Moosh:] wrote:
On 19 Jul 2003 12:04:27 GMT, Brian Sandle
wrote:

Moosh:] wrote:
On 19 Jul 2003 04:24:23 GMT, Brian Sandle
wrote:

Moosh:] wrote:
On Fri, 18 Jul 2003 08:59:34 -0700, Dzogvi Gzboli
wrote:

Where can I find a list of the persons/cases in which diagnosable
injury resulted from ingesting GE corn? Or medical journal reports?

You are joking? Doesn't the inability to find such say something?

Not really.

Farmers are judging that cows fed on GM corn give less milk.

Which farmers? Which cows? Which corn? Where?

I shall have to search it out.

But you might expect it. It does not take much to affect milk
production, cows even have music preferences.

If you say so I've heard tomatoes do too.

As I reported before rats given the choice of GM and non-GM feed
had a preference for the latter. So that could affect the cows.

The rats play different music?

How did the rats tell the difference? Its extremely difficult for
science to differentiate.

Animals have good sense organs. They can almost sense the theoretical
limit of low light intensity. They have a good sense of smell, and the
different protein expression in the food would smell different. It is a
few percent of the plant. Besides the extra Roundup may have a taste or
smell.

Before Roundup Ready times strict withholding periods for herbicides
had to be adhered to.

Which herbicides? They are all different.
With holding times still apply.


Roundup has been promoted as safe so is
applied more.

Look, glyphosate ( a very safe plant enzyme inhibitor) can be applied
to RR crops during growth. Whereas with conventional crops it is
applied heavily before sowing, and then other more toxic and expensive
selective herbicides are applied during growth. It migh not be ideal,
but it is a big improvement on the conventional regime.

I know it is thought to be safe. Indeed some farmers used it to dry out a
crop for harvest. Now I wonder what they do about that. Extra? Something
else?

And isn't Roundup resistance transfering to the weeds so the other
herbicides are needed anyway?


And you have to buy it with the Monsanto seed.

No you don't. You can not buy anything you like.

You can not buy anything you like. You contract to buy Roundup when you
buy the RR seeds. So it will be used, most likely, since it has been
bought under the contract, whether it is really needed or not. Do Monsanto
allow you to buy the seed without Roundup next time? Then how do they make
their profit on the loss leader technology fee on the seeds? It is the
Roundup sale which makes the profit.


So there will be more Roundup in the corn crop now.

It breaks down rapidly in plants see EXTOXNET:
http://ace.orst.edu/info/extoxnet/pips/ghindex.html

But it does adhere to soil particles and may not break down, even in
waterways.

And anyway, it is quite harmless.

Not necessarily to water creatures, or to many humans, possibly.

It will be more
estrogenic.

Like many many molecules in the environment. But that is assuming it
has survived the breakdown in the plant.

It is soil bacteria which attempt to break it down. The RR plants will
metabolise it something else, then you have to check the toxicity of that.

Estrogenic pasture is generally a reproductive problem.
as I have posted.

That would be some clovers?

Some more than others, and mycotoxins.

Perhaps Jim might comment on pendulous udders in developing calves
produced from cows on estrogenic pasture. They will be harder to
milk. Maybe an estrogenic mycotxin is causing it, or red clover, or
Roundup? Needs research, I would say.

And it hasn't been researched? I'm sure I've come across lots over the
years.

Who does it profit to research it? Can they afford the research? Will they
be bought out?

Oh yes when zearallenones increase growth rate of animals owing to their
estrogenicity then that gets published. But how often the reproductive
problems? Not so much, I believe.

It takes a while for troubles to show up in humans. If a few percent more
women have to bottle supplement their babies that may reduce a nations
great IQ test as the DHA in human milk helps eye - possibly brain
development.

A long bow to draw?

The business world is always trying to avoid taking long time spans
into account.

That's the job of the regulator, and I believe yours has taken all
this into account.

The stuff has not been around for a generation.

The extra Roundup in human diets of Roundup Ready crops provides extra
xeno-estrogen in the diet.

What "more Roundup"? The glyphosate, or the surfactant wetting agent?

I think it is proprietary information.

What is? Glyphosate and surfactant (dish liquid or shampoo)?

And a sticky agent, probably.

More xeno-oestrogen than what?

Than before the advent of Roundup Ready.

I very much doubt that. Have you seen the list of hormone disruptors?
Reads like the Merck Index.

Depends on how much of them or their metabolites are in the food, and
environment.

You may not see results till the developing
eggs in the ovaries of todays foetuses are being fertilised 30 years away.
Farmers who would have gone organic are getting caught with polluting
Monsanto genes in their crops and rather than fighting are finding it
easier to pay up and go totally Roundup Ready, rather than lose the farm.

Roundup Ready has huge advantages if a farmer can afford it.

Saves on use of far more toxic and expensive herbicides.

Roundup also can save much soil erosion from mechanical pre-seeding
weed control.

Some farmers have `succeeded' with Roundup Ready, but the technology
fee is still a loss leader.

Well don't buy it. Simple.
Monsanto don't expect folks to buy their product if it provides them
with no advantage.

Then if you happen to get it on your land you are liable. One or two
farmers in such cirucumstances have resisted going GE paying the
technology fee. Even if they think it is not providing them with advantage
they are still charged.

Then it is very hard to track an origin of a disease which jumps species
in one individual then spreads rapidly through the new species. The GM
technology is designed to get genes to cross barriers they otherwise would
not. The probability of a jump in one individual is very low, but in the
population of China you have to multiply by a billion.

I think you are confusing two entirely separate phenomena.

Why do you?

Well you are talking about the possible spread of gene sequences
expressing proteins providing antibiotic resistance to organisms, and
then about new diseases. I can't see the connection.

They are both furthered by the technology which increases the probability
of gene transfer.

The drug resistance marker in the GM crops has been warned against by
many.

But nothing has come of it? What problems has this ever caused?

The experminent going on is uncontrolled. Therefore although
infectious disease is increasing world wide it cannot be pinned on
the GM technology.

What infectious diseases are increasing world wide and of which the
cause is not known?

go to http://www.i-sis.org.uk and search for infectious diseases.

One interesting point:


Linkname: SARS Virus Genetically Engineered
URL: http://www.i-sis.org.uk/SVGE.php
size: 247 lines

[...]
Urnovitz believes that the spike protein of the SARS virus is the
result of genetic rearrangements provoked by environmental genotoxic
agents, much like those he and his colleagues have detected in Gulf
War I veterans suffering from Gulf War Syndrome.

But how did the virus get to south China? A possible answer was
provided by Urnovitz: Migratory birds that frequent gene-swapping hot
spots like southeast China could have carried the SARS virus there.

Urnovitz himself doesn't think the SARS virus is the real cause of
SARS. Instead, it is the piece of reshuffled human chromosome 7 that
others are referring to as the spike protein gene of the SARS virus.
That alone is sufficient to trigger serious autoimmune responses in
people.

Hence, to create vaccines against that `spike' protein is also
tantamount to vaccinating people against their own genes (see "Dynamic
genomics", this series).
[...]
All bacteria have always swopped their genes,

Just like humans and all beings which reproduce sexually.

But bacteria can swap quite a percentage in a day.

Their generation span is 20 minutes in ideal situations.

But they pass on resistance more by swapping genes rather than passing
them on from parent to offspring.

they really have a
common gene bank,

Like all species-like groups

No really rather different. You are behind with your reading.

In what way different, then. No point saying I'm behind in this and
that and outdated. What is intrinsically different from sexual
reproductive gene mixing and the way bacteria do it. They don't do it
sexually of course.


I have explained that a bit, but you can read more in:


This is the html version of the file
http://www.nzige.canterbury.ac.nz/fi...ubmission.pdf.
G o o g l e automatically generates html versions of documents as we
crawl the web.
To link to or bookmark this page, use the following url:

http://www.google.com/cobrand_univ?q... l=en&ie=UTF-8
[...]
3. Issue 2.1, the difference between gene transfer and gene
transmission and how that

difference should be used in risk analysis.

3.1. Preamble. That HGT is real and an important mechanism by which
some genes

reproduce is by now widely acknowledged. Yet that acknowledgment is
only recent.

Had this application been made even five years earlier, the debate on
its

acceptability would have been at the level of arguing whether HGT
happened

at all.

This is to say that the science of HGT is young even though the
effects of HGT have

been described since the mid-20th

Century (Ferguson and Heinemann, 2002). HGT's

role in evolution is just starting to be studied outside of specialist
biological

examples (eg, Agrobacterium and plants). Technologies purpose designed
for its

study are only just appearing. So it is understandable, perhaps, that
despite the

realisation by the larger scientific community that HGT is real and
frequent, HGT is

not universally incorporated into the daily working analyses of
molecular biologists,

botanists and zoologists. Moreover, it will take time for this new
specialist branch of

genetics to become widely incorporated in curricula through the
publication of new

textbooks. Still, the incorporation of HGT in risk analysis must
transcend a cursory

knowledge of HGT and cultural barriers to these ideas within some
branches of

biology.
[...]

&c, a bit much to quote.

and what you do to one gets around and is made use of by
the others.

Yep, happens in all sexually reproducing gene pools.
All surviving mutations will spread into the gene pool.

You are behind. Mid 1990s the question was whether horizontal gene
transfer occurs. Now it totally accpeted. Bacteria probably pass on
more of their survival characteristics through it than through
vertical transfer.

What is the vertical transfer? Cloning?

No parent to offspring.

Again, what is intrinsically
different in mixing genetic material one way or another?
Nothing is new, however. Bacteria have been doing what they do for
millions of years.

The ref I gave explains.

Then you get indirect harm from GM when the drugs we have can
no longer treat the illnesses.

Examples?

I have been in a hospital ward which had MRSA. When I went back to
hospital 4 years later I had a red medicalert sticker on my
bracelet. It turned out to be an MRSA warning. Several tests were
done and some weeks before it was removed.

Was MRSA caused by GM? I thought it was bacteria doing what bacteria
do. Evolving to resist environmental attack.

GM can cause things by direct engineering or secondary picking up of
resistance from GM foods and other products. In the latter case what was
treatable Staph aureus turns itself into untreatable Staph aureus. If
aniamls are being fed GM food with antibiotic resistance genes, and given
low dose antibiotic growth promoters en masse, it seems important to look
into whether that increases the rate of increase of resistance to
antibiotics. Oh, yes, as with the computer viruses made by the people who
wish to sell antidotes, it is all work for them.

Resistance can develop
from animals fed antibiotics, but
what about when humans are fed antibiotic resistance genes en masse?

They are denatured and digested, along with all the other food we eat.

Not when the digestion is not perfect. For one thing transgenes from GE
food can be found in colostomy bags.

The antibiotics we take lightly are another matter.

But it is a bit of a different dimension of risk.

Funding of research these days is based on partnerships with profit
driven companies. So risk analysis which might take away the
quick-profit-and-get-out-of-it is a poor relation.

Well if you haven't got a strong regulator....
But don't confuse this with "science".

If we had strong Govt risk analysis we would not have had GE crops with
antibiotic resistance.