If you can show how freezing that pollen, thawing it and pollinating with it substantially alters its DNA you might have a (tiny) point. You can throw every hybridization technique that exists at me and all it does is help show how different and alien GM is.
After all this, I really think the biggest enemy of GM foods is Monsanto. Its ironic, because I know they pioneered a lot of the research. Its just that their predatory tactics and market dominating practices have really made a lot of us suspect the whole approach.
GMOās are here to stay. Lets hope they prove as useful and safe as earlier breeding and growing technologies have.
Not often. However, this has happened with the chestnut and the papaya, both of which actually have had disease-resistant forms created with genetic engineering. The papaya has been on the market for a long time, and the chestnut was recently developed and is pending market approval.
Diseases can wipe out entire species despite biodiversity, but they are more likely to destroy monocultures (such as the potato in 1840 in Ireland).
That is purely faulty. There is actually no evidence of any harm from GMOs as a technology. I also how you attach the word āplanet-poisoning chemical companyā, when organics have pesticides too, just their pesticides have a much larger ecological impact per hectare than the synthetic ones (10.1371/journal.pone.0011250, 10.1021/bk-2007-0947.ch005).
What about the opposite question ā¦ why donāt we test all new food plant varieties? Companies generally create new varieties that will result in more profit: increased pest resistance, earlier harvest times, longer harvest times, better taste, brighter color, etc. How often is this done at the expense of nutrition? What about high levels of toxins? The USDA has a recommended limit for solanine in new potato varieties, but it is not a mandated limit. Hybrids can also result in toxins that are not present in either parent (ex: S. tuberosum and S. brevidens produced not only the usual glycoalkaloids, but also the toxin demissidine, which is not produced in either parent (Laurila et al., 1996)).
What is it that makes targeted genetic modification so much more harmful than āgenetically modificationā using conventional breeding, hybridization, mutagenesis, and selection?
How so?
What kind of testing would be āadequateā enough for you?
Different species of frogs and bats are both threatened by strains of pathogenic fungi.
Punchcardās point is that even with conventional breeding, and in nature, new genetic combinations occur routinely.
So:
āmy mental image of genetic modification (of the newfangled variety, not the old style where cross-breeding and selective breeding were involved) is that it has the potential to add new bugs into the code that we wonāt understand until we ārunā the codeā is not really true, as the old style and new style use the same language, and the new style is not more prone to adding ābugsā then the old style. Very often less genetic material is changed in transgenic critters vs. the very complex chaotic additions of genetic material that routinely occur in crossbreeding/selective breeding.
My real opposition to GMOs has more to do with the baggage surrounding its use: specifically the patenting of plants, the inability of farmers to use seeds from plants they grow, cross contamination of organic or other seed stocks, the encouraging of the use of pesticides by certain GM products (Monsantoās roundup ready specifically) and the resulting/parallel attempted monopoly on food production of companies like Monsanto.
If GM plants and seeds were as open to use as non-GM plants and seeds (or if there was a shorter patent time limit, say 5 or 7 years), if we disallowed certain negative GM practices like making plants pesticide resistant rather than strengthening plants to avoid the need for pesticides, and if the main proponents werenāt huge transnational predatory conglomerates, I would feel much better about their use. As the industry exists now does anyone really think that if Monsanto or another huge conglomerate created a dangerous GM plant that was highly profitable that they would forego the profits to protect the environment or the health of the populace?
Its not necessarily the technology itself, but some of its practitioners and their practices, that scare a lot of people.
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Your analogy using computer code to represent the dangers of genetic engineering is interesting, but off target. To make a proper comparison, conventional cross breeding would be similar to taking 2 separate computer programs, shuffling the code, and evaluating what comes out. There are a few limitations about how the genetic code would reshuffle, but the outcome is predictably random. In genetic engineering, the process is similar to inserting one or a few lines of code into an existing program. There is some randomness about where the insert occurs, but the result is much more predictable. Your analogy of the sandbox also occurs in genetic engineering. The first part occurs in the lab, where the transformed progeny are evaluated for expression of the trait, samples of the plant are evaluated for nutritional and protein content, and tests are performed to determine if known toxic compounds are produced, and if any proteins with allergenic properties are found. Then another round of sandboxing occurs in controlled field test plots, with limited access and care to reduce the chance of escape. This determines if the trait is expressed under natural conditions, and that the plants perform similarly to comparable non-transformed plants. Any plant that fails to meet either of these sandboxes is eliminated. You could compare these levels to alpha and beta testing if you like. So, if anything, genetically engineered plants undergo at least as rigorous testing as computer code. Based on my experience with computer programs, probably more so. As for invasive species, most GM plants are grown in the same areas that their non-GM cousins are grown.
Exactly.
(slight wording edit, because I realize I misread your other postā¦ sorry, Ygret!)
Nature DOES create ābugsā in the wild. The idea that natural selection canāt hold onto bugs assumes that if something is good for the speciesā survival it is good for the rest of the environment and for humans. Itās not. And I was pretty specific in my initial definition of ābugsā in this case as being traits that may help the species survive but would not be good for the well being of humans or other species in the environment.
There are many examples of things we could consider ābugsā in natural genetics. Sickle Cell Anaemia. Feature or bug? Well, if you are trying to avoid death by malaria, the gene for it is a a feature. If you are trying to avoid horribly painful death in the offspring with two sickle cell genes then itās definitely a bug!
The difference is that weāre trying to create these features one gene at a time, and we donāt have sufficient sandboxing to keep the feature/bugs out of the wild once they are created.
Which is exactly why the GM species, if stronger in natural selection terms, is likely to become an āinvasiveā species.
The fact that GM plants have been found on more than one farm that was not using GM seed themselves is proof that the field testing process alone is not enough.
As a biologist and a noncomputer programmer, I know based on my knowledge of biology and viral principle that itās possible for your computer programming to escape the safe environment of your sandbox, achieve artificial intelligence, and create cyborg clones that will be the end of all mankind. Trust me, there are fictional examples of this.
Nature will have the last laugh. Bt hybrid corn is the gene splicerās poster child; transplanting a gene from Bacillus thuringiensis that was poisonous to the corn borer eating its way through the roots of the corn plant. Initially successful, Bt hybrids are now being attacked by corn borers which have developed resistance.
There is also the potential of a gene-spilced hybrid becoming a risk to non-target organisms.
Iām surprised no one has addressed the real shortcoming of this story. No where does the author address the fact that we have this problem due to mono cropping. If we didnāt have tens of thousands of acres of the exact same species of tree growing all over Florida, the spread of plant viruses like this would be heavily curtailed by nature itself. The virus problem is not a ānatureā problem, it is a 100% man-made problem. GMO solutions are not addressing the āvirus problemā, they are addressing the problem of lousy farming decisions (made due to bad science in the 1950s and 1960s). Throwing bad science at bad science is hardly the best long-term solution.
Where is the debate about simply farming in ways that nature helps support, rather than farming in ways nature clearly abhors?
Same question goes both ways. Still looking for the ones that prove they have any real benefits as well.
Iām aware the long-term safety of GMO foods is still up in the air, and will remain so until long term studies have been run and reviewed. Thatās not the point.
The point has to do with people making absolute claims on either side of the argument. It is completely useless to claim that GMO crops are ādetrimental to every living organism on the planetā when there is not a single shred of scientific evidence out there supporting that claim. Itās nothing but gut based truthiness.
And in case it sounds like Iām being too hard on only one group of people, I want to make it clear that the same holds true for GMO defenders. Just because no harm has been observed does not mean itās absent. Thereās no excuse for charging full steam ahead just because a 1 year trial seemed to work okay. Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of how medical studies function understands it takes decades before a consensus can be reached.
The problem is too important to allow bias to influence decision making. People need to sit the hell down, shut up, and let scientists do their job.
Farmers havenāt been able to use seeds from plants they grow for over 100 years now. Modern crop varieties are hybrids that donāt breed true.
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