David Hare-Scott wrote:
songbird wrote:
Billy wrote:
...
Which will it be, a reasoned conversation, or crickets?

i'll bet on the crickets...

It seems we have heard the last of this. Crickets 4, reason 0. Bird wins
the doll.

whee!


"i'll call him George..."


additional info via a mutual friend:


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One out of four people in the U.S. reports having some type of food
allergy.21 Genetically engineered ingredients make matters worse in
two ways.

First, shuffling genes among species causes an allergen, for example
a nut allergen, to end up in food we've always thought is safe. Take
what happened in 1996 when university researchers decided to check
out a new genetically engineered soybean created by the Pioneer
Hi-Bred International. The soybeans were engineered to contain a
single gene from a Brazil nut. Since it's well known in the medical
community that nuts can cause allergic reactions in people, the
scientist decided to find out whether or not this single gene in the
soybeans could cause a response in folks who were allergic to Brazil
nuts. Incredibly, allergic reactions did occur from this one gene, as
reported that year in the New England Journal of Medicine.22 For
people who are fatally allergic to Brazil nuts, eating this
genetically engineered soy could be lethal. It's important to
remember that this allergy test was done independently and at the
discretion of these scientists; it was not required by any regulatory
agency of the U.S.

The second danger is that genetically engineering foods can provoke
an entirely new set of allergies. Here's how it works: The genetic
packages transferred into the cell encode a number of novel proteins
unfamiliar to the host plant. The resulting combination of a foreign
gene and the genetic material of the plant can set off an allergic
reaction. For example, in November 2005, Australian researchers found
that peas, genetically engineered with a bean gene, triggered
allergic reactions in research animals.23 This was a surprise because
the new gene in the peas was for a protein found in beans that does
not cause any allergic reactions at all. How could these identical
genes, one causing no allergies and the other causing allergies when
engineered into a pea, have such a different impact? The same gene
can produce slight variations of proteins in different plants-even in
closely related plants. In the pea, the protein encoded by the gene
was modified in a slightly different way than in the bean, and the
new form of this protein was allergcnic. So even when working with
identical genes, the very process of genetic engineering can turn a
non-allergenic gene into an allergenic one-a frightening prospect.
Yet, this new finding should not come as a surprise. More than a
decade ago, PDA scientists warned repeatedly that genetic engineering
could "produce a new protein allergen," and they've demanded
long-term testing for this hazard. Meanwhile, leaders at the FDA
continue to ignore science and refuse to require solid testing of
genetically engineered foods, exposing the public to these new and
hidden allergens.

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songbird