"Gordon Couger" wrote in message ...
"ddwyer" wrote in message
...
In article , Moosh:]
writes

Thanks Gordon, good point.
Not thet there's much more we can do about it than what we are doing.
If you want to convert a sheep or a bacteria to produce a bioactive
material such as a protein as a theraputic agent the way foreward is not
to breed or mutate but GM a species. I.e. create a self replicating
factory. GM food has the potential to generate unwanted materials that
mutation and breeding cannot.
Unwanted material in foodstuffs will be the rare hazard that we wont
recognise until too late. Sadly whole populations will consume; not just
the ill for whom the risk would ba acceptable.

Due to testing in GM food stuffs we are much less likely to get unintended
hazards in food stuffs than we are in in normally bred food stuffs.

Another naif who seems to believe that governments and their
regulations will save us. It was a British government regulation
requiring cattle to be heavily dosed with organophosphate pesticides
which may have triggered the BSE outbreak. See Mark Purdy's research.

I can
list several cases of food stuffs that case harm bred with conventional
methods an you can't list a single one with GM methods.

I certainly can, a company in San Diego named Epicyte. They are
producing a spermicide in corn kernals via GM.

================================================== ===========
Vast fields of maize could soon be churning out antibodies for
preventing sexually transmitted diseases.

Researchers at Epicyte, a biotech company in San Diego, say their
technology promises to make the mass production of therapeutic
antibodies easier and cheaper. At the moment, therapeutic antibodies
are produced using hamster ovary cells - an expensive method that
produces limited amounts.

But Epicyte's new "plantibody" technology allows the DNA that codes
for antibodies to be introduced into crop plants such as maize. The
antibodies are only produced in the maize kernels, making it easy to
extract them using current maize-processing methods.

Epicyte is already well on the way to producing an antibody to prevent
herpes infection, says Andrew Hiatt, who helped develop the
technology. The antibody, HX8, works by sticking to the virus and
blocking its entry into cells, and has proved highly effective in
animal tests.

Although condoms provide some protection against herpes infection,
they are not 100 per cent reliable. But HX8 can provide protection in
the vagina for 24 hours. Epicyte is also developing antibodies that
block HIV transmission and the virus that causes genital warts.

The HX8 genes have already been transferred into maize, and Epicyte
plans to start clinical trials of the antibody next year. Hiatt hopes
plantibodies will be cheap enough for consumers to buy them over the
counter. "That's the ultimate goal," he says.

Claire Ainsworth
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991373
================================================== ===================

I don't want my balls to be damaged every time I eat corn just because
a company wants to improve it's bottom line. Once their GM pollen
escapes into the air there's no going back, and no protection for any
other corn plant in the world. It's already happened.

================================================== ================
"Biotech Company Admits StarLink
Contamination is Forever
Knight Ridder/Tribune
Biotech Firm Executive Says Genetically Engineered Corn Is
Here to Stay
Mar. 19

A top Aventis CropScience executive said Sunday that the food
supply will never be rid of the new strain of corn that the company
genetically engineered at Research Triangle Park."

http://www.purefood.org/ge/starlinkforever.cfm
================================================== ==================


================================================== ==================
"Genetically Modified Corn Spreading to Protected Wild Corn
Despite Mexico's 3-year-old moratorium on the use of genetically
altered corn, scientists have detected genetically modified DNA in
wild maize in the mountains of the state of Oaxaca.

Wayward genes from genetically modified corn that is widely grown in
Canada and the United States are spreading in remote mountainous
regions of Mexico.

Up to 70% of wild Mexican maize now carries transgenes that could only
have come from genetically engineered crops. The transgenes, which
scientists borrow from viruses and bacteria, have been engineered into
GM crops."

Nature November 29, 2001;414:541-543

http://www.mercola.com/2001/dec/12/gm_corn.htm
================================================== =====================


If you are going to use arguments use ones that you don't loose at the onset
with proven facts.

Gordon

I just used proven facts.

--Hua Kul