Slashdot Mirror
CRISPR-Altered Plants Are Not Going To Be Regulated (For Now) (fastcompany.com)
Good news for people who like genetically altered tomatoes and other plants. The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced it will no longer regulate them. From a report: The USDA not only rolled back Obama-era rules regulating genetically edited plants, but now it claims that plants whose genomes have been altered using gene-editing technology (read: CRISPR) pose "no risk," MIT's Technology Review reports. While CRISPR engineering is still a relatively new science whose full impact is not yet known, the USDA has decided that it is merely an innovative shortcut to the age-old practice of plant breeding.
The Zika virus wasn't a problem until genetically-altered mosquitoes were released in Brazil.
Huh what? Citation please! The Zika problem is being SOLVED by genetically altered mosquitoes that are eradicating the specific species that carries the virus. This method has been far more effective at the destruction of specific targeted mosquito species than any method in the history of mankind (maybe not as much as a nuke).
The primary reason it became an epidemic in South America is because it is very new there. It's been around for centuries in Asia but cropped up in Brazil less than 5 years ago! It was brand new to the locals' immune system and thus spread like wild fire.
I don't know if you posted in jest or accidentally but if serious, it is a major disservice to BOTH sides of the debate. This example is literally the perfect, responsible type of solutions that we HOPE to achieve with genetic modification.
Dandelions are harmless, edible, and more attractive than grass... Grass is definitely the weed in this comparison.
Generally no, fearing the result would require picking and choosing particular edits to oppose. The arguments fall more along the "all things natural are safe, nature is better than man" lines.
While there can always be unintended consequences the nearly random editing process of nature produces all sorts of things which are deadly to us, thinking the things we've deliberately built with a targeted purpose are innately inferior is ignorance to the extreme.
Seed patents are no better or worse than most other kinds of patents. Drug patents are almost exactly analogous. Whether or not you think that IP in general helps encourage or stifle innovation is a hot topic, but the mainstream is pro-IP so we need to deal in that reality. At least it is a patent and so enjoys short protection times. It could be like copyright and we'd be stuck with ~100 years of suffering instead of ~20 years of suffering.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.