In article ,
Reid? wrote:

Following up to Peter Ashby

Then stay away from conventional crops then, very far away. Because the
uncontrolled genetic changes used in their production must, using your
own logic

"uncontrolled" genetic changes by selective breeding and crosses
with similar plants hardly amounts to components of a fish in a
tomato.

Since DNA is a component of fish that may be strictly true, but it is
also a component of tomatoes. So your usage of the term is potentially
misleading and as such, emotive.

If you think such things are unnatural I suggest you do a web search on
'lateral transmission'. Genome sequencing efforts are turning up a
number of examples of genes swapped between unrelated organisms. In fact
it is the feature of dna that enables lateral transfer in nature that
allows GM to work.

There is nothing magical about DNA, one gene out of tens of thousands
does not make a tomato a fish. I don't know the exact figure but since
we humans aparently share roughly 50% of our dna sequences with bananas
a similar figure is likely true for tomatoes and fish.

Peter

--
Peter Ashby
School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee, Scotland
To assume that I speak for the University of Dundee is to be deluded.
Reverse the Spam and remove to email me.