The PBS special HARVEST OF FEAR is also a good resource. I believe I watched a bit of THE FUTURE OF FOOD, and found it primarily biased against biotech, as you may surmise from the description. I don't think it's good for people new to the subject to watch because of this, though it is certainly worth watching.
I felt HARVEST OF FEAR is a better introductory documentary. It provided a better balanced documentary; every interview was countered with an opposing view. When I watched it, I felt that because of the balanced viewpoints, it helped lead viewers to pros and cons, rather than inundate the viewer with negativity.
In any case, I'm offering an alternative, and I hope anyone who watches one will watch the other.
You couldn't have put it better; it's a horrible, horrible idea that has already been put into effect.
We are now in the habit of planting one, ONE, high yield crop variety because it gives us the most food, and if a disease comes by that targets that crop, we're SCREWED. And this isn't just the fault of Monsanto, this is also the result of hybrid crops. The key is to start diversifying immediately.
The progeny aren't viable. After the 2nd generation, gene propagation stops. How is the gene going to go any farther than that? The only immediate problem is a neighboring farmers crop where he ends up not being able to plant viable seed, and that stops there too.
The gene can outbreed ONCE. Past that, it's a dead end, because it does what it's engineered to do, stop producing progeny!
Yes, sinister. Systematic steps taken to destroy the very concept of the independent farmer, to make them all dependent on Monsanto. Suing farmers when nature happens and Monsanto plants pollinate non-Monsanto fields for patent violation.
I question with the word "sinister" because I don't see any proof of intention. They have done seriously questionable stuff, but I feel sinister is a little strong. Their goal may be to profit, but that is not necessarily the same as intentionally taking "systematic steps" to destroy the concept of the independent farmer. If you're arguing for the ability of the farmer to plant his own seed, there's this interesting question:
While Percy Schmeiser was fighting for the farmer's right to plant his own seed, you have to wonder: when your crop becomes pollinated by a plant from another field, is it still your seed? Half the genome is from your crop, have from the other. Is it still yours, especially if the other half is patented? No answers here from me. I think this is tricky.
The hybrid crops provide an incentive for farmers to purchase new seeds each year. It does not destroy the ability for them to replant seeds -- the hybrids are viable, even if their offspring don't have all the same advantages. Many farmers still breed crops in the traditional way to create better breeds. Monsanto is trying to make this not just disadvantageous, but impossible.
Link and sources please? I find this interesting, about farmers breeding crops traditionally. The only instances of this that I've heard of are in Mexico and nations that haven't resorted to use of hybrid crops. Their crops have become a source of genetic variety that US crops lack, because we have resorted to monoculture. While farmers can still plant their own seeds, it doesn't make sense to! These crops wouldn't be competitive in the market. In a sense, the farmers ability to produce crops for profit from save seed is pretty much destroyed. And you know what? These hybrid seeds are patented!
According to the PVPA, plant breeders have 25 years of control over new breeds! So unless that 25 years is up, farmers with hybrid seeds can't replant! While hybrid seed doesn't destroy the ability to plant new seeds, it does prohibit it.
Okay, so what do these other hypothetical forms of 'terminator' reduce the viability of? This is basically DRM for plants -- don't tell me they aren't crippled in some way, because if they weren't there would be no reason for the tech to exist.
The quote I posted says that these plants ARE crippled. I'm not saying that they aren't. But the crippling is to prevent traits genetically engineered into the plants from being introduced into crops of farmers who didn't purchase them. Why is this important? Well, Monsanto doesn't need to sue. Crossbreeding may have occurred, but the traits aren't expressed. That's why the differentiation between types of terminator tech is important. By generalizing V-GURT, you give all of terminator tech a bad name, when new (hypothetical) forms could eliminate this mess we're in right now.
And yes, I absolutely do consider any technology that is designed to prevent farmers from breeding their own crops without the permission of Monsanto to be inherently sinister and evil. It scares me that you think locking away the freaking foundation of civilization is something that might not be evil.
I never said that locking away the freaking foundation of civilization is not evil. It IS. What I'm trying to point out is that this isn't necessarily the end result of terminator technology. It should be regulated so that farmers that want to breed their own crops have the ability to do so. Furthermore, farmers should be able to breed their own crops, and they can! Just don't buy Monsanto! Now, if Monsanto crops DO pollinate a farmers crop and he can't replant seeds, Monsanto needs to be held responsible. There's certainly no question about that, and the technology has to be made so that this can't happen.
This is really one case where what is good for the people and what is good for the corporations can be drawn in black and white. There is absolutely no other reason for the terminator gene to exist.
Exactly. The 'terminator' gene exists for one greedy, selfish, sinister reason: To destroy the foundation of millenia of agriculture. The right of the farmer to use this year's seeds to plant next year's crop. The ability to pick and choose the seeds to plant, which is what lead to our modern domesticated crops.
They want this to go by the wayside. The ultimate goal of things like the terminator gene is to destroy the concept of the independent farmer so that there is no farming without Monsanto. Sinister? The ability of a farmer to save seeds for next years crop has ALREADY been challenged, and this occured almost a CENTURY ago by the advent of hybrid crops! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterosis
And I dunno, I don't agree with your use of the word 'terminator'. Terminator technology can vary, and in this case, this form of the tech is called V-GURT. There may be other forms of 'terminator' tech that DON'T reduce seed viability that can be developed! Your liberal use of the term 'terminator' scares me; it makes it seem as if all incarnations of it (present and future!) MUST have a sinister evil goal.
Terminator tech was under development by a joint partnership with the USDA and a private company that has appeared to have been absorbed by Monsanto.
WHATEVER qualms one may have about Monsanto, the USDA generally has the best intentions for our public safety. IMO, they put in the most effort out of all the other organizations in the world to make sure our agriculture is safe.
And you know what? Monsanto has pledged not to use Terminator tech. See article here:
We apologize for any confusion caused by the added language "in food crops" that appeared in the discussion of Genetic Use Restriction Technologies (GURTs) in our last Pledge Report. We stand by our commitment to not use genetic engineering methods that result in sterile seeds. Period. "
The above article does state that Monsanto may go back on it's pledge of the Moratorium on Terminator tech is lifted, but signs point to them switching to methods that DO NOT prevent future seed viability.
"The intent of the article was to distinguish the "terminator" technology -- which as you know is one type of GURT -- from other GURTs that can use biological means to address important stewardship and business mandates -- such as the type that would turn off the expression of the biotech trait in the next generation of seed while not affecting all other characteristics of the seed and keeping the seed viable in subsequent generations (specifically, the T-GURTs, as you point out)."
Lastly, what's wrong with music, writing, artwork, and source code being IP? They're original sources of work the authors of such should be recognized. Your use of quotes indicate otherwise. Our GMO's, are novel uses of existing gene sequences; this is questionable, and whether this should be IP is debatable. The gene sequences are already existent, scientists are only rearranging them. Should they become IP because they've been rearranged? This I don't know.
I think you're being paranoid and using strong alarmist language.
Dictators obviously don't need these plants to starve their own people, if they can do it already. Furthermore, if GMO companies really wanted to fuck us all over, they'd release some virus to kill all crops except for their own. How's that for crime against humanity?
Terminator seeds appear to be a profit enhancing tool, whose impact only affects farmers who save their own seeds. The latter I sincerely doubt makes up the majority of current farmers, and the effects of T-seeds I am SURE can be controlled with specific legislative clauses. IE, if you are next to a seed saving farmer, you cannot plant these! Perhaps this idea is foolish, I don't know. Someone tell me?
The surprising thing is that this was developed by the USDA, which generally makes sure all agricultural products are very very safe. At the very least, they try harder than any other similar organization in the world. I'm sure they have good intentions, and what's even more surprising is that Monsanto, the biggest baddest profit monger of them all promised not to commercialize this.
I've heard of agrobacterium used in delivering genes into plants, but I've never heard of bacteria picking up DNA from a plant and actually becoming harmful to the environment in one way or another.
Granted, it's known bacteria do have DNA uptake mechanisms, but plant DNA is probably going to be useless for a bacterium. The former is a eukaryote, latter is prokaryote, and the subsequent mRNA and protein processing mechanisms are going to be different between the two.
Maybe the bacterium can transfer the newly acquired DNA a la agrobacterium? I don't know. This seems unlikely, as this would mean we would see plants with DNA from other species more frequently, and we don't see that. Heck, if that happened, all this controversy above GMO plants would probably be nonexsitent!
Do you have any specific fears in mind? Or was the soil bacteria comment just made out of fear of the unknown?
As much as people think that farmers not being able to save seeds is a new issue, it's not. It's happened before. Kinda sounds like Battlestar, doesn't it?
In any case, people found that selfing two plant lines (getting seeds from a plant by pollinating the plant with it's own pollen) to make them homozygous at all alleles, and then crossing the 2 lines to create progeny heterozygous at every locus produced more robust plants; READ, bigger, more product, feeds more people.
Now, the problem with this, is that the farmers can't save their own seeds! Keeping seeds, planting a new crop, and letting the new plants fertilize each other INCREASES homozygosity, decreasing hybrid vigor. As a result, saving seeds is NOT A VIABLE OPTION.
How long has this been around? Get this: this process was invented in 1914-1917, and nearly all corn today is hybrid corn. I don't know how much of America's crops are GMO's and if that has any effect on number of hybrid crops, but the Wiki sounds right. It sounds right, based on what I've been taught.
So, this talk about farmers saving seeds is kind of moot; it's not a good idea with hybrid crops, and their profits from buying hybrid crop seeds every year must outweigh saving seeds, otherwise they wouldn't do it!
This isn't to absolve big companies for Terminator crops; I think there's a better way of preventing outbreeding, specifically by altering protein ID proteins so they're only recognized by a specific plant. But I think this will not affect greatest population of farmers, specifically because of hybrid crop use. The only population that gets screwed over appears to be farmers who do save seeds, and I don't think that population is very large, because it doesn't seem as profitable. As a result, perhaps legislation stating that Terminator crops can only be used when there is no presence of seed saving farmers could be put into place.
Imidacloprid. The article is misleading, I think at least. Imidacloprid, according to Wikipedia, isn't a result of a transgene. It's the result of the plant taking the chemical up through the roots. As a result, the plant vasculature distributes it throughout the plant, and insects get it by sucking sap.
Meh, if I'm reading this right, it seems that the bees are only exposed to low doses. These doses seem only enough to cause disorientation. Maybe they get lost, can't get back? There's more here on the incident in France: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imidacloprid_effects_ on_bee_population It also seems that some studies decided that imidacloprid had no effect on the bees, but people still fear it and don't want to use it.
Lazer tweezers? Gee golly, that sounds COOL! Why don't we have THOSE in our labs?
Back on topic. I'm suspicious of any comments regarding GMO's. Bt cotton toxin's effects are supposed to be specific to lepidoptera LARVAE. Honeybees are of the order hymenoptera, and it's supposed to be the adult bees that disappear from the colonies. Furthermore, prior to collapse, the bees that appear to make up the workforce are young adult bees. If the larvae are getting wiped out, this fact doesn't make sense. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_Collapse_Disor der
Then again, it could be something as simple as the gene insertion into the genome of Bt plants have caused some undesirable protein product, but this should be isolated to certain or even just a single Bt plant species. This is because Bt gene insertion into genomes is completely random, at least to my knowledge. Because of the randomness, I think something definitely weird can happen, but the chances of the insertion landing in "junk" DNA instead of coding DNA, well, it's pretty high. Granted, "junk" DNA isn't always junk...
I say test it out. Get a multiple hives in multiple greenhouses, each with it's own GMO crop, along with other non GMO crops for controls, and see what happens. This shouldn't be too hard to do since you can control flowering time or what not. I think the only real issue is getting the bees. If the bees start dying, then the Europeans and the SF Gate's suggestion may prove to be valid.
This seems a little odd to me. The CryXX toxins are supposed to only be toxic within an insect gut. Why? They only have their pore forming activity under alkaline conditions. This is why it's dangerous to insects; insects eat plant material with CryXX proteins, proteins become active under alkaline insect gut conditions, insect gut get's holes punched in it, insect dies. Mammalian guts are acidic (to my knowledge, this should be all, right?), and as a result, the CryXX toxins would be inactive in our guts. It leads me to wonder what sort of toxic effect they could be having on the mice. It could very well be that mice livers can't handle filtering the protein; ours may be able to (regardless of how close our genomes are, there are bound to be differences).
Further more, the fact that the German authority found SOME homologies to sequences in C. elegans, vibrio cholerae, and b. popilliae doesn't sound like anything alarming to me; sequence homologies can be common, considering the evolution of proteins seem to follow a cut and paste mechanism, where one motif is mixed and matched with another. An extreme (perhaps bad example on my part), are how our antibodies are amalgamations of different protein motifs, kind of a like a lego model. Before any good conclusions can be drawn, I think would like to know what proteins in the listed organisms have "some" homologies Cry3B1, what percentage of sequences are homologous, and what the hell do those homologies do. Are they phosphatases? Kinases? Some sort of receptor? Are they some integral part of a toxin?
Meh, I guess they did say the cause of toxicity was unknown. I wonder if any sort of assay comparing the proteins expressed in wild type maize and Bt maize could show some sort of difference in protein content. I guess you'd have to look at chemical contents of both varieties as well.
Hum. Does anyone know if Greenpeace has any data to go with their article?
You're quite right to point out access, but it's not just war, it's who has the means to buy the food as well. If a rich nation has surplus, and a poor nation has demand, the rich nation certainly isn't going to ship the food to a nation that can't pay. There's probably something fundamentally wrong with our society that needs to be addressed.
Furthermore, the current food surplus is a byproduct of unsustainable agricultural practices. As the population continues to grow, we will not be able to keep producing at current levels; we'll destroy our land and we won't have anywhere to farm. Organic foods, at least not alone, will definitely not be a solution. If we turned to completely organic farming today, we wouldn't have nearly enough land to feed the world. This is where GM might come into play, or even a mix of organic ag AND GM.
That statement is an insult to many good willed professors at many universities trying to do something good for the world. It may be said that corporations are doing this for one reason; profit, but even that may not be true.
Ingo Potrykus was one such man. It's been said that in his attempt to create golden rice, he gave a speech to an auditorium full of people, explaining his plight. Here he was, trying to address the issue of vitamin A deficiency, and he couldn't, because of the corporations and their patents on genetic engineering tools. At the end, he had an auditorium filled with a tearful audience. Look how far Professor Potrykus has come; major corporations have had to allow use of their patented properties for public use, and hell, if more people can try and blackmail these major corporations so that they have to do things that won't look bad to the public, who knows what might be accomplished.
That being said, Monsanto is probably downright evil. Organizations like PIPRA and MANY public universities are trying to change this, by patenting variants of existing genetic engineering tools and then allowing their widespread use without trying to profit.
Farmers collecting seeds for future crops is not a wise idea. Quite frankly, the high yield crops farmers in developed countries grow are a result of hybrid vigor: plants of two lineages are selfed, producing two inbred lines from the parents. They are inbred for several generations. These inbreds become increasingly homozygous at all alleles. The two inbred lines are then crossed, resulting in progeny much more vigorous than the parental lines, I believe due to homozygosity at all, if not nearly every, allele. This is known as hybrid vigor.
These lines are what are sold to farmers. The problem is, if farmers save the seeds from their crops, the progeny of the hybrid crops have a certain amount of their population become homozygous at alleles, and hybrid vigor is lost. Continuing generation become lower yielding than the previous, and the farmer has to buy seeds anyway.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_vigor
So, point one, terminator hurting farmers from saving seeds; when you're dealing with GMO crops that have been bred for hybrid vigor, or ANY HYBRID CROP, it makes no sense to save the seed in the first place. Only in places like Africa or Mexico where farmers grow indigenous ecotypes will this be a problem, and chances are WE DON'T WANT THEM TO GROW GMO/HYBRID CROPS. Wild ecotypes are a natural gene reserve for disease resistance and other genes that have been lost in our high yield cultivars. Of course, you run into the issue of where are these people going to get better crops.
ISSUE TWO: Cross pollination
Current arguments against GMO crops include that GMO crops will cross pollinate wild crop cultivars, introducing god knows what awful things in to the wild type gene pool. Farmers also want GMO crops separate from say, crops that can be marketed as "GMO FREE". The terminator gene addresses this issue by preventing cross pollination.'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_ organism -- this link has a section addressing cross pollination by GMO's. Check it out.
From what I recall, farmers in the US who grow GMO crops already have to buy seeds each season from companies. I actually spoke to one such farmer, and asked why they continue to grow GMO crops, despite having to buy seeds each season. His answer?
They're profitable, otherwise they wouldn't do it.
Interesting fact: 60% of genes are conserved between a fly and a human. They share a "core set" of genes, meaning they code for the same proteins, etc. Between humans and cows, it's probably even more, considering how much closer evolutionarily cows are to humans compared to flys.
That being said, the poster who mentioned insulin brings up an interesting point. Using "human" genes (and you know, I'm sure there is some animal, or many even, that share our gene coding for insulin, which is used for blood sugar homeostasis), can help people, like diabetics. There certainly are ethical boundaries that should not be crossed, many ethical questions that must be answered, but this is true with many things. Should we splice the atom? Should organic farmers use weeding methods detrimental to their workers instead of herbicides? Should we continue using conventional farming techniques that hurt the earth? Should we genetically engineer corn to make it's own pesticides to increase yields and feed more people even though we don't fully know the environmental consequences? A doctor has two patients that will die on him, and he has to chose one to operate on. Which should he save?
Furthermore, to the poster who mentioned that the root of the issues aren't being addressed. While bioengineering food may not address the root of the issue, how do you expect biologists/genetecists/researchers to address these issues? Unless these people become politicians or human rights advocates, they can't do anything. Bioengineering is their SPECIALTY, and it is what they can do to help others. Politics should be left to the politicians (and those of those in the US need to write to our senators, etc).
Admittedly, some of these people are working for companys like Ventria or Monsanto, and their intentions may be less than wholesome, but you have people like Ingo Potrykus and his Golden Rice II, now making enough vitamin A (about 2 servings of rice a day) to help those who have vitamin A deficiency in lesser developed nations. You have people at public universities, who in the US receive intellecual proprietary control over their products, working to solve these problems without looking for profit like Monsanto, and you have organizations like PIPRA trying to organize the public sector to rival the private sector.
Honestly, I believe our opinions tend to be too black and white. This is wrong, therefore it shouldn't be done, and that's write, we HAVE to do that. I don't think anything is so clear cut, and that answers lie in between. We're going to need some GE, and we're going to need some politics, and we're going to need some good old grass roots movements to motivate the government, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/harvest/
The PBS special HARVEST OF FEAR is also a good resource. I believe I watched a bit of THE FUTURE OF FOOD, and found it primarily biased against biotech, as you may surmise from the description. I don't think it's good for people new to the subject to watch because of this, though it is certainly worth watching.
I felt HARVEST OF FEAR is a better introductory documentary. It provided a better balanced documentary; every interview was countered with an opposing view. When I watched it, I felt that because of the balanced viewpoints, it helped lead viewers to pros and cons, rather than inundate the viewer with negativity.
In any case, I'm offering an alternative, and I hope anyone who watches one will watch the other.
Your last bit is describing the present situation. Most US crops are ALREADY relying on monoculture. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoculture
You couldn't have put it better; it's a horrible, horrible idea that has already been put into effect.
We are now in the habit of planting one, ONE, high yield crop variety because it gives us the most food, and if a disease comes by that targets that crop, we're SCREWED. And this isn't just the fault of Monsanto, this is also the result of hybrid crops. The key is to start diversifying immediately.
The progeny aren't viable. After the 2nd generation, gene propagation stops. How is the gene going to go any farther than that? The only immediate problem is a neighboring farmers crop where he ends up not being able to plant viable seed, and that stops there too.
The gene can outbreed ONCE. Past that, it's a dead end, because it does what it's engineered to do, stop producing progeny!
I question with the word "sinister" because I don't see any proof of intention. They have done seriously questionable stuff, but I feel sinister is a little strong. Their goal may be to profit, but that is not necessarily the same as intentionally taking "systematic steps" to destroy the concept of the independent farmer. If you're arguing for the ability of the farmer to plant his own seed, there's this interesting question:
While Percy Schmeiser was fighting for the farmer's right to plant his own seed, you have to wonder: when your crop becomes pollinated by a plant from another field, is it still your seed? Half the genome is from your crop, have from the other. Is it still yours, especially if the other half is patented? No answers here from me. I think this is tricky.
The hybrid crops provide an incentive for farmers to purchase new seeds each year. It does not destroy the ability for them to replant seeds -- the hybrids are viable, even if their offspring don't have all the same advantages. Many farmers still breed crops in the traditional way to create better breeds. Monsanto is trying to make this not just disadvantageous, but impossible.Link and sources please? I find this interesting, about farmers breeding crops traditionally. The only instances of this that I've heard of are in Mexico and nations that haven't resorted to use of hybrid crops. Their crops have become a source of genetic variety that US crops lack, because we have resorted to monoculture. While farmers can still plant their own seeds, it doesn't make sense to! These crops wouldn't be competitive in the market. In a sense, the farmers ability to produce crops for profit from save seed is pretty much destroyed. And you know what? These hybrid seeds are patented!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_Variety_Prote ction_Act
According to the PVPA, plant breeders have 25 years of control over new breeds! So unless that 25 years is up, farmers with hybrid seeds can't replant! While hybrid seed doesn't destroy the ability to plant new seeds, it does prohibit it.
Okay, so what do these other hypothetical forms of 'terminator' reduce the viability of? This is basically DRM for plants -- don't tell me they aren't crippled in some way, because if they weren't there would be no reason for the tech to exist.
The quote I posted says that these plants ARE crippled. I'm not saying that they aren't. But the crippling is to prevent traits genetically engineered into the plants from being introduced into crops of farmers who didn't purchase them. Why is this important? Well, Monsanto doesn't need to sue. Crossbreeding may have occurred, but the traits aren't expressed. That's why the differentiation between types of terminator tech is important. By generalizing V-GURT, you give all of terminator tech a bad name, when new (hypothetical) forms could eliminate this mess we're in right now.
And yes, I absolutely do consider any technology that is designed to prevent farmers from breeding their own crops without the permission of Monsanto to be inherently sinister and evil. It scares me that you think locking away the freaking foundation of civilization is something that might not be evil.
I never said that locking away the freaking foundation of civilization is not evil. It IS. What I'm trying to point out is that this isn't necessarily the end result of terminator technology. It should be regulated so that farmers that want to breed their own crops have the ability to do so. Furthermore, farmers should be able to breed their own crops, and they can! Just don't buy Monsanto! Now, if Monsanto crops DO pollinate a farmers crop and he can't replant seeds, Monsanto needs to be held responsible. There's certainly no question about that, and the technology has to be made so that this can't happen.
Doh. That was me, for those haters of A. Cowards. Thought I was logged in.
Exactly. The 'terminator' gene exists for one greedy, selfish, sinister reason: To destroy the foundation of millenia of agriculture. The right of the farmer to use this year's seeds to plant next year's crop. The ability to pick and choose the seeds to plant, which is what lead to our modern domesticated crops.
They want this to go by the wayside. The ultimate goal of things like the terminator gene is to destroy the concept of the independent farmer so that there is no farming without Monsanto.
Sinister? The ability of a farmer to save seeds for next years crop has ALREADY been challenged, and this occured almost a CENTURY ago by the advent of hybrid crops! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterosis And I dunno, I don't agree with your use of the word 'terminator'. Terminator technology can vary, and in this case, this form of the tech is called V-GURT. There may be other forms of 'terminator' tech that DON'T reduce seed viability that can be developed! Your liberal use of the term 'terminator' scares me; it makes it seem as if all incarnations of it (present and future!) MUST have a sinister evil goal.
Terminator tech was under development by a joint partnership with the USDA and a private company that has appeared to have been absorbed by Monsanto.
d ates/monsanto_apologizes_and_returns_to_original_p ledge_not_to_commercialize_terminator
WHATEVER qualms one may have about Monsanto, the USDA generally has the best intentions for our public safety. IMO, they put in the most effort out of all the other organizations in the world to make sure our agriculture is safe.
And you know what? Monsanto has pledged not to use Terminator tech. See article here:
http://www.banterminator.org/news_updates/news_up
See quote here:
" Dear Ms. Sharratt,
We apologize for any confusion caused by the added language "in food crops" that appeared in the discussion of Genetic Use Restriction Technologies (GURTs) in our last Pledge Report. We stand by our commitment to not use genetic engineering methods that result in sterile seeds. Period. "
The above article does state that Monsanto may go back on it's pledge of the Moratorium on Terminator tech is lifted, but signs point to them switching to methods that DO NOT prevent future seed viability.
"The intent of the article was to distinguish the "terminator" technology -- which as you know is one type of GURT -- from other GURTs that can use biological means to address important stewardship and business mandates -- such as the type that would turn off the expression of the biotech trait in the next generation of seed while not affecting all other characteristics of the seed and keeping the seed viable in subsequent generations (specifically, the T-GURTs, as you point out)."
Lastly, what's wrong with music, writing, artwork, and source code being IP? They're original sources of work the authors of such should be recognized. Your use of quotes indicate otherwise. Our GMO's, are novel uses of existing gene sequences; this is questionable, and whether this should be IP is debatable. The gene sequences are already existent, scientists are only rearranging them. Should they become IP because they've been rearranged? This I don't know.
I think you're being paranoid and using strong alarmist language.
Dictators obviously don't need these plants to starve their own people, if they can do it already. Furthermore, if GMO companies really wanted to fuck us all over, they'd release some virus to kill all crops except for their own. How's that for crime against humanity?
Terminator seeds appear to be a profit enhancing tool, whose impact only affects farmers who save their own seeds. The latter I sincerely doubt makes up the majority of current farmers, and the effects of T-seeds I am SURE can be controlled with specific legislative clauses. IE, if you are next to a seed saving farmer, you cannot plant these! Perhaps this idea is foolish, I don't know. Someone tell me?
The surprising thing is that this was developed by the USDA, which generally makes sure all agricultural products are very very safe. At the very least, they try harder than any other similar organization in the world. I'm sure they have good intentions, and what's even more surprising is that Monsanto, the biggest baddest profit monger of them all promised not to commercialize this.
I've heard of agrobacterium used in delivering genes into plants, but I've never heard of bacteria picking up DNA from a plant and actually becoming harmful to the environment in one way or another. Granted, it's known bacteria do have DNA uptake mechanisms, but plant DNA is probably going to be useless for a bacterium. The former is a eukaryote, latter is prokaryote, and the subsequent mRNA and protein processing mechanisms are going to be different between the two. Maybe the bacterium can transfer the newly acquired DNA a la agrobacterium? I don't know. This seems unlikely, as this would mean we would see plants with DNA from other species more frequently, and we don't see that. Heck, if that happened, all this controversy above GMO plants would probably be nonexsitent! Do you have any specific fears in mind? Or was the soil bacteria comment just made out of fear of the unknown?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterosis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_seed
As much as people think that farmers not being able to save seeds is a new issue, it's not. It's happened before. Kinda sounds like Battlestar, doesn't it?
In any case, people found that selfing two plant lines (getting seeds from a plant by pollinating the plant with it's own pollen) to make them homozygous at all alleles, and then crossing the 2 lines to create progeny heterozygous at every locus produced more robust plants; READ, bigger, more product, feeds more people.
Now, the problem with this, is that the farmers can't save their own seeds! Keeping seeds, planting a new crop, and letting the new plants fertilize each other INCREASES homozygosity, decreasing hybrid vigor. As a result, saving seeds is NOT A VIABLE OPTION.
How long has this been around? Get this: this process was invented in 1914-1917, and nearly all corn today is hybrid corn. I don't know how much of America's crops are GMO's and if that has any effect on number of hybrid crops, but the Wiki sounds right. It sounds right, based on what I've been taught.
So, this talk about farmers saving seeds is kind of moot; it's not a good idea with hybrid crops, and their profits from buying hybrid crop seeds every year must outweigh saving seeds, otherwise they wouldn't do it!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminator_gene
This isn't to absolve big companies for Terminator crops; I think there's a better way of preventing outbreeding, specifically by altering protein ID proteins so they're only recognized by a specific plant. But I think this will not affect greatest population of farmers, specifically because of hybrid crop use. The only population that gets screwed over appears to be farmers who do save seeds, and I don't think that population is very large, because it doesn't seem as profitable. As a result, perhaps legislation stating that Terminator crops can only be used when there is no presence of seed saving farmers could be put into place.
Er, meant to say the neurotoxin from the NJ article is imidacloprid. Slipped my mind.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imidacloprid
_ on_bee_population
Imidacloprid. The article is misleading, I think at least. Imidacloprid, according to Wikipedia, isn't a result of a transgene. It's the result of the plant taking the chemical up through the roots. As a result, the plant vasculature distributes it throughout the plant, and insects get it by sucking sap.
Meh, if I'm reading this right, it seems that the bees are only exposed to low doses. These doses seem only enough to cause disorientation. Maybe they get lost, can't get back? There's more here on the incident in France: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imidacloprid_effects
It also seems that some studies decided that imidacloprid had no effect on the bees, but people still fear it and don't want to use it.
Lazer tweezers? Gee golly, that sounds COOL! Why don't we have THOSE in our labs?
r der
Back on topic. I'm suspicious of any comments regarding GMO's. Bt cotton toxin's effects are supposed to be specific to lepidoptera LARVAE. Honeybees are of the order hymenoptera, and it's supposed to be the adult bees that disappear from the colonies. Furthermore, prior to collapse, the bees that appear to make up the workforce are young adult bees. If the larvae are getting wiped out, this fact doesn't make sense. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_Collapse_Diso
Then again, it could be something as simple as the gene insertion into the genome of Bt plants have caused some undesirable protein product, but this should be isolated to certain or even just a single Bt plant species. This is because Bt gene insertion into genomes is completely random, at least to my knowledge. Because of the randomness, I think something definitely weird can happen, but the chances of the insertion landing in "junk" DNA instead of coding DNA, well, it's pretty high. Granted, "junk" DNA isn't always junk...
I say test it out. Get a multiple hives in multiple greenhouses, each with it's own GMO crop, along with other non GMO crops for controls, and see what happens. This shouldn't be too hard to do since you can control flowering time or what not. I think the only real issue is getting the bees. If the bees start dying, then the Europeans and the SF Gate's suggestion may prove to be valid.
This seems a little odd to me. The CryXX toxins are supposed to only be toxic within an insect gut. Why? They only have their pore forming activity under alkaline conditions. This is why it's dangerous to insects; insects eat plant material with CryXX proteins, proteins become active under alkaline insect gut conditions, insect gut get's holes punched in it, insect dies. Mammalian guts are acidic (to my knowledge, this should be all, right?), and as a result, the CryXX toxins would be inactive in our guts. It leads me to wonder what sort of toxic effect they could be having on the mice. It could very well be that mice livers can't handle filtering the protein; ours may be able to (regardless of how close our genomes are, there are bound to be differences).
Further more, the fact that the German authority found SOME homologies to sequences in C. elegans, vibrio cholerae, and b. popilliae doesn't sound like anything alarming to me; sequence homologies can be common, considering the evolution of proteins seem to follow a cut and paste mechanism, where one motif is mixed and matched with another. An extreme (perhaps bad example on my part), are how our antibodies are amalgamations of different protein motifs, kind of a like a lego model. Before any good conclusions can be drawn, I think would like to know what proteins in the listed organisms have "some" homologies Cry3B1, what percentage of sequences are homologous, and what the hell do those homologies do. Are they phosphatases? Kinases? Some sort of receptor? Are they some integral part of a toxin?
Meh, I guess they did say the cause of toxicity was unknown. I wonder if any sort of assay comparing the proteins expressed in wild type maize and Bt maize could show some sort of difference in protein content. I guess you'd have to look at chemical contents of both varieties as well.
Hum. Does anyone know if Greenpeace has any data to go with their article?
You're quite right to point out access, but it's not just war, it's who has the means to buy the food as well. If a rich nation has surplus, and a poor nation has demand, the rich nation certainly isn't going to ship the food to a nation that can't pay. There's probably something fundamentally wrong with our society that needs to be addressed.
Furthermore, the current food surplus is a byproduct of unsustainable agricultural practices. As the population continues to grow, we will not be able to keep producing at current levels; we'll destroy our land and we won't have anywhere to farm. Organic foods, at least not alone, will definitely not be a solution. If we turned to completely organic farming today, we wouldn't have nearly enough land to feed the world. This is where GM might come into play, or even a mix of organic ag AND GM.
The reason for GM crops is not ONLY ONE.
That statement is an insult to many good willed professors at many universities trying to do something good for the world. It may be said that corporations are doing this for one reason; profit, but even that may not be true.
Ingo Potrykus was one such man. It's been said that in his attempt to create golden rice, he gave a speech to an auditorium full of people, explaining his plight. Here he was, trying to address the issue of vitamin A deficiency, and he couldn't, because of the corporations and their patents on genetic engineering tools. At the end, he had an auditorium filled with a tearful audience. Look how far Professor Potrykus has come; major corporations have had to allow use of their patented properties for public use, and hell, if more people can try and blackmail these major corporations so that they have to do things that won't look bad to the public, who knows what might be accomplished.
That being said, Monsanto is probably downright evil. Organizations like PIPRA and MANY public universities are trying to change this, by patenting variants of existing genetic engineering tools and then allowing their widespread use without trying to profit.
Farmers collecting seeds for future crops is not a wise idea. Quite frankly, the high yield crops farmers in developed countries grow are a result of hybrid vigor: plants of two lineages are selfed, producing two inbred lines from the parents. They are inbred for several generations. These inbreds become increasingly homozygous at all alleles. The two inbred lines are then crossed, resulting in progeny much more vigorous than the parental lines, I believe due to homozygosity at all, if not nearly every, allele. This is known as hybrid vigor. These lines are what are sold to farmers. The problem is, if farmers save the seeds from their crops, the progeny of the hybrid crops have a certain amount of their population become homozygous at alleles, and hybrid vigor is lost. Continuing generation become lower yielding than the previous, and the farmer has to buy seeds anyway. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_vigor So, point one, terminator hurting farmers from saving seeds; when you're dealing with GMO crops that have been bred for hybrid vigor, or ANY HYBRID CROP, it makes no sense to save the seed in the first place. Only in places like Africa or Mexico where farmers grow indigenous ecotypes will this be a problem, and chances are WE DON'T WANT THEM TO GROW GMO/HYBRID CROPS. Wild ecotypes are a natural gene reserve for disease resistance and other genes that have been lost in our high yield cultivars. Of course, you run into the issue of where are these people going to get better crops. ISSUE TWO: Cross pollination Current arguments against GMO crops include that GMO crops will cross pollinate wild crop cultivars, introducing god knows what awful things in to the wild type gene pool. Farmers also want GMO crops separate from say, crops that can be marketed as "GMO FREE". The terminator gene addresses this issue by preventing cross pollination.' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_ organism -- this link has a section addressing cross pollination by GMO's. Check it out.
From what I recall, farmers in the US who grow GMO crops already have to buy seeds each season from companies. I actually spoke to one such farmer, and asked why they continue to grow GMO crops, despite having to buy seeds each season. His answer?
They're profitable, otherwise they wouldn't do it.
Interesting fact: 60% of genes are conserved between a fly and a human. They share a "core set" of genes, meaning they code for the same proteins, etc. Between humans and cows, it's probably even more, considering how much closer evolutionarily cows are to humans compared to flys.
That being said, the poster who mentioned insulin brings up an interesting point. Using "human" genes (and you know, I'm sure there is some animal, or many even, that share our gene coding for insulin, which is used for blood sugar homeostasis), can help people, like diabetics. There certainly are ethical boundaries that should not be crossed, many ethical questions that must be answered, but this is true with many things. Should we splice the atom? Should organic farmers use weeding methods detrimental to their workers instead of herbicides? Should we continue using conventional farming techniques that hurt the earth? Should we genetically engineer corn to make it's own pesticides to increase yields and feed more people even though we don't fully know the environmental consequences? A doctor has two patients that will die on him, and he has to chose one to operate on. Which should he save?
Furthermore, to the poster who mentioned that the root of the issues aren't being addressed. While bioengineering food may not address the root of the issue, how do you expect biologists/genetecists/researchers to address these issues? Unless these people become politicians or human rights advocates, they can't do anything. Bioengineering is their SPECIALTY, and it is what they can do to help others. Politics should be left to the politicians (and those of those in the US need to write to our senators, etc).
Admittedly, some of these people are working for companys like Ventria or Monsanto, and their intentions may be less than wholesome, but you have people like Ingo Potrykus and his Golden Rice II, now making enough vitamin A (about 2 servings of rice a day) to help those who have vitamin A deficiency in lesser developed nations. You have people at public universities, who in the US receive intellecual proprietary control over their products, working to solve these problems without looking for profit like Monsanto, and you have organizations like PIPRA trying to organize the public sector to rival the private sector.
Honestly, I believe our opinions tend to be too black and white. This is wrong, therefore it shouldn't be done, and that's write, we HAVE to do that. I don't think anything is so clear cut, and that answers lie in between. We're going to need some GE, and we're going to need some politics, and we're going to need some good old grass roots movements to motivate the government, etc.