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Controversial Trial of Genetically Modified Wheat Ends In Disappointment
sciencehabit writes: A controversial GM wheat trial has failed after more than £2 million of public money was spent protecting it from GM opponents. Researchers had hoped that the wheat modified to produce a warning pheromone would keep aphids away and attract their natural enemies, reducing the need for insecticides. Despite showing promise in the laboratory, the field trial failed to show any effect. “If you make a transgenic plant that produces that alarm continuously, it’s not going to work,” ecologist Marcel Dicke of Wageningen University in the Netherlands says. “You have a plant crying wolf all the time, and the bugs won’t listen to it any longer.”
Of course they will. Because if it costs money to develop GMOs, then there had better be a return on investment. Or noone will bother.
And since GMOs, like any new drug, includes a lot of trial & error (mostly error), your successful new GMO (or drug) has to carry the costs of all your unsuccessful ones. So you have to be able to make a lot of money on any success, or noone will bother.
Note that the cost of developing this failed GMO will have to be paid, down the line, by higher costs on other products produced by the same people.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
I would have expected better from Slashdot than to say the experiment had failed. It might not have produced the result the experimenters had hoped for, but it has produced a result (the GM crop does not significantly deter aphids) and has therefore been a successful experiment. In addition, it appears to have given them other ideas (try to make a crop that only sporadically gives off the pheromone) which will progress this area of science.
The food costs twice as much because of companies like Monsanto, corporate farming (greed), and costs of pesticides. Einstein...
There are two points to this. In crops where insect damage is a big deal, the Bt trait has actually reduced total pesticide use. Where weeds are more prominent of a threat, pesticide use in the form of herbicides has increased. However, in the case of herbicide resistance traits (i.e. roundup-ready), the use of less-toxic pesticides (i.e. Roundup) has increased because that is what the crop has been designed to tolerate. Prior to the use of the RR trait, farmers primarily used various selective herbicides like atrazine which are a lot more toxic than Roundup. So this is actually a net benefit since Roundup can replace all of the toxic selective pesticides that were being used previously. Compare the LD50's of Roundup vs. the older pesticides to see proof.
http://www.crediblehulk.org/index.php/2015/06/02/about-those-more-caustic-herbicides-that-glyphosate-helped-replace-by-credible-hulk/
You are wrong on the law. Isolating or identifying genes is not patentable, at least after Myriad: http://www2.bloomberglaw.com/public/desktop/document/Assn_for_Molecular_Pathology_v_Myriad_Genetics_Inc_No_12398_2013_
Even if you isolate a gene and use that gene to splice into another creature/plant, it's obvious to a person of skill in the art once isolated that splicing this gene will lead to expression of certain effects. To that extent it is not patentable.
Now, you might argue that the wheat failed in the above instance, so it involves experimentation. Yes the wheat failed, but not because of gene expression, but because of how the natural predators found out they were being gamed. Had nothing to do with producing the pheromones, which worked as anticipated. So, not patentable anyways.
The only trouble is proponents of GMO's have too much money and will continue to peddle, oh only isolation is not patentable, we can work around that using patent language. Look at Alice from the supreme court, where they decry the use work around language to get around judgements.
I am sorry, I have no love lost for GMO's and the companies that peddle them. They are evil as they get. They sue farmers. They even allege, if its 90% GMO crop, they own the entire bunch. You only have to look at monoculture issues like cavendish bananas to see that we could have human mass extinction, because of GMO crops and monoculture.
If you get a 20 year patent on GMO's. Unlicensed folks cannot use these plants to create other plant varieties, i.e., selective breeding. So, you are encouraging monoculture. If there is a natural predator which takes a liking to a GMO, all of the crop across the world will be wiped out in a matter of years. So, we will at best lose that one crop. Imagine if that happens to corn or wheat? 90% of the products on our supermarket shelf will disappear.
Patents on GMO's are horrible. Plant variety protection act thought of these difficulties and issues and balanced the rights of framers and the dangers of monoculture. But Monsanto had enough money to pull of the Bowman v. Monsanto win. None of these monoculture issues were highlighted in the case. Sad really.
Just so we are clear. I don't have a problem with GMO's. I have a problem with patents on GMOs and monoculture because of patent rights for 20 years. Let me give you a hint. A GMO crop won't change all that much for 20 years, and is sold as standardized seed. But the natural pathogens evolve at a frightening pace for those 20 years. It's a problem waiting to happen. PVP on the other hand gives crops a fighting chance, when farmers breed them.
Doesn't the cry wolf effect make the predators of the aphids that much more effective?
No. The pheromone is normally emitted by the wheat when it is under attack by aphids, thus attracting predators. But the GMO wheat emits the pheromone all the time, so the predators show up, and ... no lunch. So this would make them less effective. The goal was not to make the predators more effective, but to scare away the aphids, which are normally not attracted to wheat that is already emitting the pheromone.