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Biotech Wish List
The termator gene has it's place. Contorling volenter crops is one and
protecting intlectelual propety is a legtiment use. Cosider cotton in India. To protect the BT genetics and all other genetics in India they use hybred cotton. No place else in the world uses hybred cotton. In the case of BT cotton in India the hybridization is done by hand. Each bloom must be emasulated by hand and covered with a bag and then a few days later the bag much be reomved and the flower fertized by hand. Each bloom produces 4 or 5 seeds. It takes at least 20 or 30 seconds for each bloom and if the BT cotton doubles the yeild of Indain cotton it takes about 8,000 seeds to make a 480 pound bale of cotton or 1600 blooms or about 2.5 hours of hand labor to produce the seed. The breeders are going to protect their investment or not make it. Is it better for the farmer to pay for 2.5 hours of labor to hybidize the seed so he can't replant it or for the breeder to use a less expensive technology to protect his investment. I was farming before the plant protecton laws went in to effect in the US and the progress in cotton move at a snails pace. One man would work with one variaty all his life. With the plant protection act there was suddenly a lot of new cotton to choose from. You don't get improved varities for free. Someone has to pay for the work to develop them. All the goverments but China have paractialy quit funding ag research so do you want to just quit developing new varities? More things will come with time but the big things come first. The boll worm and it relitives are the number one pest in the world and the BT protien a natural protien that kills them. Round Up resistance was easy to do and has allowed millons of acres to reverse the loss of organic matter in the soil for the first time in crops like cotton and soybean. When used for notil cropping it is the biggest step in stopping soil erosion in my life. What has already been done is the biggest postive step in imporoveing framings impact on the envionment in history and you bitch about it? Gordon Gordon "jitney" wrote in message om... Instead of screwing the world's poor with nightmares like the "Terminator Gene," wouldn't it be great if the biotech firms could come up with things like: 1) Splice together the bottom of a carrot and the top of a cabbage. 2) Join together salt marsh plants with rice. These two would go a long way to relieve world hunger. Then for disease: 3) Develop a virus that attacks cancer cells. 4) Develop other viruses that attack infectous bacteria. No, I'm not some kind of Pollyanna, I'm usually very cynical.And some of these ideas may be naive, I am not a biologist. But I wanted to offer people something nice to think about for Christmas. Have a merry one, and feel free to add to the list. |
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