Bio-Engineered Rice Uses Human Genes 417
gliph writes "Yahoo news has a piece about a small biogenetics firm that is using genetically engineered rice containing human genes to help fight diarrhea. From the article: 'Ventria's rice produces two human proteins found in mother's milk, saliva and tears, which help people hydrate and lessen the severity and duration of diarrhea attacks, a top killer of children in developing countries.'"
Old recipe for stopping diarrhea (Score:4, Insightful)
Eating cooked rice also helps stopping diarrhea. Normal rice, non genetic modifications whatsoever.
These simple old tricks come all the way from my grandmother, and i've used them often enough to know that they work (either that or it's the placebo effect in action).
So why exactly do we need frankein-rice for?
Re:Ethics? (Score:5, Insightful)
also injecting yourself with a part of a
human? Many drugs are made in e.g. e.coli
where a human or modified human gene is
expressed to make a protein, then purified
and sold. This new approach is just
packaging the relevant drug/protein in a
capsule which happens to be a rice grain.
No ethics problems here.
Re:Ethics? (Score:1, Insightful)
Shouldn't the headline read... (Score:3, Insightful)
FTA
>"Earlier this month, a Peruvian scientist sponsored by Ventria presented data at the Pediatric Academics Societies meeting in San Francisco. It showed children hospitalized in Peru with serious diarrhea attacks recovered quicker -- 3.67 days versus 5.21 days -- if the dehydration solution they were fed contained the powder."
Re:Ethics? (Score:5, Insightful)
You obviously never had a little child with severe diarrhea. Which is sometimes accompanied by a lot of vomiting. So everything you feed to your child goes out. If not in first few minutes upwards than in next few minutes downwards.
Eating human? Please. There are many genes that are common to many speices. So, 'eating genes' that are present in pig/cow/horse/chicken... and human... Well, you cannibal!
Ethics vs survival (Score:3, Insightful)
When clean water is not always at hand, diseases such as dysentery are easy to catch. Although this rice is no cure, it can help prevent the loss of fluids associated with this disease and help save lives.
So, what are these ethical issues you were referring to again?
$ick $cience (Score:5, Insightful)
You know what helps people hydrate? Water. Clean water and food can prevent diarrhea. All that money going into genetically engineered crops. Why not fix the socio-political problems of these regions so the infrastructures -> people can become healthy?
Oh yeah... no profit in that. Hell's gonna be standing room only.
Re:Shouldn't the headline read... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Old recipe for stopping diarrhea (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Old recipe for stopping diarrhea (Score:1, Insightful)
I am not disputing that diarrhea kills a large number of children (I recall hearing that it is the leading cause of death in the world.) But families that can not afford clean water won't be able to afford this stuff. Not that offering the product to those who can afford it is evil, but they will use the fact that children do die of diarrhea as a scare tactic in advertising as well as gaining political leverage.
Re:Old recipe for stopping diarrhea (Score:1, Insightful)
All they do, is lock the poor farmers in to a GM contract.
And now, the poor farmer has to buy this GM crap, he has 5 times more kids than he ever can feed and as you can see, there will be even more people suffering.
You can NOT take the statistics from developed country and say: "Oh my, "too many" children are dying in poor country. Lets save them! Huraaa!"
This is absolute bull shit and causes more harm than good.
Re:$ick $cience (Score:4, Insightful)
Shut the fuck up. (Score:5, Insightful)
Shut. The. Fuck. Up.
It's easy for you to bitch and moan and fear-monger about the ethics of human DNA in some rice, from your computer chair in your air-conditioned first-world home or office. Meanwhile there are people - real, live people - people with thoughts, and feelings, and whose well-being you'd place at first-priority, whose well-being would be your tantamount concern, whose well-being would trump these silly goddamn over-analytical beardo quack ideas and "what ifs" -- that is, if you weren't such a fucking unthinking monster -- and these people are shitting themselves to death. And even though you and I both laughed as kids when we played Oregon Trail and learned what "dysentary" meant, one of us has managed to grow up, and figures it'd be best if we could put a stop to this horrible pain and suffering in the real world. Meanwhile, the other one is playing Armchair Philosopher, talking about lines being crossed and the ethics of eliminating suffering , without knowing the first thing about what he's talking about. Jesus Christ.
Have you heard about a little invention from the very late 1700s called "vaccinations"? Is this "ethical" in your eyes? Was it "ethical" for Louis Pasteur to inject human beings with (residual amounts of) COW DNA? Or should we have put a stop to this and let smallpox continue to ravage the globe? What about blood transfusions? That's OMG human DNA as well. Or, wait, are you one of those fucking quacker-flappers, like that lady who made an entire campaign out of "HIV does not cause AIDS", then gave AIDS to her daughter (by not taking any preventative measures during pregnancy)?
Look. I'm trying not to be too much of a -1 Flamebait -1 Troll -1 Confrontational Asshole, but what is your deal? If someone you loved (assuming you are actually capable of feeling empathy, or anything beyond Moral Sense [c.f. Twain, "The Mysterious Stranger" [gutenberg.org]]) was locked in a room, in a hotel you did not own, which was currently on fire, would you worry about the ethics of breaking the door down? Would you tap the fireman on the back as he was about to take an axe to the door, and oh-so-wisely, intellectually bleat^H^H^H^H^H state that it was a violation of ethics to be destroying property that wasn't yours? Would you then put on your Humble Pious Face, with your head solemnly cast down, and proclaim your grief for the impending loss of your wife / child / mother / father? Or does this garbage only spew forth from your mouth when it's other people's children whose lives are at risk?
So much idiotic diarrhea dribbling out of your mouth - I'm sure this isn't the only completely moronic thing you've managed to come up with in your blessedly short existance. Maybe you could use a DNA injection. I know I'd gladly sodomize you. I mean "innoculate" you - I get those two words confused =)!
MODS: -1, Whatever me all you want. I prefer not to intellectualize idiocy (such as the Parent post), so if you're going to mod me down for calling bullshit when I see it, mod me down, for calling bullshit, when, I, see... it. </Shatner>
Re:Old recipe for stopping diarrhea (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Old recipe for stopping diarrhea (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Shut the fuck up. (Score:5, Insightful)
What ifs? Is that meant to be imply some negative connotation to perfectly reasonable and serious concerns?
Here's a whatif, for you. What if we give hard working salt-of-the-earth farmers the chance to save some money and allow them to feed their cows animal protein instead of corn? Never mind the overly analytical issue of feeding herbivores other herbivores, there's livelihoods at risk, economies at stake, and benefits to go around for everyone.
Sorry, but the history of technological progress is littered with Really Bad Ideas that sounded really good at one time. Mad cow is just the latest, and a Google search will turn up as many as you want. Any radical idea deserves serious vetting, whether it takes the form of catcalls from the
Re:Ethics? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Product's name: (Score:2, Insightful)
Wind Pollination (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know how far they have tested this, but medicine and science has had several disasters with medications given to one generation and the disastrous results showing up in subsequent generations. Why can't we stick with things that humans evolved on and eliminate the crud like high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, genetically modified foods, olean, etc? Our bodies don't know what we're eating anymore.
Re:Shut the fuck up. (Score:3, Insightful)
Fine save the kiddies. Just don't complain in fifty years time when we're up to our asses in GM crossbreed staple foods.
so why do you want to hurt them? (Score:5, Insightful)
These people are not going to be helped with bioengineered rice. The problems in the third world are political chaos, war, lack of family planning, lack of education, religious fundamentalism, and others. Poverty, disease, high mortality, child labor, homelessness, and migration are symptoms of that. You can't fix the problems by treating the symptoms, and even if the first world made it its top priority to help the third world, it couldn't being to alleviate the suffering. The only way this is ever going to get fixed is to address the root problems.
Every dollar you invest in attempts at quick fixes like bioengineered rice is a dollar you aren't spending on fixing the fundamental problems. It's actually worse than that: if you give these people crutches like bioengineered rice, they're even less likely to do what's necessary to modernize their infrastructure, and you make them dependent on high-tech products and imports.
It's well-meaning idiots like you that focus on the short term and keep meddling in those societies (creating corruption and dependency in the process) that are responsible for a large part of the suffering in the third world. Europe and the US developed into modern societies with long life expectancies without such meddling, and these nations can and will as well if we give them access to world markets and let them compete and develop freely.
Re:Shouldn't the headline read... (Score:3, Insightful)
Because the kind of diarrhea mentioned in the article is not what you get the morning after a wild party in your frat. Tests were done in Peru because in that country diarrhea in children is endemic, caused by several factors, poverty among them, bad sanitation, inadequate water supply where the dry climate is a factor, etc.
It's one thing to complain about the high price you pay to fill your swimming pool in Southern California, it's a different thing to have to store your drinking water in an old steel can.
Tell me what organization can do what you want? (Score:3, Insightful)
This leaves most of the real work to private organizations, the ones who have been doing the bulk of the charitable work in Africa and similar areas. Since most of them do not get government money they need solutions that work and work in conditions less than ideal. This is where enigneered food stuffs come into play.
Claiming water is the best way to hydrate people is like claiming a drowning man is going to be wet. Its a big "DUH" yet completely misses the point. This paticular rice is a solution where the obvious solution isn't practical or available at the time. Dry goods are many times easier to transport and store. What has to be done until the infrastructure is in place is to prevent as many complications as possible. Rice is a great medium. A little of it goes a long way.
The problem with saving many people of the world today is ignorance. While we like to pretend the leaders of these 3rd world countries are ignorant the bulk of the ignorance is here at home in the western world. The very same people who would harp about religious ignorance are the very same ones who fly off the handle at any foods that are engineered. They have little information, rely on innuendo and partial truths, and then use hyperbole and fear to make their point seem valid. Trouble is their ignorance kills people in the countries that can use the help.
Look, we can think good thoughts all we want. We can forever look for a better solution. Unfortunately most of these people don't have the time to wait and good thoughts don't keep them fed and healthy.
Whats next? Claiming that irradiated food is bad? How about the scare tactics that surrounded homoginizing? (sp?)
Ethics and what have you (Score:5, Insightful)
But of course, this is not about save the lives of poor children - it is just yet another way to earn money from the poor. If we really wanted to put an end to unnecessary suffering, it would be far more relevant to try ending poverty; it is after all not as if we in the western world couldn't it if we really wanted to.
However, there is a more sinister side to the debate about genetically modified plants: gene pollution. It works like this: you grow your modified plant, the bees (or wind) comes and takes pollen away, and some of it pollinates wild plants - or the neighbor farmer's unmodified crop.
In the first case wild plant species now carry the modification, and it may or may not pop up later in circumstances that are very unfortunate. In the second case the farmer's crop is suddenly 'illegal', because it now contains patented genes that he has not paid any ryalties for using.
Now that's the REAL ethical challenge when it comes to genetic modification.
Re:so why do you want to hurt them? (Score:2, Insightful)
What do you propose a biogeneticist (that means someone whose speciality is in the process of biogenetics, ie the building blocks of life - as opposed to being a politician, a general, a condom dispenser, a teacher, a full-time skeptic [randi.org], or other things) do?
Your second paragraph seems to be saying something along the lines of "DON'T INVEST IN BIOGENETICS! BECAUSE SOLVING DISEASES IS ONLY A BANDAID TO THE GREATER PROBLEM OF blah blah". Notice the "blah blah". That is my way of implying that I tune you out because you don't make any sense. Tell me, where did I mention that this was GOING TO SAVE THE ENTIRE PLANET FOREVER ALL OUR TROUBLES GONE HOOP, HOOP, HOORAY? Oh, that's right, I didn't. Are you saying that nobody should give bio-genetics firms any money, because it's just a waste? Guess what - speaking rhetorically, if I give a bio-genetics firm money, it is with the express intent that they use it to bio-geneticize. And it seems like, in that regard, this is a very successful bio-genetics firm. Bio-genetics isn't cheap, you know. Well, anyway, how about just telling me in what firms to invest in to make sure the fundamental problems are fixed? Oh, wait, you mean it's vast and multi-faceted and there's no one firm that's working on the Perfection Engine? Oh well. I hate to sound like an asshole (not really), but you lose this paragraph.
And, Occam's Razor as applied to your conclusion: "blah blah blah I am a disgusting cowardly borderline-racist and we shouldn't share the spoils of hundreds of years of science with the primitives, just let the 1% with 90% of the wealth in Primitivswana get to make deals on the stock market and surely they will trickle down the wealth to the poor and all shall prosper!! blah blah". The "blah blahs" in this allude to you somehow managing, with three short paragraphs, to be even more long-winded and redundant than I am in all my pages of text.
Look at it this way: You're a two year old. I'm the wise old grandmother who babysits you. One day, I notice that one of your shoes is untied. Should I tie your shoe for you, knowing that, in the future, you'll possibly be able to tie your own shoe, but for now it's best just to tie your shoe (a crude, stopgap quickfix) so you don't trip, given that you are currently too young to learn how? Or should I just make sure you have access to shoes and laces and fingers and knots, then carry about my Objectivist business? If you answered "yes" to the former, then congratulations on re-thinking your original stance. If you answered "yes" to the latter, however, then you're probably a Libertarian, and I don't think there's any help for you.
Re:Old recipe for stopping diarrhea (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Old recipe for stopping diarrhea (Score:2, Insightful)
Is it?
Then what do we do when they continue to have 15 children each, all of which now survive to adulthood because of the super-rice, and those children have a further 15 more children etc?
The developing world will become more and more of a burden than it already is - There's a reason nature kills off so many of the population in these areas - it's because places like (poor) asia, and africa cannot sustain large self sufficient populations. This is why first-world charity events to aid the poor of the third-world is a pointless act of chasing ones tail.
-Jar.
Re:so why do you want to hurt them? (Score:3, Insightful)
The apartment building is on fire! Bravely, Dr. Ventria dashes inside to check for survivors and organize the evactuation! Nugneant claps his hands with glee! But what's this?? A ragtag group of Armchair Perfectionists are damning the Good Doctor's efforts, saying that if he really wanted to help, he'd have brought a firehose and set up a ladder outside the apartment building!! Nugneant is trying hard not to laugh!! And uh-oh, here comes the army of mods in the big shiny mod-engine!! Whatever will happen next?? Tune in tomorrow for the next episode of SLASHDOT PRESENTS: THE RICE THREAD!!
Re:$ick $cience (Score:3, Insightful)
Because many of the problems are unfixable without dismantling the political structures of those countries, and, well, seems people get a tad upset when we do that.
"Human" DNA is fearmongering (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm appalled at the level of unscientific FUD that is out there. If slashdotters don't think scientifically, what will the general public do? Ban DHMO (http://www.dhmo.org/)?
Re:Product's name: (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, I can't speak for either of the the groups you mention, but I'm a very strict vegetarian, largely on ethical grounds (among several other reasons).
My objection to this would be two-fold: I don't wish to ingest stuff made from animal, and I don't wish to ingest GMOs in general.
I have no problem for selective breeding within a species; fine, select for traits that are already present. That makes sense, and that's a very natural process already.
But mixing genes from animals into plants scares the hell outta me -- in no small way because we realy don't know what the long-term consequences would be. Plus the issues of bio-diversity and the like (think Monsanto and patented corn).
Look at what happened with mad cow -- sheep protein had no business being fed to cows which are herbivores, who knows what the hell happens when we mix it into plants. We're seeing evidence that the growth hormones we feed cows is affecting puberty rates among children, and all sorts of scary, unintended consequences.
Personally speaking, I would be very unwilling to eat this rice, or any GMO produce in general, and most especially when animal genes have been spliced in. The whole thing skeeves me out like you wouldn't believe!!
Re:they should insert this technology up their... (Score:3, Insightful)
Because if you fuck up inserting genes to plants you have a dead/malformed plant. If you fuck up inserting genes to humans you have a dead/malformed human.
That, and it's much cheaper to make a single genetically modified plant seed and let nature worry about making more, than to genetically alter all (or any significant amount) of humans. The consequences of fuck-ups are also a lot less severe - imagine if you converted half the population of the planet before realizing that the side effects of these changes include death in 6 months.
Finally, plants are much simpler organisms than humans, and therefore easier to modify.
Re:Product's name: (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course it matters. Claiming otherwise is moronic.
Because if I just remove 'religious' and insert ethical/societal/cultural/whatever in there, we can say that not eating/killing/raping/oppressing/owning people is just a silly social convention and there's no need to adhere them, because, after all, they're just silly superstitions. So you should just go do anything willy nilly, because to do otherwise is just superstition.
Having "chosen to elevate some holy teaching or other over the advantages of... " anything -- wow, someone has some guiding principles. The US has chosen to elevate their constitution over the advantages of tyranny, opression, and barbarism. Every single civil society has decided to elevate some abstractions above other consequences, and have typically codified it in their own laws and equivalent to a constitution. Many of them specifically include protections for religious freedoms.
Well, sometimes it's not always someones choice to be subjected to these things.
There have been cases where international aid to African nations came with genetically modified plants, and a requirement that the recipients can't keep any seed for next years crop. And that if they did, they'd be violating EU import bans on GMOs. So the potential recipients could either starve now, or look out for their future chances of being self-sufficient and having an export market. Some friggin' choice. Die now, or die later.
McDondald's was sued because years after they announced they were cooking their fries in 100% pure vegetable oil, it became public they considered beef tallow to be a 'spice'. People who weren't eating animal products (either by religious need or personal choice) were appalled to filed out they'd been surrepititously fed animal products, and were correspondingly quite pissed.
Maybe you think we should get rid of that whole ban of feeding sheep to cows, because after all, that whole mad cow thing is just getting in the way of our profit margin -- we want to sell you a product as cheaply as possible. Making sure it's not harmful is just too expensive and inconvenient.
These things have a nasty habit of just ending up in places by default, as some idiot just foists it off on everyone, and figures everyone should suck it up.
Why don't you go feed peanut butter or shellfish to someone with the corresponding allergy, and kick some kittens and knock over some old people on the way. Cause you've demonstrated about the same level of sensitivity.
Re:$ick $cience (Score:4, Insightful)
There are two reasons.
First, this is a biotech company. I highly doubt that they have much experience in how to "fix socio-political problems". On the other hand, they are probably pretty skillful at making genetically modified rice that could help reduce the number of people that die from one of the top 10 killers in the third world.
Second, all the money in the world can't fix the problems in many third world nations. You can throw as much money at the problem and it wont suddenly make good governance appear. If throwing money at a problem would make good governance, Iraq should be a flowering utopia. Instead, Iraq is a black hole where a billion dollars goes in, a million dollars come out in government coffers, and the rest vanishes in corruption.
Poor governance is the source of world poverty. Feeding everyone isn't that expensive. Hell, do all the things required to help bring a nation up to the point where it can stand on its own two feet is not that expensive. The issue is not paying for the things that these nations need. The issue is getting these things to these nations. Where the money starts to suddenly vanish is when you try and transport money/food/seeds, exc. If you hand these things over to the local government, large portions of it vanish. If you try and deliver it yourself, you risk getting expelled by the local government. What option does that leave you? Should you at that point invade and try and help people at the point of a gun? We tried that. It was called Somalia. In that one black hawk down incident a squad of American soldiers probably killed more Somali as they tried to retreat back to safety then they saved during the entire operation.
There is no easy fix to world poverty. Bitch that a biotech company is doing there small part to help the probably is counter productive and whiney at best.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)