Got to agree there. I only use XP for about 20 minutes a day, on two different computers, mostly with Explorer, and I've had more system-hanging crashes in that 20 minutes a day than I've had in the entire time I've run Mac OS X on my iBook (going on a year and a half). I probably get a crash with Explorer (on the XP machines) every week or two.
Explorer was crash-prone on OS X, too, when I still used it, but at least it left the system alone.
I was under the impression that limbs and wings were developmentally distinct structures, and that wings had not developed out of legs or vice versa. Could be wrong...it's been a little while since I had entomology.
I thought of this too, but not many crops like ploidy numbers that high, and relatively few can be produced commercially like that (strawberries being the notable exception). So, assuming you're getting it to grow, which I would guess is unlikely for 12n at least, and you breed them, you're then faced with the problem of knocking the ploidy back down to something that will be survive.
I could be way off on bananas...not my area of expertise, but it seems unlikely. I'm still not entirely clear of what's going on with bananas.
No, it just means it won't grow into a commercial cultivar. Because banana isn't really a tree, I doubt you could really graft anything on it anyway...well, you might be able to, but you certainly wouldn't want to.
The bananas should be edible, but they could be something unappeal or have seeds. Where did you buy the seeds? Did they mention what sort of plant it should be?
Most banana breeding (as far as I know, which I must admit is not very far) is done with diploid and tetraploid cultivars, which are fertile. Cross a diploid and tetraploid, you get a triploid. Strikes me as an annoying crop to breed.
Some crosses can in fact be made between triploid and diploids, with the offspring as tetraploids, but I'm still trying to figure out what's going on there. Any guesses?
The problem with genetic diversity in apples and virtually all other fruit is that until the industry is devastated by something, there's little immediate financial incentive to do it. We have a very set idea of what qualifies as an apple, and it consists of a very, very small part of the apple genome. So any kind of interspecific cross is going to look unappealing to consumers for several generations before it starts looking like the apples we buy now. The problem is that a generation in terms of apple breeding is at VERY least five years, and that doesn't leave you much time to evaluate anything...a more workable bare minimum would be more along the lines of 10 years. So if it takes four generations to get back to something acceptable, that's 40 years. Most apple breeder programs don't have funding sources that will tolerate killing time for an entire career. Like everything else, they want results. So mostly people keep mucking around with different permutations of the existing stuff.
Transgenics offer an opportunity to speed up the process, but the backlash in fruit has the potential to be significantly more than highly processed crops like cereals...
I'm sorry the question and answer format is offensive to you... It's a rhetorical tool, and nothing more. It wasn't meant to be insulting. Get over it.
I have no problem with an independent body certifying foods as free of transgenic plant products. In fact, I think this is a good idea. I'm sorry if I somehow implied I didn't. Has any one prevented this?
If I want to take the risk of being involved in an automobile accident, does the burden fall on me, to avoid driving, or on the other drivers, to empty the street for my safety? I won't answer this question, since you seem to be overly sensitive to such things.
I think perhaps you've read too much into the phrase "coloring of interpretation). As some one who has "been around biologists all my life", you ought be aware of the little known fact that scientists are actually human beings! Human beings are incapable of being unbiased. Every one has their own desires and prejudices which subconsciously influence their interpretations. Most scientists are painfully aware of this, and it weighs constantly on their minds as they work. I'd like to also point out that of the scientists I've known, there have been at least as many, if not more, who tend to be overly conservative in there interpretations...hesitating to make justifiable conclusions for fear they are only seeing what they want to see in the data. The shading of interpretation is usually minor and generally harmless, and often heavily qualified. But regardless, it only serves to emphasize the need to actually look at the data and judge the conclusions yourself.
The distinction between "natural" hybrids made during traditional breeding and those made through biotech is largely arbitrary. The difference is mostly speed.
And there's certainly no guarantee of safety in traditional breeding. Working in contact with a number of breeding progarms, I've heard of a number of close calls. A particular potato selection, bred entirely by traditional methods, made it all the way to the final round of replicated trials before it was realized that it was dangerously toxic in any substantial amount. A wheat cultivar was found to have allergens unknown to domesticated wheat, introduced by standard cross-breeding with wild relatives. There are many, many stories like this. And yet these problems have virtually all been caught, with testing significantly less rigorous than that transgenic crops are subjected to.
I think I'll avoid repeating myself and simple refer you to my other messages in this thread on labelling and the validity of studies.
The problem isn't the educated consumers...its the uneducated ones. I'll give the same disclaimer I've given elsewhere in this thread, which is that while I do not support mandatory labelling, neither do I support the handling of the issue by both the biotech companies (and, to a lesser extent, the universities) or the activist groups. A more responsible treatment of the issue would have resulted in a lot less screaming and gnashing of teeth, and may be even a public with a clue. The basic issues aren't that hard to grasp (though the details certainly are)...the problem is that people have been so confused by the buckets of half-truths both sides have fed them, that its getting to be nearly impossible to educate anyone.
A) However, if seeds aren't saved, these genes will not persist in the environment, nor will they be present in any substantial amount to make a significant impact on the make up of a crop harvested from that land.
B) Maybe in an ideal world. Frankly, farms have been contaminating every ones land and water with things a hell of a lot worse than foreign genes for a long time. Governments have ruled in many cases that these things (pesticides, manure, etc), proven harmful beyond a shadow of a doubt, are not harmful enough in small quantities to justify the disruption of agriculture which would result. Why then, should they judge that genes not proven to have any deliterious effect, which would not be a problem under most agriculture practices, should be restrained?
C) The Percy Schmeiser case (which I assume your referring to) is actually still being appealled. I was actually thinking of the US. In fact, I really think that the case probably should be thrown out, based on what little I know of Canadian law. But for the most part, in the US, everything I've seen indicates that Monsanto operates within the existing intellectual property laws. Which are horrifyingly bad and really ought to be revised. Don't get the idea that I'm trying to act as an apologist for Monsanto...they use the same sleazy business techniques every other major corporation uses.
D) Well even if your statement was the case, it wouldn't be forcing any one to use anything. To play semantics a bit, there already is no non-GMO stuff out there, nor has there been since Pre-Columbian times. Corn is inherently genetically modified, because the precursor species likely doesn't even exist any more, let alone being grown by any one. I know you mean transgenics (I hate the term GMO because it is almost always used inappropriately), but frankly, a gene is a gene is a gene is a gene. Transformation occurs in nature, through viruses and bacteria, and although these events are rare and random, there have been many years and many opportunties, and it is virtually guaranteed that everything out there has genes from something else in it.
Please understand that I think that the intellectual property laws in the U.S. and probably most other countries are terrible when it comes to gene patenting, and that this is at the root of much of the problem caused by transgenic crops. I'd be all for fixing them, though I don't think it's going to happen.
People certainly do have a right to make irrational decisions. But manufacturers of food also have the right to decided, ationally or not, whether they want to label their food as coming from transgenic plants or not, at least until government decides otherwise. And so far, most of them have decided not to. If you've got a problem with it, you have every right to do the research and not eat it. Just because you have the right to decide what you want to eat, doesn't mean you have the right not to have to do your homework.
Please don't think I'm defending the way that the corporate biotech world or large scale agriculture have gone about things...frankly I think the handling of this issue by them, particularly by Monsanto, has been atrocious. As detached as most people in this country are from agriculture, I think people tend to lose perspective when it comes to it.
Agriculture is a business. A big, big business. Probably the world's largest, depending on what measure you use. Like any other business, he gets out there first, has the best chance of becoming established and making money. This goes for both the companies producing the technology, and the individual farmers. In cereal crops, cultivars change every two years or so, and whether you make a profit depends on whether you choose right. These are relatively low value crops with slim profit margins, and a single stumble may mean some one loses the farm, literally. So farmers, as much as the biotech firms, want to adapt new technology as soon as they think there's a reasonable chance of it working, for fear of being left behind. Don't forget that this all very market driven, as well...if variety A did well last year, and made decent money, the plants themselves can do every bit as well this year, and the farmer can still wind up with a gigantic loss if many of the other farmers plant something else and produce even more, dropping the unit price to the point where last years pick is no longer profitable.
You're right...there is no food shortage in this country (although I would note that in most sectors of agriculture we are nowhere near self-sufficient, and that there ARE food shortages elsewhere). But agriculture is in a very real sense, a sense few outside the field appreciate, the foundation of our economy. Not just because of the money it generates, but because by having a ready, cheap supply of food, people are free to participate in other segments of the economy. A consistent correlation exists between the standard of living in a country and the percentage of people who farm and the percentage of personal income spent on food. Keeping farmers in business and prices low are good for the economy.
Is part of this about protecting corporate profits? Of course it is...everything goes through government is on some level. But its also about protecting the economy and people in general.
Well, the cabbage/radish hybrid at least sounded like a good idea. I don't think the idea of something you can eat the leaves and the roots on is a bad idea...that just apparently wasn't the right solution.
Is it consistent about where on the plant it produces the different fruit? I suppose it could be some sort of weird chimaera... Fruit development is effected by all kinds of things, though... The sort of square, elongated look of certain apple varieties is a response to cold night temperatures (if I remember...could be wrong on this), and since most of our apples in this country come from places like Washington or New York, that's what we're used to...but if you grow the same thing in the south (and you can get it to grow...the already disease prone apples are a pain in the ass in the warm, humid south) the apples are more like normal, round apples. Odd stuff.
Citrus plants are all quite happily cross-fertile (assuming you can get ploidy issues straightened out), so who knows what the genetic backround it is...
This may be my personal bias, but I largely trust the university research. I have worked at two major research universities, involved in plant genetics, for approaching a decade, and while every one is aware of the pressures from corporate funding sources, I have yet to actually witness anything resembling bad science from any of my colleagues as a result. Does it color interpretation? A little. To larger, more intentional and blatant problems occur? Yes, occasionally. However, as far as I can tell,k the great bulk of the research done is done right, and that which is done poorly can definitely be picked out by careful reading of the resulting papers.
I do agree that the solution is to educate people. However, for whatever reason, relatively few people are attempting to educate the public in general with anything resembling unbiased information.
It doesn't help that for whatever reason, there is a stunning level of distrust of intellectuals by the public in this country. The fact that people appear not to be bothered by having a president far stupider than they are disturbs me greatly...
There's still tissue culture, though, which is how I assume the fertile cabbage/radish tetraploids are made...take the malformed diploid hybrid, treat with colchicine, culture the effected part.
Rose breeding is a mess. I don't know how they keep up with it. I work in small fruit breeding...enough whacky ploidy things going on there for me.
A) This only happnes if people save seeds. In this day of hybrid seeds, no one save seeds in most crops (certainly not corn and soy) except subsistence farmers and organic farmers.
B) This happened before transgenics, too. If I was growing variety X, and you were growing variety Y, and pollen from X pollinated your variety Y, I'm still not forcing you to plant X, or even the seeds contaminated with X DNA.
C) To my knowledge, none of these lawsuits have been successfully prosecuted.
D) Even if they were, they wouldn't be forcing the farmer to use transgenic crops, they'd be forcing them to pay for technology they didn't intend to use. Pretty lame, but not the same thing.
BT acts on a metabolic mechanism humans don't even have, so classifying it as a poison is a bit misleading.
BT doesn't cause pesticide resistance any faster than standard pesticides, which for the most part are noxious chemicals of some sort with demonstrated bad effects on human beings.
Hybrid seed isn't necessarily infertile, it's just useless, because instead of a uniform, beneficial genotype like the parent, its non-uniform and all over the place, thanks to the wonders of random assortment. They'll happily grow and pass on their genes, if you let them. But no one would intentionally plant them, except for research.
I agree, though, that the problem with transgenics (I refuse to use GM or GMO, because they're such poor terms...unless you harvest your food from the wild, it's all genetically modified), is the stupid intellectual property laws, which are simultaneously being proven stupid by the technology field. Eventually the problem will reach a head, a crisis will occur, and a lot of it will get fixed, but I don't see it happening for a long time, and when it does, many many people are going to be very unhappy.
Not that this sort of thing isn't a concern, but it must be noted that this is a fairly unlikely sort of thing (not being sued by Monsanto...that happens all the time)... Cross-pollination can and does happen between fields of corn (although relatively uncommon at any large distance). However, corn farmers today, for the most part, do not save seed for replanting. Most corn seed planted commercially today is hybrid seed, and if the progeny from the corn resulting from such seed is planted, you get assorted, non-uniform, wierd plants no grower wants. There's no reason it has to be that way, of course...it just happens to be the best way to get good corn is hybrid seed. The exception to that today in this country is organic growers, who do sometimes save seed, and tend to be using older varieties. So for this to happen, you'd need a grower saving seeds near a field of transgenic corn.
The reason to the resistance towards labeling is that the public is so ill-informed (54% in a recent survey did not know that non-transgenic corn had genes all, for example). The food and pharmaceutical companies aren't afraid of the choice a well-informed public will make, they're afraid of the choice the actual public will make, which would likely cost them billions of dollars in research over what amounts to bad PR.
Do I trust Monsanto or Eli Lilly to tell me the truth about transgenics? No, of course not. Neither to I trust the "anti-GMO" activists who spout scare-mongering pseudo-science. The real research, done at universities by people with somewhat less of an axe to grind, indicates that the health risks of any transgenic crop which has actually made it to market are essentially nil. Environmental risks are something else, of course, but these too are being vastly overplayed.
I used to consider myself to be a very environmentally active person, and I often supported a variety of "environmental" groups. Yet in the past four years or so I've been so disgusted by the lies and half-truths coming out of these groups that I've virtually stopped funding all of them.
Read the literature...don't take my word or any one else's for it.
I'm torn, because in my heart I do support the idea that people should know what they are eating. But when you can count on those people to make bad decisions, decisions which harm both them and the economy, I can't really support doing it right now.
Yeah, despite both having n=9 chromosomes, radish and cabbage don't seem to have homologous sets of chromosomes, and so they don't pair up right, resulting in sterile plants. However, you can make a fertile tetraploid.
Cross-pollination, certainly not in the field, just isn't going to happen between corn and soy. The reasons are almost too many to list...wrong number of chromosomes, lack of homology between chromosomes, mistiming of flowering, various forms of genetic incompatibility, etc. You might be able to coax some sort of a sad deformed thing out of protoplast fusion or some such thing, but I'd be against it, and even if you could, you'd be lucky if you could get it to live at all outside of a lab.
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Got to agree there. I only use XP for about 20 minutes a day, on two different computers, mostly with Explorer, and I've had more system-hanging crashes in that 20 minutes a day than I've had in the entire time I've run Mac OS X on my iBook (going on a year and a half). I probably get a crash with Explorer (on the XP machines) every week or two.
Explorer was crash-prone on OS X, too, when I still used it, but at least it left the system alone.
But how are we getting the 1n gametes in the first place from a triploid?
I was under the impression that limbs and wings were developmentally distinct structures, and that wings had not developed out of legs or vice versa. Could be wrong...it's been a little while since I had entomology.
That's kind of what I was guessing, basically a lucky shuffling of the poor triploids chromosomes resulting in something 2n that works.
That's what you're saying, right, not that the triploid always produces diploid gametes, right?
The third world did organic farming for years. A lot of it still does. It was called subsistence farming.
I thought of this too, but not many crops like ploidy numbers that high, and relatively few can be produced commercially like that (strawberries being the notable exception). So, assuming you're getting it to grow, which I would guess is unlikely for 12n at least, and you breed them, you're then faced with the problem of knocking the ploidy back down to something that will be survive.
I could be way off on bananas...not my area of expertise, but it seems unlikely. I'm still not entirely clear of what's going on with bananas.
No, it just means it won't grow into a commercial cultivar. Because banana isn't really a tree, I doubt you could really graft anything on it anyway...well, you might be able to, but you certainly wouldn't want to.
The bananas should be edible, but they could be something unappeal or have seeds. Where did you buy the seeds? Did they mention what sort of plant it should be?
Most banana breeding (as far as I know, which I must admit is not very far) is done with diploid and tetraploid cultivars, which are fertile. Cross a diploid and tetraploid, you get a triploid. Strikes me as an annoying crop to breed.
Some crosses can in fact be made between triploid and diploids, with the offspring as tetraploids, but I'm still trying to figure out what's going on there. Any guesses?
The problem with genetic diversity in apples and virtually all other fruit is that until the industry is devastated by something, there's little immediate financial incentive to do it. We have a very set idea of what qualifies as an apple, and it consists of a very, very small part of the apple genome. So any kind of interspecific cross is going to look unappealing to consumers for several generations before it starts looking like the apples we buy now. The problem is that a generation in terms of apple breeding is at VERY least five years, and that doesn't leave you much time to evaluate anything...a more workable bare minimum would be more along the lines of 10 years. So if it takes four generations to get back to something acceptable, that's 40 years. Most apple breeder programs don't have funding sources that will tolerate killing time for an entire career. Like everything else, they want results. So mostly people keep mucking around with different permutations of the existing stuff.
Transgenics offer an opportunity to speed up the process, but the backlash in fruit has the potential to be significantly more than highly processed crops like cereals...
I'm sorry the question and answer format is offensive to you... It's a rhetorical tool, and nothing more. It wasn't meant to be insulting. Get over it.
I have no problem with an independent body certifying foods as free of transgenic plant products. In fact, I think this is a good idea. I'm sorry if I somehow implied I didn't. Has any one prevented this?
If I want to take the risk of being involved in an automobile accident, does the burden fall on me, to avoid driving, or on the other drivers, to empty the street for my safety? I won't answer this question, since you seem to be overly sensitive to such things.
I think perhaps you've read too much into the phrase "coloring of interpretation). As some one who has "been around biologists all my life", you ought be aware of the little known fact that scientists are actually human beings! Human beings are incapable of being unbiased. Every one has their own desires and prejudices which subconsciously influence their interpretations. Most scientists are painfully aware of this, and it weighs constantly on their minds as they work. I'd like to also point out that of the scientists I've known, there have been at least as many, if not more, who tend to be overly conservative in there interpretations...hesitating to make justifiable conclusions for fear they are only seeing what they want to see in the data. The shading of interpretation is usually minor and generally harmless, and often heavily qualified. But regardless, it only serves to emphasize the need to actually look at the data and judge the conclusions yourself.
The distinction between "natural" hybrids made during traditional breeding and those made through biotech is largely arbitrary. The difference is mostly speed.
And there's certainly no guarantee of safety in traditional breeding. Working in contact with a number of breeding progarms, I've heard of a number of close calls. A particular potato selection, bred entirely by traditional methods, made it all the way to the final round of replicated trials before it was realized that it was dangerously toxic in any substantial amount. A wheat cultivar was found to have allergens unknown to domesticated wheat, introduced by standard cross-breeding with wild relatives. There are many, many stories like this. And yet these problems have virtually all been caught, with testing significantly less rigorous than that transgenic crops are subjected to.
I think I'll avoid repeating myself and simple refer you to my other messages in this thread on labelling and the validity of studies.
The problem isn't the educated consumers...its the uneducated ones. I'll give the same disclaimer I've given elsewhere in this thread, which is that while I do not support mandatory labelling, neither do I support the handling of the issue by both the biotech companies (and, to a lesser extent, the universities) or the activist groups. A more responsible treatment of the issue would have resulted in a lot less screaming and gnashing of teeth, and may be even a public with a clue. The basic issues aren't that hard to grasp (though the details certainly are)...the problem is that people have been so confused by the buckets of half-truths both sides have fed them, that its getting to be nearly impossible to educate anyone.
Amen. Finally some one giving this rational treatment. Thanks.
Agriculture isn't natural, and any one who thinks it is, doesn't know that much about it.
A) However, if seeds aren't saved, these genes will not persist in the environment, nor will they be present in any substantial amount to make a significant impact on the make up of a crop harvested from that land.
B) Maybe in an ideal world. Frankly, farms have been contaminating every ones land and water with things a hell of a lot worse than foreign genes for a long time. Governments have ruled in many cases that these things (pesticides, manure, etc), proven harmful beyond a shadow of a doubt, are not harmful enough in small quantities to justify the disruption of agriculture which would result. Why then, should they judge that genes not proven to have any deliterious effect, which would not be a problem under most agriculture practices, should be restrained?
C) The Percy Schmeiser case (which I assume your referring to) is actually still being appealled. I was actually thinking of the US. In fact, I really think that the case probably should be thrown out, based on what little I know of Canadian law. But for the most part, in the US, everything I've seen indicates that Monsanto operates within the existing intellectual property laws. Which are horrifyingly bad and really ought to be revised. Don't get the idea that I'm trying to act as an apologist for Monsanto...they use the same sleazy business techniques every other major corporation uses.
D) Well even if your statement was the case, it wouldn't be forcing any one to use anything. To play semantics a bit, there already is no non-GMO stuff out there, nor has there been since Pre-Columbian times. Corn is inherently genetically modified, because the precursor species likely doesn't even exist any more, let alone being grown by any one. I know you mean transgenics (I hate the term GMO because it is almost always used inappropriately), but frankly, a gene is a gene is a gene is a gene. Transformation occurs in nature, through viruses and bacteria, and although these events are rare and random, there have been many years and many opportunties, and it is virtually guaranteed that everything out there has genes from something else in it.
Please understand that I think that the intellectual property laws in the U.S. and probably most other countries are terrible when it comes to gene patenting, and that this is at the root of much of the problem caused by transgenic crops. I'd be all for fixing them, though I don't think it's going to happen.
People certainly do have a right to make irrational decisions. But manufacturers of food also have the right to decided, ationally or not, whether they want to label their food as coming from transgenic plants or not, at least until government decides otherwise. And so far, most of them have decided not to. If you've got a problem with it, you have every right to do the research and not eat it. Just because you have the right to decide what you want to eat, doesn't mean you have the right not to have to do your homework.
Please don't think I'm defending the way that the corporate biotech world or large scale agriculture have gone about things...frankly I think the handling of this issue by them, particularly by Monsanto, has been atrocious. As detached as most people in this country are from agriculture, I think people tend to lose perspective when it comes to it.
Agriculture is a business. A big, big business. Probably the world's largest, depending on what measure you use. Like any other business, he gets out there first, has the best chance of becoming established and making money. This goes for both the companies producing the technology, and the individual farmers. In cereal crops, cultivars change every two years or so, and whether you make a profit depends on whether you choose right. These are relatively low value crops with slim profit margins, and a single stumble may mean some one loses the farm, literally. So farmers, as much as the biotech firms, want to adapt new technology as soon as they think there's a reasonable chance of it working, for fear of being left behind. Don't forget that this all very market driven, as well...if variety A did well last year, and made decent money, the plants themselves can do every bit as well this year, and the farmer can still wind up with a gigantic loss if many of the other farmers plant something else and produce even more, dropping the unit price to the point where last years pick is no longer profitable.
You're right...there is no food shortage in this country (although I would note that in most sectors of agriculture we are nowhere near self-sufficient, and that there ARE food shortages elsewhere). But agriculture is in a very real sense, a sense few outside the field appreciate, the foundation of our economy. Not just because of the money it generates, but because by having a ready, cheap supply of food, people are free to participate in other segments of the economy. A consistent correlation exists between the standard of living in a country and the percentage of people who farm and the percentage of personal income spent on food. Keeping farmers in business and prices low are good for the economy.
Is part of this about protecting corporate profits? Of course it is...everything goes through government is on some level. But its also about protecting the economy and people in general.
Well, the cabbage/radish hybrid at least sounded like a good idea. I don't think the idea of something you can eat the leaves and the roots on is a bad idea...that just apparently wasn't the right solution.
Is it consistent about where on the plant it produces the different fruit? I suppose it could be some sort of weird chimaera... Fruit development is effected by all kinds of things, though... The sort of square, elongated look of certain apple varieties is a response to cold night temperatures (if I remember...could be wrong on this), and since most of our apples in this country come from places like Washington or New York, that's what we're used to...but if you grow the same thing in the south (and you can get it to grow...the already disease prone apples are a pain in the ass in the warm, humid south) the apples are more like normal, round apples. Odd stuff.
Citrus plants are all quite happily cross-fertile (assuming you can get ploidy issues straightened out), so who knows what the genetic backround it is...
Your link didn't work, but unless they're forcing unlabeled transgenic seed into the EU, it's still not the same thing.
This may be my personal bias, but I largely trust the university research. I have worked at two major research universities, involved in plant genetics, for approaching a decade, and while every one is aware of the pressures from corporate funding sources, I have yet to actually witness anything resembling bad science from any of my colleagues as a result. Does it color interpretation? A little. To larger, more intentional and blatant problems occur? Yes, occasionally. However, as far as I can tell,k the great bulk of the research done is done right, and that which is done poorly can definitely be picked out by careful reading of the resulting papers.
I do agree that the solution is to educate people. However, for whatever reason, relatively few people are attempting to educate the public in general with anything resembling unbiased information.
It doesn't help that for whatever reason, there is a stunning level of distrust of intellectuals by the public in this country. The fact that people appear not to be bothered by having a president far stupider than they are disturbs me greatly...
There's still tissue culture, though, which is how I assume the fertile cabbage/radish tetraploids are made...take the malformed diploid hybrid, treat with colchicine, culture the effected part.
Rose breeding is a mess. I don't know how they keep up with it. I work in small fruit breeding...enough whacky ploidy things going on there for me.
A) This only happnes if people save seeds. In this day of hybrid seeds, no one save seeds in most crops (certainly not corn and soy) except subsistence farmers and organic farmers.
B) This happened before transgenics, too. If I was growing variety X, and you were growing variety Y, and pollen from X pollinated your variety Y, I'm still not forcing you to plant X, or even the seeds contaminated with X DNA.
C) To my knowledge, none of these lawsuits have been successfully prosecuted.
D) Even if they were, they wouldn't be forcing the farmer to use transgenic crops, they'd be forcing them to pay for technology they didn't intend to use. Pretty lame, but not the same thing.
BT acts on a metabolic mechanism humans don't even have, so classifying it as a poison is a bit misleading.
BT doesn't cause pesticide resistance any faster than standard pesticides, which for the most part are noxious chemicals of some sort with demonstrated bad effects on human beings.
Hybrid seed isn't necessarily infertile, it's just useless, because instead of a uniform, beneficial genotype like the parent, its non-uniform and all over the place, thanks to the wonders of random assortment. They'll happily grow and pass on their genes, if you let them. But no one would intentionally plant them, except for research.
I agree, though, that the problem with transgenics (I refuse to use GM or GMO, because they're such poor terms...unless you harvest your food from the wild, it's all genetically modified), is the stupid intellectual property laws, which are simultaneously being proven stupid by the technology field. Eventually the problem will reach a head, a crisis will occur, and a lot of it will get fixed, but I don't see it happening for a long time, and when it does, many many people are going to be very unhappy.
Not that this sort of thing isn't a concern, but it must be noted that this is a fairly unlikely sort of thing (not being sued by Monsanto...that happens all the time)... Cross-pollination can and does happen between fields of corn (although relatively uncommon at any large distance). However, corn farmers today, for the most part, do not save seed for replanting. Most corn seed planted commercially today is hybrid seed, and if the progeny from the corn resulting from such seed is planted, you get assorted, non-uniform, wierd plants no grower wants. There's no reason it has to be that way, of course...it just happens to be the best way to get good corn is hybrid seed. The exception to that today in this country is organic growers, who do sometimes save seed, and tend to be using older varieties. So for this to happen, you'd need a grower saving seeds near a field of transgenic corn.
Actually, it's Zambia.
There's no Zaire anymore, anyway.
The reason to the resistance towards labeling is that the public is so ill-informed (54% in a recent survey did not know that non-transgenic corn had genes all, for example). The food and pharmaceutical companies aren't afraid of the choice a well-informed public will make, they're afraid of the choice the actual public will make, which would likely cost them billions of dollars in research over what amounts to bad PR.
Do I trust Monsanto or Eli Lilly to tell me the truth about transgenics? No, of course not. Neither to I trust the "anti-GMO" activists who spout scare-mongering pseudo-science. The real research, done at universities by people with somewhat less of an axe to grind, indicates that the health risks of any transgenic crop which has actually made it to market are essentially nil. Environmental risks are something else, of course, but these too are being vastly overplayed.
I used to consider myself to be a very environmentally active person, and I often supported a variety of "environmental" groups. Yet in the past four years or so I've been so disgusted by the lies and half-truths coming out of these groups that I've virtually stopped funding all of them.
Read the literature...don't take my word or any one else's for it.
I'm torn, because in my heart I do support the idea that people should know what they are eating. But when you can count on those people to make bad decisions, decisions which harm both them and the economy, I can't really support doing it right now.
Yeah, despite both having n=9 chromosomes, radish and cabbage don't seem to have homologous sets of chromosomes, and so they don't pair up right, resulting in sterile plants. However, you can make a fertile tetraploid.
Cross-pollination, certainly not in the field, just isn't going to happen between corn and soy. The reasons are almost too many to list...wrong number of chromosomes, lack of homology between chromosomes, mistiming of flowering, various forms of genetic incompatibility, etc. You might be able to coax some sort of a sad deformed thing out of protoplast fusion or some such thing, but I'd be against it, and even if you could, you'd be lucky if you could get it to live at all outside of a lab.