People have been messing with plant genetics for thousands and thousands of years. Same with animals, that’s how we have the pets we have today, artificial selection!
Some of the greenpeace nazi’s out there seem to think it’s “not natural” to “pervert” “mother earth” more then we already are. But really, aren’t they just bitching just for the sake of bitching? Genetically engineered plants taste better, grow faster, yield higher volumes of usable material, are cheaper, the benefits are limitless.
Being against cloning of human beings is fine by me, I’m personally against it, but that’s for a different thread. What is the purpose of hating “frankenfood” (ridiculous term they use), just because they don’t feel like bitching about other things?
There are a lot of reasonable arguments for being careful with them, mostly due to the potential for the GM foods to interbreed with their wild relatives, thus spreading the foreign genes into the wild populations. This can have unintended negative consequences. Just pulling an example out of my ass, one modification out there is to make plants that make BT toxin, a very potent pesticide that’s completely safe to humans. Currently it’s effective due to the fact that no insects have evolved resistance. But if the BT gene spreads to wild plants, it will spread rapidly due to selective pressure, thus providing pressure in turn for insects to develop resistance, thus making it useless as a pesticide.
Messing around with genes strikes me as rather dangerous, since despite the bull that is put out, we don’t really understand genes.
However, my main reason is that I have a serious distrust of Monsanto, their motives for inserting the Primula gene into Maize is simply so that they can sell Roundup.
Breeding disease and pest resistant plants strikes me as a good idea
controlled tinkering with genes in a very controlled environment seems like sensible research
but bare faced commercial manipulation to sell a weed killer
something stinks
There is an Egyptian surgeon I heard of who was experimenting with using the influenza virus as a carrier to target cancerous cells, I know about it partly because a lass I knew was one of his patients.
when it got out what he was doing, he got shut down immediately
I expect he is still working on it, well financed, but in an environment where his mutants are not going to get out into the wild.
The comparison to artifical selection isn’t necessarily a useful one; it is possible, through direct manipulation of an organism’s genome, to create something which could never have arisen through selective breeding, whereas anything we produce by artifical selection could just as easily have arisen spontaneously in the wild.
That alone doesn’t necessarily make GM a bad thing, just a different thing from traditional selective breeding
erm… maybe I’m missing something, but how are things things bad with respect to gen eng crops? Who cares if the pollen carries a little further? Presumably weeds would become resistant to roundup no matter which crops were planted… right?
I’m not surprised that genetic engineering of plants has drawn serious fire from the tinfoil hat crowd; people tend to distrust and dislike things they don’t understand.
I have seen information published in mainstream media (TIME magazine comes to mind, and US News) that indicates there are reasons to be careful with this stuff, but most of the reasons have more to do possible environmental problems. Some scientists think it’s possible for humans to lose control of “superplants” – kind of like a green, leafy Frankenstein’s monster. One phrase I remember reading was “kudzu on steroids,” alluding to the ubiquitous ground cover introduced into the South from China. But I don’t know if that was a so-called mainstream opinion, or somebody from the lunatic fringe.
People are generally against geneticaly enhanced plants for populist missunderstanding and ideas like Frankenstein and Triffids, the sam old thing as saying ‘if man were made to fly, God would have given him wings’. Unfortunately this has the effect of masking those sensible and well thought out objections that exist.
Most of the sensible objections are not people against GE crops, but people who feel they should be carefully used and well tested for safety.
In some GE crops that are modified for pest resistance seem to rapidly lose their advantage over the pests, so human modification is leading to natural genetic change in the insect pests. Also GE crops are often less geneticaly diverse than normal crops, this can lead to more risk of the crops being completely destroyed by a new disease or infestation.
If memory serves me right , the genetic crops produce worthless or no seeds. Therefore it would be necessary to buy new roundup resistant seeds yearly. Highly profitable since all the seeds and insecticides blow around off the original property. They can not be contained.
Forgett Darwin .The arguement is moot. We are the selector of species now. We alter plant and animal life for our profit. We have the ability to gene select and alter people too. It wont stop.
Not if the crop isn’t roundup resistant in the first place. We wouldn’t be spraying it so much, so the selective pressure would be lower. By allowing herbicide resistance to transfer to related species through pollen, we’ve created an agricultural equivalent to the antibiotic resistance plasmids which plague the health care industry. Sure, roundup works great on these crops now, but what will we use in five hundred years when everything is resistant to it? Presumably we’ll still be growing crops in the year 2525, but will this short term strategy leave our progeny helpless against the weeds of tomorrow?
Suppose we find that the alien genes inserted into plants have very bizarre effects-such as making the plants capable of growing during the winter, or producing fruit/seeds that are nutrionally useless to humans (something binds up the protein). Would this be a major problem? You could just breed another strain. Suppose we are able to make a transgeneric plant that makes gasoline for us-is it worth the risk to avoid trying this? By the way, those transgenic strawberries 9they were bred to be resistant to frost0-did they work out?
I have worked in this field. Something about your story here rings false. The part I have a problem with is that he would get shut down. On what basis? There is absolutely nothing wrong with this research as described. Using viral vectors in general, and influenza in particular, to target tumor cells is a widespread technique used in many , many, many labs.
You would probably go into a tizzy if you knew that I, personally, have used attenuated versions of the smallpox virus (vaccinia, to be specific) to try to target tumor cells.
Consider it from the allergen point of view. creating a new strain of plant could produce a new form of allergen to humans or other life forms. Testing needs to be thorough to avoid creating something that cannot be undone (such as killer bee’s).
The thing is, we don’t know what we’re doing. Now before you misinterpret this as the moral of a b-movie, what I actually mean is that molecular genetics is hellishly complex; tinkering with a single gene (or inserting a novel one) doesn’t necessarily mean that a single effect will result, because genes work with each other in a very complicated web of interactions. And we just don’t fully understand the details of all of that yet.
This isn’t a reason to stop genetic engineering; it’s a reason to be careful; it’s probably actually a reason to do lots more genetic engineering, so that we can understand it better.
My main concern is the potential impact that these plants could have on insect populations and thus the birds and other creatures which feed off of them.
[QUOTE=Least Original User Name Ever]
If memory serves me right , the genetic crops produce worthless or no seeds. . . .QUOTE]
I don’t think that that is necessarily a trait of engineered plants though, for the reason you pointed out, the “manufacturer” would certainly find it desirable. (Seems I’ve read that some seed companies will make purchasers of some of their hybrids sign a statement to the effect that they will not save any of their crop for seed for the next year.)
Why the knee-jerk reaction of some against GE? A lot of folks are what I call Biological Luddites. Since they don’t grasp genetics, they’re afraid of it. (Hell. This morning on The Research Channel I saw a graphic claiming about 45% of the populance still “have doubts” about evolution!)
Certainly caution is prudent, for reasons others have already given.
I was told once that there is a toxic variety of GE corn that is present in, and cross-pollinating with, our non-GE corn crops. As a result, corn in general is (supposedly) projected to be unfit for human consumption within a few decades, IIRC.
Granted, this was told to me by my LaRouche buddy who is currently MIA.
As an aside, I’ve noticed increasing frequency in experiencing mild anaphylaxis-like symptoms when eating corn products. I have no proof that this is from evil toxic corn, however.
haha i said GE instead of GM. Sorry for that, I must be more concerned than I thought about the $1,000 my new GE kitchen appliances cost me today.
I’m for genetically enhanced plants, but mostly in theory. I’m concerned that in the favor of speedy production and monetary incentives … maybe the whole picture is not always understood and/or considered.
When someone mentions the toxic corn (myth?) I am always briefly reminded of nuclear bombs. It sounds stupid, but I’m not certain how else to describe it. Maybe it was from my husband telling me years ago that until we launched a nuke, we didn’t exactly know the devastation that it would cause. It seemed like a great weapon to have, but we didn’t realize the horror it could cause.
I don’t want to start a nitpick (nor hijack) on nukes, though. I’m just mentioning how the above information reminds of my mistrust of hastily propogated, genetically altered crops.