On 21 Jul 2003 11:39:12 GMT, Brian Sandle
wrote:

In sci.med.nutrition Moosh:] wrote:
On 20 Jul 2003 03:05:01 GMT, Brian Sandle
wrote:
Not anthropomorphism, ecology of genes. The chief of the University of
Canterbury Plant and Microbial Sciences Department runs the New Zealand
Gene Ecology organisation. (Jack Heinemann) (do google search in
www.canterbury.ac.nz)

Because bacteria can exchange genes to their advantage in the protected
environment of a human cell

Can you give us an example of this? Bacteria living within a cell?

"Some disease causing bacteria, like Salmonella typhimurium, invade human
cells when they infect people.

News to me, but there you go. What sort of cells are invaded?
Leucocytes?

There the bacteria coul dbe protected from
antibiotics while exhanging the genes for antibiotic resistance and the
genes that make bacteria better at causing disease. Laboratory tests
proved that genes do transfer between these bacteria even when antibiotics
are present.

The ability of bacteria to exchange genes insdie human cells also suggests
the bacteria could transfer genes to the human genome. However, Heinemann
says, `This is not necessarily going to cause the transfer of bacterial
genes to our sex cells and to our children, because these bacteria do not
normally have access to our sex cells'" - Deborah Parker, UC Alumni,
Winter 2003, p 19.

Though who knows, when, as I posted in the `apocalypse' thread, GM can be
used to make, in corn, antibodies which will destroy human sperm.

And this would be injected into what site on the body?
Why would you want to manufacture anti-sperm antibodies?
Contraception? These are only just proteins, BTW

it is necessary to take more care with drug
resistance genes.

Is not sufficient care already being taken?

No. Things are done with the knowledge of the decade.

What more can you ask?

We should not be feeding drug resistance genes to people
en masse, not checking up with control groups if it is triggering
anything.

What evidence have you that this has not been thoroughly investigated?

It has been examined with the old ideas. That genes are transferred from
parent to offspring (vertical movement) was the basis. That is now
outmoded. Genes go horizontally from one bacteria to another, and that is
the more dominant method of passing on resistance. It can happen in human
cells where bacteria are protected from antibiotics.

But how is this well-known phenomenon related to GE?

Heinemann's work was `recognised by the American Society for Microbiology
as teh best published in April 2002. The society publishes 600 of the many
thousands of articles submitted to its journals each month, and of the 600
published last year, the Canterbury research was singled out as "best of
the best."'

Fine. Bacteria swap genes. As they can multiply "vertically"
from one to 4,722,366,400,000,000,000,000 in just one day, I think
this is probably not all that fantastic