric, and who gets grant money or public money for research that will be patented for private gain, who gets the patent money, and meanwhile the public can't even access a write-up or report of this research without paying an exorbitant fee to some journal that touts its "high impact factor".
You scientists are just grubbing for money like the rest of us who are trying to make a buck to get by in this life, so don't try to pawn your work off on us like it's some grand altruism or search for the truth, because it's not. Like everything else, it's all about making a buck somehow or another.
Science in the 1930s was primitive? The same science that quickly lead to the mass production and distribution of television sets in every home? The science that brought us into the nuclear age? The introduction of plastic as a material?
Compared to today's standards, the study of ecology was perhaps "primitive". However, compared to the very limited understanding of the application of biological controls in the 1930s, today's geneticists also have not had decades upon decades of research to prove that genetic engineering is safe to implement on a massive universal scale. There's nothing wrong with scientific progress, but altering the genetic code of our most essential staple crops and growing only these crops on 90% of all the commercial farms around the entire world with only 10 years of industrial experience to draw from, how can we be 100% confident that "everything will be ok".
One of the most essential traits of scientists and engineers is to learn from our mistakes. There are too many examples of over-aggressive adoption of new, radical, and untested technology to allow ourselves to become arrogant and repeat the same disasters ourselves. We develop products, we analyze and test them in the lab, we simulate what we cannot test in the lab, and then we begin initial release of products to a limited test market for a period of time that may last months or in some cases even years before we fully adopt new technology. During the "test market" phase vulnerabilities are identified, products are recalled, design changes are implemented in the next production run, presuming that the entire project or program isn't scrapped and abandoned entirely. For many of these products the technology is mechanical or electrical, or a new application for chemicals or materials.
Safety hazards with most product designs have not usually harmed very many people, if any at all, when they are first identified, and the product recall and correction process is typically well coordinated and quickly implemented with most companies. But most products cannot reproduce or permanently alter the genetic traits of entire ecosystems and all their future descendents into prosterity. It does no good to recall a GMO crop if adjacent wild species have adopted the malignant genes and the mutant population continues to spread unchecked. There are many invasive weeds that share similar enough traits with conventional crops, that if they were to cross pollinate and adapt the Round Up resistant gene as well as the other engineered traits that favor rapid growth they could pose serious threats to our global agricultural system. And that's just one theoretical example. The real problems that might emerge from this might be unimaginable with our contemporary primitive understanding. There just hasn't been enough time to wait and study smaller test fields to be certain that this technology is safe to commit to and become dependent upon.
Unfortunately, as with countless other examples of radical emerging technology adopted too early and agressively, there is no great satisfaction with sitting back and shouting "I told you so". People at all levels (scientists, engineers, economists, environmentalists, businessmen, and consumers) who understand this very serious and irreversible potential danger have to do what they can to urge those with authority to make sure this technology is adopted reasonably and responsibly. Which means that we can't just commit our entire world's agricultural production to this technology. We have to implement in phases that permit sufficient time to gather and study the impact so that destruction is limited to test areas and not the entire world.
Nobody here is suggesting we put the lid back on Pandora's box and grow our own food in our backyards with hand tools and fertilizer from our pet goat. Rather, just making the point that adopting new technology in a safe and reasonable manner is the better way to proceed.
How much testing will ever be enough?
The general consensus that I've gathered from talking with anti-GMO folks is there there will NEVER be enough testing that will convince them that GMO food is safe, and only any results that would ever show some kind of harm, even if only "maybe", "possible", "potential" would be considered definitive. You see this constantly on pretty much any anti-GMO site (naturalist sites, organic foods, etc). They hype up even the slightest possibility of not 100% safety, regardless of the actual science and papers not making this case or even despite showing that not only is this not the case, but not even possible (such as the BT corn. It isn't possible for the BT Cry proteins to have a toxic effect in a mammalian gut because it is easily broken down, whereas in specific insect guts it causes the stomach to rupture, eliminating the pest).
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
No poison making, the handle has a mundane and harmless back story. ;)
My friends were veterans, one of whom was drafted into the Vietnam conflict. The chemicals were Agent Orange and another of the swath of chemicals Monsanto and Dow developed for the deforestation/urban-center-driving movement the government. I don't remember the chemical responsible for Paul's lung condition, but I believe the diabetes and integumentary condition experienced by John were due to Agent Orange, because his position in Vietnam during the war corroborated that. The chemical Paul ingested might have been Agent Blue.