Anti-Biotech Morons

[Abdul Alhazred]

I think you missed my point, I was carefuil not to suggest any moral problem with Monsanto being profit motivated. Of course they are, like any business.

OK not you, but what I said was no strawman. I believe much of the anti-biotech movement has just such a motivation, combined with anti-USA, anti-capitalist and anti-technology-in-general bias.

Of course in the case of the EU it's none of these really, but economic protectionism. Maybe a bit of anti-USA bias too, but not primarily.

 

[Benguin]

At EU level, very probably. But the EU and US governments both need to have a proper serious think about agriculture policy wrt overproduction and subsidies.

I think at national level opposition is very vocal from Green groups, who seem to be sadly intertwined with anarcho-lefty groups.

What you said wasn't a strawman, it was the argument that "obstructing this technology is obstructing something that will save the starving millions" I was pointing at.

I'm all for environmental and ethical concerns, I just find myself driven away from supporting them because of their affiliations with daft and unrealistic theologies. David Ike, anyone?

 

[RichardR]

We can swap genes between fish and tomatos, for example. This raises ethical concerns as well as increased possible unforeseen interactions between the organism and its surrounding ecosystem.

Has this ever been done for tomatoes that are sold to the public?

Secondly, it can be done without the benefit of time. In selective breeding, unwanted side-effect traits can observed more easily in an organism. It's like having enforced multiple trials. Creating a GM crop, and noticing after three generations that there are unwanted side-effect traits (once a multitude of seeds have been sold across the globe), makes the whle process that bit harder to control.

But GM technology means we know exactly which genes are being transferred and so we are more likely to know what to test for.

Another concern centres on the ability to insert herbicide resistant traits, enabling larger quantities of pesticides to be used on the crops.

Herbicide resistant crops such as roundup ready are resistant to the herbicide roundup. Roundup is a biodegradable herbicide – within a few days it degrades to benign compounds, unlike the chemical herbicides used on non GM crops. Farmers have to pay money for roundup and so will only use what they have to

Insecticide traits might be of advantage (b.thierugiensis toxins for instance), but to date not many have been as successful as hoped.

I didn't know that. Doesn't mean they should be banned, though.

Lastly, it is common to insert an antibiotics resistance gene into the plasmids used to transfer traits during the process. These stay with the plant, and are of concern should these resistance traits be picked up by random bacteria.

This was recently discussed here. Summary – they use antibiotics that have outlived their practical use. Nearly all strains of pathogens they used to kill are now resistant to them.

 

[RichardR]

Also the argument that GM crops are going to help the hungry is not accepted by anti-GM people.

They (quite correctly) observe the likes of Monsanto are businesses motivated by profit and not altruistic organisations. Benefits in helping the world's poor avoid starvation and/or malnutrition would be merely a by-product of any developments they release.

This is just Ad Hominem. The motivations of Monsanto have nothing to do with whether GMOs are safe or not.

Thus far the only GM we've had in the UK has been to permit much more potent pesticides to be used, presumably to increase yields.

The problems of starvation in the third world have nothing to do yields, there is no global shortage of food ... it is distribution that is the problem. Malnutrition might be helped (inserting genes so, say, rice delivers more nutrients) but, again, that isn't what GM is being used for at this stage, so using it as an argument in support is speculative.

Another 2 billion people are coming in the next 20 years and it will be a problem then. And increased yields will be required if we don't want to chop down all the forests for farmland.

And surely, the reason that Golden Rice "isn't what GM is being used for at this stage", is because of opposition by anti-GMO groups. They want to ban all GMOs, remember?

 

[headscratcher4]

No one that I know of who supports continued research and development of GMOs seriously argues that it will feed billions. What they do argue is that it is part of the technological, political, economic, structural, agricultural mix of policies and practices that MAY provide some answers to the looming population problem. Indeed, not even Monsato seriously argues that GMOs will solve global food problems, they merely posit that it is PART of the solution.

WHy? Because there are going to be an additional 2 billion mouthes to feed in twenty five years. Because most of the usable land is already undercultivation. Because, given conventional and organic farming methods now employed, it is hard to see how yeilds can be expanded to meet the need. Because we don't want to chop down all of the rain forrests to creat marginal agricultural lands. Because urbanization globally continues to eat into the best agricultural lands, and on and on.

The real point of GMOs, is to use every tool that we can to avoid looming population and agricultural disaster.

 

[Rob Lister]

This is an interesting thread but, you know what, it doesn't matter.

The whole debate is academic. The genie is out of the bottle. The genie grants wishes to any that ask. Disparaging the genie only means you, personally, refuse to ask anything of it. Others will because --- well, the will because it is a genie and it grants wishes. I want a plant that..., I want a crop that..., I want a dog that..., I want a child that...

Trying to grab the genie and stuff it back in it's bottle is like trying to trap a bead of mercury under your thumb; like hearding computer programmers or cats, it just ain't going to happen. The best you can do is to apply incentive as to the direction you'd like to see them go.

GM crops are certainly here to stay in the good ol' U.S. of A. Soon too in the U.K. And this is really only the extreme top few molecules on the tip of the GM ice burg.

 

[Benguin]

This is just Ad Hominem. The motivations of Monsanto have nothing to do with whether GMOs are safe or not.

I would agree if the argument you originally put hadn't included the comment about hunger ....

The real point of GMOs, is to use every tool that we can to avoid looming population and agricultural disaster.

No problems with that, it just takes a massive leap from there to accuse people who oppose GM of deliberately opposing something that will help the starving millions.

It could, it might, but we don't know if it will and that wasn't what it was for anyway.

I actually find it difficult to see how any GM advance could help feed an extra 2 billion, unless we make seaweed that tastes like bananas or something. Who knows. It's pure speculation.

And surely, the reason that Golden Rice "isn't what GM is being used for at this stage", is because of opposition by anti-GMO groups. They want to ban all GMOs, remember?

It's a nice idea, but it's more hype than substance. And, in any case, the very fact it is likely to bring benefits has caused many traditional GM opponents to back down on this.

 

[Ladewig]

Another point in favor
In addition to increasing yields on current farms and increasing vitamins in staple crops, there is also a movement to increase farmland by allowing crops to grow where they never have before
BBC story

Canadian scientists have created a tomato that grows in water nearly half as salty as the ocean. The sodium ions in salt are toxic to plants because they interfere with their metabolism.
But the modified tomato contains a gene that makes it gather ions inside large cell spaces called vacuoles where they can’t harm the plant. The salt-storing takes place only in the leaves, not in the tomato. This ensures that it will look feel and taste the same as a tomato grown in normal conditions.

Another point against

A brand of BT corn was found to express a toxin that scientists thought might cause allergies because of its molecular structure. So the US Environmental Protection Agency decided only to approve the corn as animal feed.
But in September 2000, traces of the corn were discovered in taco shells. All US corn exports suffered badly and the brand of corn was taken off the market.

One point of the anti-GMO crowd that hasn't been mentioned is laws which allow GMO foods to be sold without labelling referring to their modifications. If one were allergic to fish, then knowing that salmon genes were transferred to a tomato would be useful information. I understand that the chance of this specific transferred DNA creating proteins that would trigger allergic reactions is very, very small, but it is not zero.

I am very much in favor of GMO crops. On the other hand, I do not believe that all of the protestors are deluded luddites.

 

[Ladewig]

like herding computer programmers or cats, it just ain't going to happen.

I disagree. Both of these tasks can be accomplished if one has the right foods.

 

[athon]

Ok, some really good points. Let's see if we can address some of them.

It is important to emphasise that there is no such thing as "foreign DNA". As Eos pointed out DNA is identical across phylogenies, thus "foreign DNA" can reasonably dismissed as an oxymoron. I fail to see what ethical concerns there might be. It's not natural? Neither is agriculture. We're playing God? We always have. How do you think that both the Chihuaha and Great Dane trace their ancestry to the wolf?

While DNA itself is conserved as a chemical code across all species, genes themselves aren't so. German words and English words both use the Greco-Roman alphabet, and even have some words that share the same routes. But those words occasionally have different contexts in each language. While I'm not usually one for analogies, there is similarity between this and genetics.

Maybe there isn't 'foreign DNA', bit this oversimplifies the matter. There are control genes in different species that play different roles, interact differently and effect different genes in different circumstances; and coding genes that can be affected by different control genes again depending on the circumstances. We are learning just how complicated these interactions are as we continue to unravel the roles played by different genes.

Genetic Engineering and GM can be a useful product of this information, but one we have to understand fully.

The second point is that many of the arguments against GM plants can also be levelled against conventionally bred plants. What scientific basis is there for presuming that conventional plants wouldn't and don't interact in an unforeseen fashion with their ecosystems?
I fail to see how unwanted side effects would be more easily observed in conventional crops. If anything the opposite is true, since GM crops are more stringently regulated than conventional ones.

True, and this happens often when introducing exotic plant species into new environments. In a way, this further backs up my argument that says when we introduce new factors into an ecosystem, we should be aware of as many of the consequences as possible.

Conventional crops and exotic plants have something of a studied history behind them. A fair bit is known about how they interact with their ecosystem. Changing genes, especially across species barriers, is a novel concept, and one which has only been observed over several generations. Again, I'm not suggesting GM is a bad idea -- just one that needs those stringent rules and large amounts of trial-based research.

/snip/ Imagine if these strains had been produced by GM? I reckon we'd never hear the last of them in that case.

True. No argument here, and one I happen to agree with. There is still a lot of fear with GM crops, don't forget, due to ignorance.

As far as the trials in SE Asia regarding pesticide genes in crops, I have not read about them, and would stand corrected if you could point them out. Up until last year, however, the few trials I was following were not as encouraging as the companies were hoping.

This has been adressed in a very recent thread. In short it's a non-issue. The potential for transfer of antibiotic resistance genes from GM crops to bacteria is very slight, and in a world were overprescription of antibiotics is a major concern not something to lose sleep over.

Not exactly a good argument though. Yes, the whole over-use of antibiotics is an issue, and a major one at that. But it's a bit like saying 'war kills millions every year -- lone murderers only a few, so let's not bother about them'. It is still something that needs to be kept in mind when dealing with GM crops. The chances of gene transfer might be small, but on a massive scale it only takes a single successful transformation procedure to produce a new VRE.

But we're not jumping in blind. The problem is that many anti-GMers want to halt the process, full stop. Why else would they be burning research centres? To be honest, I can't recall any anti-GM organisation distancing themselves from this kind of behaviour (although I stand to be corrected on that score).

Without good government regulation, many companies could easily be tempted to forgo testing and sell less than safe products unto the market. Informed government regulation is the answer, although the 'informed' part is where arguments lie.

I agree fully that many anti-GM'ers want to halt the science fully. And this is ludicrous. But the science has to be understood much better than it is before we can claim it to be the answer to the world's problems.

Athon

 

[RichardR]

I would agree if the argument you originally put hadn't included the comment about hunger ....

I disagree. No matter what I might claim, if the response is that Monsanto is motivated by profit and not altruism, my argument has not been refuted. You have attacked the motive of the company not the claimed benefit of the product. They need to show that the product is dangerous, not that the producer is interested only in profit.

Btw, I was not accusing you personally of ad Hominem, I realize you were just presenting the position many anti-GM people hold.

Ironically, I believe this type of ad Hominem is known as "poisoning the well". Pretty funny considering they're environmentalists.

No problems with that, it just takes a massive leap from there to accuse people who oppose GM of deliberately opposing something that will help the starving millions.

Not that massive a leap:

The World Food Programme (WFP), a UN agency, complains that its work to assist the millions of hunger-affected Zambians has become "more difficult" due to the continued ban of GM food in the country. The Zambian government today announced it would not change its decision to ban the import of GM food, not even for hunger relief.

(snip)

The heated debate following Zambia's decision not to change its GM food legislation has however left many wondering about the stubbornness of Zambia's President Levy Mwanawasa and environmental groups not to allow GM foods as millions are left hungry. American consumers are shocked and write opinion letters to non-American media complaining against what they perceive as "anti-US propaganda". The outrage is understandable, given that US consumers eat GM food on a daily basis "and have taken no harm of it".

 

[Hunter]

Erm, hi folks, just a quick question.

I've been hearing that Monsanto (and this may just be balderdash, but I'd like to know more) has been using so called "terminator genes" in their seeds sold to farmers in India and SE Asia. The problem supposedly is that these terminator genes spread to neighboring fields and promptly kill off those crops...with the end result being that the poor farmers must buy seeds from monsanto..every single year.

I must admit that the story sounds suspect, but since I know so little on the issue, any information would be appreciated.

 

[headscratcher4]

Erm, hi folks, just a quick question.

I've been hearing that Monsanto (and this may just be balderdash, but I'd like to know more) has been using so called "terminator genes" in their seeds sold to farmers in India and SE Asia. The problem supposedly is that these terminator genes spread to neighboring fields and promptly kill off those crops...with the end result being that the poor farmers must buy seeds from monsanto..every single year.

I must admit that the story sounds suspect, but since I know so little on the issue, any information would be appreciated.

The word "balderdash" doesn't begin to describe it. This is the kind of ◊◊◊◊ that the anti-GM crowd knows to be untrue, yet continues to spread because it helps make their case...the "Big Lie" theory of political action.

Monsanto doesn't own any "terminator" technology. Indeed, what has been called "terminator" genes by GM opponents was developed in a joint effort by the USDA and a relatively small seed company in Georgia. For a time, Monsanto negotiated to buy the seed company -- which would have given it partial patent ownership over the technology -- but the deal fell through.

So-called terminator technology doesn't exist in the market place. It isn't being sold anywhere. It hasn't been submitted for regulatory approval. It only exists in the lab.

What is it? It was created by the US Department of Agriculture as a control machanism and as a method of protecting patented gene technology. Specifically, the technology would mean that you would get one plant per seed. THe plant would grow up sterile and not produce seeds that would germinate. In this way, if you had a plant that a company endowed with a patented technology -- say improved yeild potential -- the farmer couldn't steal the patented technology from the seed company by saving seed.

The farmer, to take advantage of the improved yeild potential, would have to buy the seed every year from the seed company. THe marketing theory for the seed company is that if it provides greater yeilds, better insect control, better weed control, etc. and farmers are able to grow more, better crops and make more money, than they will justify giving up saving seed and buy the seeds from the seed company on an annual basis.

Nothing about the technology forces the farmer to give up saving seed. Farmers need only plant non-sterile crops and save the seeds to continue their traditional or conventional ways. All the technology does...like a copy-right -- is prevent a farmer from stealing those patented seeds.

Now, the plant is designed to be sterile (i.e. to terminate itself). So, there is no problem of genetic or pollen drift. The plants in the next field wouldn't be under any kind of threat from these seeds BECAUSE the seeds are sterile.

If there was a problem with the seeds -- alerginicity, or something else -- their would be no flow to other plants because the seeds are sterile. A potential environmental problem would end with the life of a given plant, because the plant is sterile.

The anti-GM crowd has falsely argued that this is some sort of sin against traditional farmers because it prevents farmers from saving seed...i.e. you can't save seed from a sterile plant. What it would have done is give farmers choices, grow crops with certain postive traits that are not terminator crops and save the seed, or trade over and grow crops with presumably value-enhancing traits that would bring more profit and not save the seed.

Farmers, even in the third world make this choice all the time -- for example, if they can afford it, they buy insecticides to give their crops a better shot at survival -- even though they have to spend money to do so, and spend money every year presumbably.

The technology, as I said, has never been approved or marketed in any country in the world.

The fear mongering over this technology has been nothing short of breath-taking.

In the end, the bleeding hearts about subsistence farmers is rich people's agnst. No one wants to be a subsistence farmer. ALl farmers strive to grow crops that will do more than simply feed their family. Indeed, only feeding your family is a farming failure. You have to feed your neighbors, etc. The point is, farmers make choices in order to enhance their earning potential. These seeds would just have added to those choices -- a trade off from saving seed for theoretically the better yeilds or other postive traits promised by the terminator seeds.

Further, if the seed couldn't be shown to produce benefits, they'd never sell...farmers, contrary to the speculation of anti-GM do-gooders aren't fools. Why would they invest in seeds they can only use once UNLESS they could see that the positive traits would off-set the value of saving seed?

 

[Shane Costello]

Originally posted by Athon:
While DNA itself is conserved as a chemical code across all species, genes themselves aren't so. German words and English words both use the Greco-Roman alphabet, and even have some words that share the same routes. But those words occasionally have different contexts in each language. While I'm not usually one for analogies, there is similarity between this and genetics.

And the similarites between the two languages are such that a lot of words can be understood by speakers of either language! Don't forget that gene sequences can be very highly conserved across species barriers.

Maybe there isn't 'foreign DNA', bit this oversimplifies the matter. There are control genes in different species that play different roles, interact differently and effect different genes in different circumstances; and coding genes that can be affected by different control genes again depending on the circumstances. We are learning just how complicated these interactions are as we continue to unravel the roles played by different genes.

Genetic Engineering and GM can be a useful product of this information, but one we have to understand fully.

But why focus on genetic engineering? Surely the argument has greater relevance with conventional breeding? With GM you're inserting no more than a few genes. Conventional breeding can involve the introduction of entire genomes (see my wheat link). By the standard being applied should a moratorium be applied on conventional breeding. on the basis that we don't fully understand the processes involved?

As far as the trials in SE Asia regarding pesticide genes in crops, I have not read about them, and would stand corrected if you could point them out. Up until last year, however, the few trials I was following were not as encouraging as the companies were hoping.

I'm a bit pushed for time at the moment, but I'll dig up the links ASAP.

Not exactly a good argument though. Yes, the whole over-use of antibiotics is an issue, and a major one at that. But it's a bit like saying 'war kills millions every year -- lone murderers only a few, so let's not bother about them'. It is still something that needs to be kept in mind when dealing with GM crops. The chances of gene transfer might be small, but on a massive scale it only takes a single successful transformation procedure to produce a new VRE.

RichardR has linked to the relevant thread. The argument is sound because it's backed up by research. All things considered this really is a non-issue.

Without good government regulation, many companies could easily be tempted to forgo testing and sell less than safe products unto the market. Informed government regulation is the answer, although the 'informed' part is where arguments lie.

And I provided examples of how less than safe conventional strains made it to unto the market. Again, I don't know of anyone on the pro-GM side who argues that testing shouel be foregone.

Originally posted by Ladewig:
One point of the anti-GMO crowd that hasn't been mentioned is laws which allow GMO foods to be sold without labelling referring to their modifications. If one were allergic to fish, then knowing that salmon genes were transferred to a tomato would be useful information. I understand that the chance of this specific transferred DNA creating proteins that would trigger allergic reactions is very, very small, but it is not zero.

Well, I'm fairly certain that a tomato containing salmon genes isn't on the market. FDA regulations do not require the labelling of GM food as such because studies have shown that GM crops and foods are not substantially different to their "natural" equivalents to merit this. The FDA evaluates each GM strain or crop on an individual basis. If it concluded that a tomato containing a fish gene could provoke allergic reactions then it would require labelling of the product. Remember that specific salmon genes wouldn't necessarily cause allergic reactions. The allergans in fish would be encoded by a small number of fish genes. If one of these were transformed into a tomato, then the FDA would likely require the tomato, and all products containing the tomato, to be labelled as such.

 

[RichardR]

Well, I'm fairly certain that a tomato containing salmon genes isn't on the market.

From The Canadian Statistical Assessment Service:

Finally, the frightening sounding fish-gene-spiked tomato has made the rounds in many discussions about genetically modified foods. Might you have already ingested one without even knowing it? No. The story of the fish-gene veggie stems from a real 1991 experiment in which researchers attempted to develop a frost-resistant tomato by having the tomato express a flounder gene that produces a cold resistant protein. Although many picture the operation as a surgical implantation of fish material into a tomato, the gene in question did not actually come from a fish in any physical sense. It was merely a synthetic gene the scientists made using the information they had gleaned from the flounder’s genetic sequence.

In any case the experiment failed, and the fishy tomatoes certainly never made it to the market, though you’d never know it from the number of times flounder-filled tomatoes come up in the genetically modified food debate

The more I dig into this the less regard I have for the anti-GMO groups.

 

[Benguin]

I disagree. No matter what I might claim, if the response is that Monsanto is motivated by profit and not altruism, my argument has not been refuted. You have attacked the motive of the company not the claimed benefit of the product. They need to show that the product is dangerous, not that the producer is interested only in profit.

Btw, I was not accusing you personally of ad Hominem, I realize you were just presenting the position many anti-GM people hold.

Ironically, I believe this type of ad Hominem is known as "poisoning the well". Pretty funny considering they're environmentalists.

I actually agree with them that the global starvation arguement is not supported, see the quote from Monsanto's chairman earlier.

I disagree with their naff reasoning that it can't have any benefits because it came out of the evil military-industrial corporate hegemony (or whatever). I don't think Monsanto were thinking about global starvation when they developed this, and they've said as much. It wouldn't matter at all if it weren't for the fact that pro-GM campaigners tried to use global starvation as the support for their position. I doubt Monsanto or any of the scientists had anything to do with that, more likely some over-simplistic politician or PR person.

Not that massive a leap:

Yes, I'm just back from Africa, I know about this debate. Africa has a long history of receiving extremely bad agricultural advise and incredibly damaging 'food aid' from the west and has become deeply cynical about the whole subject.

Try this for another side of the issue ...

And not a bad article on the real problem

I'm not advancing this as any kind of evidence or argument in opposition to GM, merely opposing the use of the argument in support of GM as the evidence does not exist.

 

[athon]

And the similarites between the two languages are such that a lot of words can be understood by speakers of either language! Don't forget that gene sequences can be very highly conserved across species barriers.

Ok, but if a sequence is conserved across two species, why would you transfer it? If it doesn't exist in one species, and you wish to place a coding sequence into a crop that does not possess it, how can you initially be certain that it does not have a different effect?

As for non-coding sequences, we are only just beginning to understand how complicated that issue is. Granted, it has not been attempted yet in commercial GM (to my knowledge, but I could be shown wrong), but the temptation will surely arise to use an amplifier sequence or play with promoter regions to increase yields. At the moment it is rather crude manipulation of coding sequences that produce extra growth.

It is definately not a simple 'take gene A from species A and it will do the same thing next to gene B in species B'. Initially the industry thought it would, and with early GM in bacteria it was as simple as that. But eukaryotic organisms are proving to have a lot of tricks to get past.

Again, I should remind you I am not anti-GM. I'm just saying, we shouldn't fall into the same traps as them by screaming the opposite, saying how purely amazing and beneficial GE is rather than how foolish and destructive it is. It has incredible potential, but we have to be aware of potential risks on all fronts.

Athon

 

[The Don]

[South Park] Genetic engineering helps us to correct God's terrible, terrible mistakes - Like German people [/South Park]

 

[anor277]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't all the human insulin available to diabetics today derived from bacteria to which recombinant DNA techniques have been applied? I cite this as an example of a "good" genetic modification.

 

[athon]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't all the human insulin available to diabetics today derived from bacteria to which recombinant DNA techniques have been applied? I cite this as an example of a "good" genetic modification.

We've been playing with bacterial genomes and plasmids for a couple of decades now. We're even close to creating completely artificial bacteria (genomes designed from scratch). That'll be an exciting day.

Athon