On Wed, 6 Aug 2003 06:53:29 +0100, "Jim Webster"
wrote:


"Walter Epp" wrote in message
.. .
"Moosh:]" wrote:
On 29 Jul 2003 23:31:37 GMT, Brian Sandle
posted:
Moosh:] wrote:
On 22 Jul 2003 12:45:08 GMT, Brian Sandle
wrote:
To my knowledge they only test people with protein that they expect
the GM
plant to make. The actual plant could have the engineered promoters
switching on other genes, causing troubles you would not be looking
for.

And do they look for unintended effects from mutations and cross
pollinating?

Possibly not as thoroughly as they ought. But those are not being
applied
to such a wide sector of people as RR & Bt stuff, which goes to nearly
everyone in North America.

Mutations and cross pollinations go on constantly every minute in
every corn field in the world.

So? Natural populations have millions of generations of experience doing
this and figured out how to maintain their genetic integrity and minimize
unpleasant surprises long before human beings came into existence.

anthropomorphic rubbish. Did they hold committee meetings while they did
this figuring out, or just hold a township meeting?

Jim Webster

No, the goddess Gaia told them how to do it.

I find it difficult to accept the basic anti-GE premise that the way
genes happened to have been sorted among organisms by everything from
chance bolts of lightning over the primordial organic soup to
accidental, or human-generated (but "natural") cross-fertilisations
represents "the best of all possible worlds", and that "GE" poses a
significant risk of stuffing this up, within a few years, simply
because it's "unnatural".

This pov appears to presuppose what I call "a supernatural filing
clerk" with "good" intentions (essentially a theist view), or an
extrordinary efficiency on the part of Darwinian "natural selection."

Steve B.