Dodging the Negative Reaction To GE Crops 349
BINC writes "Wired has an article up today entitled 'Selective Breeding Gets Modern.'" From the article: "Genetically modified food has gotten a chilly reception from consumers, especially in Europe and Asia. Just last week, Japan suspended imports of American long-grain rice after authorities discovered that a genetically modified variety had accidentally mixed with conventional rice. To skirt such problems altogether, biotech companies are creating superior plants using genetics technology that is advanced but which falls short of grafting genes from one organism into another."
Someone remind me... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Someone remind me... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing's wrong with that.
What people fear are unforeseen long-term consequences of messing with genetics and releasing the results of that into the wild. Once it's out, it's extremely difficult to undo any damage.
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Actually, the problem is Intellectual Property (Score:5, Interesting)
As for the grandparent post "technology that can produce vast amounts of nutritious food that can feed people who may otherwise not have access to such a resoruce"
Naive bollocks. The current GM crops which are around are designed to sell extra weed killer. They are designed to marginally reduce the costs of producing the crop.
There is no problem growing conventional crops, we can grow the stuff easily. The problem is stopping western farmers dumping their products on third world markets at far below cost. Destroying the local market for locally produced food, thereby driving local farmers out of business and off the land. The famines, are caused by US and EU farming subsidies.
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This makes no sense.
Your claim/accusation is that US & EU food is made available to third world consumers at a lower cost than the local farmers can provide.
That could certainly cause some problems. But famine can not be one of t
Re:Actually, the problem is Intellectual Property (Score:5, Insightful)
It makes perfect sense, you simply lack a basic understanding of economics.
Western subsidies produce huge overproduction, the result is cheap food, at far below cost. Excess cheap food is dumped on the third world, the market price drops, it becomes uneconomic to farm the land in the third world, large numbers of the farmers leave the land. Money floods abroad to buy food on international markets. Then, there is a bad year, the remaining local crop fails but there is now no buffer level of production. Aid floods in to the local market devaluing the local food prices further, more money leaves the local market and exits the country which becomes poorer still.
With a healthy local market, excesses can be sold within the country, the money stays within the country, land remains in production and people stay on the land farming instead of forming militias and massacring people.
You seem to be under the impression that third world countries have plenty of spare money around which they're happy to export in order to purchase food on the international markets. You simply have no conception of the economic reality. The fact is that the farmers who accept large subsidies to overproduce food in the US and EU are causing the deaths of tens of millions of people in the poorest countries in the world.
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Before:
Local farmer produces for for $4. Sells it on local market for $5. People buy food for $5.
After:
France sells surplus to importer for $2. He sells it on local market for $3. Farmer has to quit farming. Local people buy food for $3.
Clearly the local food buying public is better off in the After scenario. The argument that they're too poor to afford it makes no sense. They would be even less able to afford the locally produced, more expensive
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I realize the west isn't helping, but the countries affected could prevent the problem the same way we maintain our markets -- by taxing the bejeezus out of imports. The corrupt governments (a redundant adjective, granted) of these countries are just as much to blame for not using the p
Closed source, proprietary food. (Score:2)
Not quite. At least outside the US, the main fears I've seen have been the sort of vendor lock in and interoperability issues that most F/OSS advocates raise against Microsoft. The damage that they worry about isn't vague, general, and environmental (which is mostly US and, from what I can tell, misplaced) it's much
Re:Someone remind me... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, that's what GE companies have always promised. However, read this: [slashdot.org]
chemical inputs (Score:5, Informative)
And in the meantime we continue to poison existing crops with chemical fertilizers and pesticides. That doesn't make me feel any safer.
GMOs don't decrease the use of chemicals. Actually some GE crops are made so more chemical input can be used. Such as Roundup Ready seeds Monsanto sales. They made it so farmers will use their use Roundup herbicide. Since the seends are immune to Roundup farners can drown their crops in the herbicide thus increase it's usage.
FalconRe:chemical inputs (Score:4, Informative)
Of course then this over spraying causes weeds to develop resistance to the spray, which means they have to spray more, until the spray is useless, then they have to use other sprays and they're back to where they started except with a locked in contract with Monsanto.
Ain't it great?
FUD (Score:4, Insightful)
Some more educated people, yes. But most just fear that their food is going to be poisonous. It drives me mad -- all the things the body can take (e.g. dozens of units of alcohol), but suddenly a few genes changed in some existing plant/animal, and people think they're going to grow a second ass or turn into a shark by consuming the stuff.
A few genes? Such as the gene in brazil nuts that codes for the protein that causes allergic reactions to people allergic to brazil nuts? Or the one that cause allergies in people allergic to peanuts?
I don't see the public saying medicine should be banned due to the evolution of superbugs that can spread out of the hospital environment
The ban on improper use of antimicrobes such as antibiotics yes. There are now strains of TB, as well as other bacteria, microbes, and viruses that are resistant to antibotics that were previously effective drugs. The misuse of antibotics will only accelerate the spread of these.
FalconThe zookeeper says: (Score:2)
Thank you.
Hunger: the big myth (Score:3, Insightful)
Why do we keep hearing the myth that we need GE for more food?
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The main reason GE foods exist is so that the companies that own them can patent the gene and own the plant. They don't increase production of the plant significantly, that is not their desire, as there's plenty off food currently (starvation is primarily a distribution issue, not a supply issue).
The reason that I choose organic whenever it's available, is because I want to vote with my dollars to say that I don't support g
Re:Someone remind me... (Score:5, Insightful)
With normal fruit/vegetables, you have seeds and can grow them freely and as you wish.
With GE crops, the seeds of the fruit/vegetables either come out sterile and you are dependent on the company to provide you with more or the seeds are okay but you have to license it from them to be allowed to use it, sort of like how you could theoretically put Windows on unlimited PCs with just one CD but the BSA will come knocking.
I think this is part of the backlash and I don't blame farmers/people not wanting any part of it.
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You can still love to produce something of value for sale and respect others and their freedoms.
It's a myth that you need to DRM [and the like] restrict people into your business model to have a success.
Tom
Corporations owning our entire food supply? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to mention the terrible weakness and loss of variety that will result from basing entire food chains only on the single strain that provides the biggest profits for the corporation who holds the patent on the crop.
Basically, it comes down to an issue of trust. And no, i don't trust Monsanto to act ethically, fairly or honestly, and I have no trust in the governments that supposedly provide the checks and balances on these companies either.
GE food would probably be fine under the following conditions:
No patents on genetic sequences.
No forced sterilisation of seeds.
If these GE foods really are that good, why can't they compete on their merits with other foodstuffs instead of having all these additional 'GRM' - genetic rights management mechanisms added.
Thats my big beef with GE foods, its got nothing to do with productivity or efficiency. People have been growing their own food for thousands of years - widespread GE foods would essentially criminalize that activity.
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OK, so why would a company want to spend many millions of dollars developing a new kind of corn, only to have a competitor buy a handful of seeds, and start selling them under their own label? Assuming all other things are equal, the company that developed the new strain is out many millions
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And thats the whole point. Look, how many farmers do you know that collect and replant their seeds? Only if you are desparately poor and can't afford any other alternative would you bother with this. If the seeds produce good corn, and don't cost much more than non-GE varieties, then they'll sell. It's that simple.
I mean,
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OK, so why would a company want to spend many millions of dollars developing a new kind of corn, only to have a competitor buy a handful of seeds, and start selling them under their own label? Assuming all other things are equal, the company that developed the new strain is out many millions of dollars. Doesn't seem to smart to me to spend another red cent developing new strains of crops if they couldn't patent them. And if this were the case, we'd have a LOT more starving people in the world.
Are you an
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Re:Someone remind me... (Score:4, Insightful)
GM food will not solve either capitalism or the distribution system's problems.
What GM food will do is to pollute the world's plants by gene migration from GM plants to other plants (already seen and documented) and impact us in many unforseen ways (e.g. the butterflies dying from GM-altered plants).
And, of course, GM food will also shift power to corporate agribusiness in a huge way, which is the real reason the US gov't pushes GM crops.
In our puppet state of Iraq -- one of the areas where agriculture literally originated -- US-imposed laws now forbid Iraqi farmers from harvesting seeds from crops to use to plant next year.
Capitalism my ass. (Score:3, Insightful)
You want a government type to blame then blame the dictatorships. The petty dictators of many these countries who accept food shipments, monentary grants, and actual machinery are one of the major reasons many starve. They spend money on their luxurious lifestyles while their people live in squalor. They spend money on their armies while their people die b
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Highly educated and well-employed folk get more food to make things like rice chips and cookies and other high-grade manufactured stuff cheaply, while the random poverty-stricken African who forages for trash for a living gets straight rice, and less of it.
From a strictly social-engineering amoral
Re:Someone remind me... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, selective breeding already 'pollutes' the world's plants by gene migration via cross-pollenation (seen, documented, and well-understood by the world's gardeners - or did you think roses came in all those colours by chance? most are hybrids with other flowering plants). The butterfly thing was, if not exactly 'forseen' by the people who made it, pretty bloody obvious. The plants were designed to resist insects by generating their own insectisides, insectisides kill butterflies anyway with traditional farming, it's reasonable to expect that the new technique would still kill butterflies. I expect the company who produced that crop was unsurprised by this result. If you want to make war on insectisides, go ahead - but don't blame it on 'GM food'.
Realistically, most of the current gene-splicing techniques aren't doing anything that couldn't be accomplished with traditional selective cross-breeding, they're just massively cheaper and faster and more reliable (it can take years of careful work to breed a particular trait into a plant, particularly if you have to cross several species to get it; gene splicing can do it in a few weeks or months). Our gene splicing technology is not currently at the level where you can stick cow genes into a tomato plant and expect it to produce milk; the species being spliced must be approximately similar before you start, so we're mostly limited to what could be done with careful breeding. Farmers and gardeners have been cross-breeding plants and animals for centuries, and it hasn't wrecked the world yet. The current practice of careful study of the impact of gene-spliced crops, through controlled field trials, is a sound one, and far more careful than people have been about introducing new lifeforms into the wild in the past (rabbits in
Weeee.. GM is the answer to world hunger! (Score:2)
Considering you have a '911 truth' sig, I doubt you let facts stand in the way of your opinions however.
Trolling are we? What is causing famine are problems like corruption, conflict and the resultant lack of effective government, unfair trade practices, agricultural dumping by the EU and the USA..... the list goes on. GM crops won't help your average third world farmer very much if his f
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Basically, it's superstition. Europe et al likes to act superior when they make fun of our creationists (who should be made fun of), but the general public over there is just as fearful and anti-science as most other populations. This is just one of the ways it gets expressed.
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The crops on totally unrelated farmer's fields are being cross-pollinated by GM plants, and the farmers are sued afterwards (for "using" the patented genes). This sucks.
Even if you believe in the (to my eyes, silly) idea that something as basic as genes should be patentable [1], there should never be any possibility for people to sue others after letting their own "property" escape in the wild. Yet this exact
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I highly suggest you watch the documentary Future of Food [imdb.com].
Here's how the documentary starts:
"We used to be a nation of farmers, but now it's less than 2% of the population of the united states, so a lot of us don't know what it takes to grow food. Over 12,000 years ago people began planting and saving seed. Agriculture flowered and civilizations were born. In China, thousands of varieties of rice were grown. Over 5,000 kinds of potatoes were cu
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So, while GE foods could pose health risks (both to humans and the enviroment), they usually don't.
Re:Someone remind me... (Score:5, Insightful)
What a bold an unfounded statement.
They are tested extensivly before release.
So are drugs, and yet we have huge scandals every few years because someone made a mistake.
So, while GE foods could pose health risks (both to humans and the enviroment), they usually don't.
They usually don't? How do you know? How long has GE food been around, and to what extent has it been produced? We don't have enough empirical data as of yet to come to the conclusion that they are "never harmful to humans".
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If you have a 1/100000 chance of killing someone with your drug [who wouldn't have otherwise died] and then the chance of them linking it and suing is 1/1000 you have a 1/100000000 chance of getting screwed. Of course it's more like 1/10000 and 9/10 but you know what I mean
Remember the goal of companies like GSK [and their ilk] is to make money for shareholders. Not actually treat real medical problems. I give you, viagra.
tom
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That's assuming, of course, that there needs to be a link to be a lawsuit. Just apply enough fearmongering and whining in a speedy enough manner to discourage proper scientific inquiry. If the lawsuit is faster than the studies, ya' win.
Re:Someone remind me... (Score:5, Insightful)
it is a stupid statement, a more correct statement would be "GE foods are not more harmfull than non GE foods."
If non GE foods were never harmful, I would never want anything else either. un-modified food crops have been introduced in lots of places with disasterous results to the native plants, and wildlife. Because their is still alott more attention paid to GE, and those introducing them, they know 1 mistake in these early stages would be disasterous to them.
their are so many people with food alergies regardless of the foods background (not to mention cholestrol, fat, diabiates) their is very little food that could fit the category "never harmful to humans."
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The big difference is, we can't check the ingredients list for genes. If we take a salmon gene and use it on potatoes, at what point can people no longer be vegetarians? The only way I know of to avoid GE food is either to pay very close attention to what is GE
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It's been around for many thousands of years, and just about every single commercial crop in the world right now has been genetically modified, either through selective cross-breeding, or via a test tube.
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You kind of redefined the meaning of "genetic engineering", didn't you?
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We can usually assume that a cross between two strains of a plant, both of which are quite safe to eat, is going to be safe to eat. If we had a cross-breed from two strains, one of whic was not safe to eat, you can bet there would be some testing before it was made publically available.
In the case of genetic engineering, genes are being introduced that have, to our knowledge, never existed in any strain of that particu
GM food and drugs. (Score:2)
No one loses their government job NOT approving a drug, because those who died won't even know that there might have been something that might have saved them. Those who die from reactions to drugs, and some have been pulled after small number of deaths - well publicized granted - y
Re:Someone remind me... (Score:4, Insightful)
Waiting until after the defects start coming in with something as dangerous as GM crops would be horrific, not least how would you REMOVE it from the earth after its cross pollinated?
Fully natural hybrids have been used and tested for millenia and are PROVEN (you and I wouldn't be here without it working) to work, the methods described in the article are just a fine tuning of that.
If we can get ALL the same benefits of GM crops without randomly inserting DNA from who knows what then I am all for it, this article would appear to make GM foods days numbered - its just not worth the risk in my eyes.
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I call bullshit!
Today's non-GE corn bears fairly little resemblance (other than superficial) to the maize that some of the first Europeans were introduced to when they came to the US.
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"As dangerous as"? Please cite some examples of GM crops causing disasters horrible enough to deserve being labelled as being so incredibly dangerous.
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As extensive as it may be, we don't have data collected from long-term testing, and long-term side effects are one thing people are concerned about. Another is arguably food allergies.
Personally I couldn't give two shits about whether or not something is GE. However this stuff should be labeled for consumers who have justifiable concerns.
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The assertions of safety and testing in this thread generally betray a lack of consideration of the issues. Tests are only relevant when you're testing for the right kind of problem; if th
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Does it occur to you, however, that not all of them necessarily care whether it's GM or not? *I* shop at Whole Foods and similar stores, because I think that in general organic and all
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The scales of the Deep sea herring appears to repel greenfly, so they extract what appears to be the active fragment of DNA and implant it into a donor plant.
Mrs perkins down the road is allergic to fish and very wisely avoids eating anything fishy.
All of a sudden the bread she is eating makes her have a reaction, for such a staple product like wheat or rice this is NOT a good situation, she
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Just to be safe, maybe you should stop eating anything with those scary GENES in them.
Re:Someone remind me... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, how about that. Get back to me when you are naked, living in the forest, gathering fruits and berries for food.
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If you assume "natural" is always better than man-made, you are... an idiot. That is provably false assumption. Yet, many people share your nutty idea that natural==better.
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Re:Someone remind me... (Score:5, Informative)
How about all of the farmers getting sued for infringement by Monsanto because Monsanto's GM crops contaminated the farmer's own crops?
Start here:
(http://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-a&rl
or here's this:
" The real possibility of interbreeding is dramatized by the defense of farmers against lawsuits filed by Monsanto, the agribusiness company most involved in research and development of genetically modified crops. The company has filed patent infringement lawsuits against some farmers. Monsanto claims that the farmers obtained Monsanto-licensed genetically modified seeds from an unknown source and did not pay royalties to Monsanto. The farmers claim that their unmodified crops were cross-pollinated from someone else's genetically modified crops planted a field or two away.
Percy Schmeiser has been farming in Saskatchewan, Canada, for 53 years. He has served in the Canadian Parliament and been a mayor. Instead of retiring, he has spent the last several years fighting Monsanto after having been sued for patent infringement. Schmeiser grew canola plants on his farm, over the years developing his own seed that was resistant to diseases common in western Canada.
Property rights
In 1998, he was sued by Monsanto, charging that Schmeiser had infringed on their patent by growing genetically altered canola--Monsanto's Roundup Ready--without paying their technology fee. Schmeiser claimed he had never purchased seed from Monsanto. The suit went to trial in June 2000 in the Federal Court of Canada. The judge ruled that it didn't matter how Monsanto's genetically altered canola got onto Schmeiser's land, that any conventional plant that cross-pollinates with the genetically modified plants becomes Monsanto's property, that patent infringement had taken place and that Schmeiser must pay his 1998 profits from his canola crop to Monsanto." This is from here: (http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1141/
So maybe you want to change that last declaration a little, unless you are truly that stupid...if so, nevermind- you're as closed minded as your "asshole science-fearing luddites", and a troll not worth having a discussin with.
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Re:The problem is the greens (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem was that they didn't want their food supply coming under corporate control.
Africa (Score:3, Interesting)
If I remember correctly, a few years ago there was an African country which had hunger-epidemic going on and the US offered to help them, the help was refused because american help was GE-food.
It was Zimbabwe. President Robert Mugabe refused the aid unless the corn was first milled because he thought people would actually try to grow corn from the seeds. He would of accepted the aid if it had been ground or milled. And people are still starving in Zimbabwe, which is his fault. Zimbabwe used to be the
Finally, scientists appear to "get it". (Score:3, Interesting)
Because the desirable features all come from varieties of natural crops, the chances of three headed luminous offspring appear unlikely.
When they were first talking about skin colour of wild plants I thought it was a waste (because you can see the fruit colour), but they are sequencing the saplings of these plants before they have grown enough to bear fruit. It allows them to tell within days which of the crop has the desired features.
I just wonder how many samples it take to identify a marker though - you can't use a single sample and must really DNA test an entire range of pre-categorised samples.
I wonder if any of the seed banks [google.co.uk] will allow their stock to be tested?
This is in effect similar to the genetic testing of embryos for certain high risk hereditary diseases, but goes to show just how cheap and "normal" DNA testing has become.
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As if there is a human being in the entire world qualified enough to do that. Am I'm not talking about "playing god" here. I mean there is no-one on earth with enough competance to relieably predict the long term effects of introducing a gene into an enviornment. The world is a complex, chaotic system. We can't even predict the long term motion of a homogeneous fluid. Is th
What's wrong with a little pea in the gene pool? (Score:2)
Is a GM crop really that radically different than their natural sibling?
I would venture to guess that even the glowing white mice are much more genetically close to their lab family than to a wild brown mouse.
What is the big problem? even if GM crops were to interbreed wouldn't their unique properties eventually be completely (for all intents and purposes) diluted. And if their unique genet
Re:What's wrong with a little pea in the gene pool (Score:2)
I think the part you're missing is that certain plants thrive in certain conditions to the detriment of other vitally important plants. Take kudzu in the southeast USA. It's not necessarily hardier than an oak tree, but it doesn't have any naturally-occuring limiting factor, so it grows rampant. It kills other trees and shrubs. All of a sudden, ther
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And if their unique genetics manages to survive and thrive in the "wild", is that not a s
Genetic engineering is thousands of years old (Score:2)
Does the fact that DNA can now be manipulated directly really make a difference as to what we're doing? In both cases, we are artificially selecting genes.
Also, keep in mind that genetic
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It why Herefords don't look like Angus.
What about genmod grass, for golf courses?
Valid use?
http://www.registerguard.com/news/2006/08/25/ed.e
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Prebirth testing and abortion of fetuses in which congenital disorders are detected.
Re:Genetic engineering is thousands of years old (Score:5, Insightful)
Massive difference. That "engineering" was based on crossbreeding phenotypes, not genotypes. Modern genetic "engineering", is based on crossbreeding of genotypes, whos phenotypes are not even able to crossbreed. Moreover, the phenotypes created are not even subject to rigorous study before being chucked out to pasture, in a process more akin to introducing rabbits to australia than breeding two types of pig.
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It's a bit about scale. Thousands of years ago we could still burn down a piece of forest, sowing grain on the ashes, and move on a few years later when the soil was depleted. If we'd continue doing that today, it would kill us. We'd just burn all our forest and lose all our soil. If we'd suddenly switch agricultural plants large-scale all over the world, we have a scenario which differs considerably fro
GE? (Score:4, Funny)
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my own two cents on GE crops (Score:4, Informative)
Most farmers in India are poorer than most of you can imagine and save some of the seeds from one years crop to reuse the next. There was also some concern that the Terminator gene would find its way into the natural crop varieties and render them useless. This in particular reeks of a company creating something principally to safeguard its profits without there being any actual value added to the farmer.
I think the result of the mess was Monsanto stopped testing it and I think later stopped developing it. That a company would try to develop something like this makes me actively distrust them and its no wonder that a lot of people are scared of genetic engineering. A lot of these groups also tend to be very secretive treating some of their research as trade secret. This is definetly what I'm used to in physics and its definetly not how science should be done. Perhaps its just me but I'm much more skeptical of research done by groups that seem primarily motivated by profit.
I'd worry that a lab environment is just too controlled and the nature has a lot of unplanned for scenarios which may end up producing unintended consequences. I've some respect for their ability to identify what a particular gene as they are doing in the present articles research - I'm more skeptical of their ability to predict what that gene will do if it is suddenly found in another species say. And no matter how extensive your lab trials become they do not address very slow processes which may well occur with GE crops. This selective breeding is less controversial but I'm no biologist and I can already see that there might be a risk with a lack of genetic diversity and that leading to an increased susceptability to disease.
I'm not so afraid of "golden corn"... (Score:2, Interesting)
That's why I dislike anything that's synthetically engineered.
What is wrong with kudzu, then? (Score:2)
What is wrong with kudzu [wikipedia.org]
There is a real world out there, and it is hard to control growth of anything anywhere. We have damaged so many ecosystems willingly or unwittingly. Many GE plants are done by megacorps for the profit of megacorps. Anyone can duplicate Monsato's weed killer, but no one can duplicate Monsato's GE seeds.
My opposition to GE does not stem from fear for the environment, but from fear of corporate greed.
Engineer your kids but not your food? (Score:5, Funny)
Seems to me that these folks just value their dinner more than their humanity
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OMG, won't somebody please think of the blastocysts!
Those blastocysts are gonna get thrown out whether or not they're researched. So obviously, you'd rather all those innocent, angelic "babies" to die in vain, then, wouldn't you?
Seems to me that these folks just value their dinner more than their humanity
Maybe we understand
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I am all for genetic experimentation in the lab to help us gain better scientific understanding. That does not mean I want to eat the results of that experimentation or release it into the wild.
-CF
GM doesn't scare me nearly as much (Score:3, Insightful)
The ignorance is astonishing (Score:3, Informative)
This was perhaps true in the 1940's. The "Green Revolution" beginning in the 1960's with all-hybrid crops put an end to that. No farmer in the US plants seeds from crops grown - they are all sterile. Perhaps some low-yield farmer in Bangledesh plants crop seeds this way today. Certainly nobody else does.
If you are worried about corporate seed control, we are there already. Do some reading. We have been there since at least 1970. We would all be starving if non-hybrid crops were being grown today.
Re:Cognitive dissonance (Score:4, Insightful)
Interesting perspective - I never thought of that. You are a lot more likely to die on the way to the grocery store in a car crash then to have fish DNA that has been spliced into your tomato make a transgenic leap into ragweed and make your lungs glow. Or something like that.
To be fair, I don't think that the objection to engineered crops is their safety - I think most of the objection comes from the conduct of the companies that control the resulting seeds, and the risk of the spliced genes "infecting" the environment. Both objections actually have some grounding in reality, but the obvious solution is increased public-sector research, and I don't see much of a push for that from the anti-GE crowd. It's a shame, because public research is what gave us the green revolution of the 60's.
If I'm wrong and the main popular objection to GE food is food safety, then you are completely correct in your characterization of those people having their danger-o-meters calibrated wrong.
No fish genes in your tomato. (Score:2)
This is a common misconception. GE foods are simply plants that have been engineered for the most desireable traits of it's own species. Anything that's grown outside of lab conditions is not going to have squid genes or horse genes or anything other than plant DNA in it.
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It is hard to break the habit once you are addicted to ciggies, but it is very easy to act like you think you are supposed to act when answering some questionaire.
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Wow, parent modded down 2 points. Looks like the Euros/Asians don't like having their idiosyncratic behavior pointed out.
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No, there isn't. However that assumption is the scientific main stream. So to claim there was no scientific backing for it seems a little far-fetched.
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Well, by your definition of "proof", there is no proof for anything. If countless studies showing dramatically increased cancer rates in people with high secondhand smoke exposure aren't sufficient, then you are either in denial about your addiction or you don't understand the scientific method.
Explain why studies have shown that non-smoking spouses of smokers (with no genetic predisposition to smoking) are 30% more likely to die of lung cancer. Waitresses? Four times as likely. People clearly don't h
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Answer: a hell of a lot more than we're doing.
Mother Nature is modifying the genomes of millions of species as we sit here typing these silly messages back and forth. Whether it be natural selection, spontaneous gene uptake, DNA replication error, viruses, radiation and/or chemical assault, indeed any of the innumerable mutagenic factors that exist in our environment
A bit off topic, but ... (Score:2)
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True enough, I suppose, but feeding billions of people is a non-trivial task.
And we can't engineer flavor back in; genetic engineering only gives you resistance and other simple properties.
Um