Can you direct me to some details on how the terminator gene worked?
**
Back when the gene gun was invented, around 1990, the guns shot a .22 bullet through a glass panel, so that the shards of DNA vector-coated glass would shoot the dna into cells.
**
I’m not sure I understand you. You don’t have “expression” in the genome; genes are expressed in the proteome. And do companies actually locate the gene in the plant genome? In what sense do they “locate” it in a genome which hasn’t been sequenced yet?
So far as I know, the inserted gene would be inserted with its own promoter. Is this not the case?
If the biotech companies were to deliberately but surreptitiously wage war against non-GM varieties (fanciful notion I suppose, but not impossible), their goal would be extinction, but this wouldn’t necessarily have to involve 100% contamination in a single generation.
**You’ve got me there, I’m no geneticist, it was an assumption which I will have to admit may be unsound.
**Ummmm, OK, I suppose they could fiddle with it a bit more and obviate the need for fertilisation, heck why not?
**I’m only trying to point out that their motivation may be short-term profit at the expense of proper restraint; if it comes down to a decision between something that’s profitable and risky (though not financially risky) or something that’s less profitable and much safer, I wonder which one prevails.
**Hmmmm, don’t misjudge me, but do understand that I’m human, I have fears which can’t simply be dismissed with a wave of the hand, or by reassuring me that I’m merely ignorant and should pipe down(not you, but you know what I mean). In any case, there are a number of GM projects that I think have yielded wonderful results, one of these was to engineer bananas to include a vaccine that was too volatile to be transported to remote regions by normal means, but was quite stable in the fruit; in this case, any risks are outweighed by the potential good, but when it comes to producing strains of plants that are dependant on one company’s trigger chemicals simply to complete their life cycles, and this is to exert (what I feel to be) excessive commercial pressure on growers, I’m less sympathetic.
But that, of course, is precisely my point, my friend. I’m not so wrried about the vanguard f GM folks, the cautious new ones advancing the technology although they can screw up, too). It’s the ones who come later, running GM companis that can’t afford the costs of impact statements, or who dont care. Most of the world is run by second-stringers.
Please address my argument. How is 10% contamination in one generation going to cause the terminator strain to supplant non-terminator crops when the terminator crops cannot reproduce themselves?
**
It seems to me that you’re making a lot of assumptions about the terminator gene. Can you direct me to any information at all about how it works? The idea that crops which cannot reproduce themselves could outbreed normal crops to the point of extinction is, as I pointed out earlier, ludicrous on the face of it. If there’s something hidden in the works which would make it possible after all, I’d like to hear about it.
**
Please address my argument. We both suggest restraints on GM crops, but my suggestions are the only ones that you reject on the grounds that the companies will choose profit over safety. Why?
**
Do you feel that software companies should not offer one-year licenses? Should they instead demand that all their customers pay, up front, many times the one-year rate for a permanent license?
Given that twice in this post I’ve had to tell you to actually address my argument, then yes, I do think I have reason to feel that you reject my solutions out of hand.
So if I complain that you’re dismissing my arguments out of hand, not only do you dismiss my complaint, but you do so with the implication that I’m just out to score points.