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problems with genetic engineering
"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. Genetic engineering has only a couple handfuls of years of experience. Many of us do not accept the proposition that a few = millions. When the tryptophan from GE sources killed some people it might not have been discovered if the symptoms were similar to some other lethal but fairly common disease. But that tryptophan affair was nothing to do with GE. Not true. The genetically engineered strains resulted in production of toxins not produced by non-GE strains, and the filtering levels in effect when the epidemic occurred had previously been in effect with non-GE strains without evidence of illness resulting. See http://www.psrast.org/jftrypt.htm for details. Linkname: The Thalidomide of Genetic Engineering URL: http://www.i-sis.org.uk/tryptophan.php size: 199 lines Linkname: Speech by Jeanette Fitzsimons in Urgent debate on GE decision - 30OCT2001 URL: http://www.ecoglobe.org.nz/ge-news/rcgm1o30.htm size: 258 lines The Royal Commission has been lauded by some as balanced, thorough, informed, and many other plaudits. This was the same Royal Commission which told the representative of oneorganisation, before they had even made their presentation, that the Commission had already made their decision and it would be the Great NZ compromise. The same organisation, after handing in their written submission much earlier, found there was an error and asked to correct it. They were told it didn't matter as "no-one was going to read it anyway". In fact the Commission disregarded a great deal of evidence which did not support its conclusions and made numerous errors of fact - for example in its reporting and assessment of evidence about the poisoning of thousands by GE tryptophan Sounds like grasping at straws -- after their key witness a few years ago was charged with falsifying evidence? They were not charged with falsifying evidence. The debate was not about the evidence but the conclusions to be drawn from it. 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. Where's this list? They get withdrawn if they cause trouble that is plain obvious. Unfortunately that's not true. Only the ones that are immediately obvious get withdrawn. If 40% of people who ate gmos were going to sustain gmo-caused heart damage that killed them 25 years later, we may not know it until millions had been condemned to die. Just like foods from plant mutations and cross-pollinating, only these are more likely What evidence is there on the relative incidences? Who is doing studies comparing recent health changes in countries with GM food compared to countries with non-GM? Who is ready for what may show up in the next generation? Health is always being monitored by hundreds of thousands of health professionals. So you agree with me that we must have labelling of GMOs? Without labeling it's difficult to impossible for the public or those professionals to make any connection between health damage and genetic engineering. Without labeling the public is being treated as guinea pigs in a giant uncontrolled experiment, For all we know, there could have already been a million illnesses and 10,000 deaths caused by GE and we wouldn't know it. In the US, year-to-year fluctuations in the number of deaths commonly exceed 10,000. Have you got ANY evidence of any problems? Here's a start: http://www.purefood.org/ge/btcomments.cfm http://www.foxbghsuit.com/exhibit%20r.htm http://www.psrast.org/bghsalmonella.htm http://www.preventcancer.com/press/july8,98.htm http://www.organicconsumers.org/rbgh/cancer091302.cfm http://www.factoryfarm.org/docs/rBGH-Hudson.doc http://www.psrast.org/pusztai.htm http://www.egroups.com/message/corp-ethics/1104 http://www.biotech-info.net/beneficials2.html http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/070903_ge.cfm http://www.bwf.org/gedebate.html#5 http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/frankenfish.cfm http://www.psrast.org/superwee.htm http://www.mindfully.org/GE/Superweed-Canola-Canada.htm http://www.organicconsumers.org/pate...nger090401.cfm http://www.psrast.org/soilfertfact.htm http://www.idiom.com/~for7gen/i/gecatast.htm and links therein, especially http://www.i-sis.org.uk/meltdown.php http://www.i-sis.org.uk/unstable.php http://www.vshiva.net/aticles/gmo_failure.htm http://www.psrast.org/prhortra.htm http://www.i-sis.org.uk/camvrecdis.php http://www.i-sis.org/CaMV.shtml http://www.i-sis.org/camv-mehd.shtml http://www.i-sis.org/terminsects-pr.shtml http://www.vshiva.net/aticles/risks_...nd_science.htm http://www.psrast.org/jftrypt.htm -- delete N0SPAAM to reply by email |
#2
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problems with genetic engineering
"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 |
#3
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problems with genetic engineering
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. |
#4
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problems with genetic engineering
On Tue, 05 Aug 2003 18:17:07 -0700, Walter Epp
posted: "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. Genetic engineering has only a couple handfuls of years of experience. But it is all much the same thing. Every combination and permutation has been tried repeatedly over the aeons. Those that are beneficial survive, those that aren't, go extinct or vestigial.. Many of us do not accept the proposition that a few = millions. A few multiplied by millions is millions. When the tryptophan from GE sources killed some people it might not have been discovered if the symptoms were similar to some other lethal but fairly common disease. But that tryptophan affair was nothing to do with GE. Not true. The genetically engineered strains resulted in production of toxins not produced by non-GE strains, and the filtering levels in effect when the epidemic occurred had previously been in effect with non-GE strains without evidence of illness resulting. See http://www.psrast.org/jftrypt.htm for details. Quote: "It was later shown that the tryptophan produced in genetically engineered bacteria contained one or more highly toxic contaminants." So the contaminants weren't discovered. A quality control matter, not a unforseen difference between GE tryptophan and non-GE tryptophan. Linkname: The Thalidomide of Genetic Engineering URL: http://www.i-sis.org.uk/tryptophan.php size: 199 lines Linkname: Speech by Jeanette Fitzsimons in Urgent debate on GE decision - 30OCT2001 URL: http://www.ecoglobe.org.nz/ge-news/rcgm1o30.htm size: 258 lines The Royal Commission has been lauded by some as balanced, thorough, informed, and many other plaudits. This was the same Royal Commission which told the representative of oneorganisation, before they had even made their presentation, that the Commission had already made their decision and it would be the Great NZ compromise. The same organisation, after handing in their written submission much earlier, found there was an error and asked to correct it. They were told it didn't matter as "no-one was going to read it anyway". In fact the Commission disregarded a great deal of evidence which did not support its conclusions and made numerous errors of fact - for example in its reporting and assessment of evidence about the poisoning of thousands by GE tryptophan Sounds like grasping at straws -- after their key witness a few years ago was charged with falsifying evidence? They were not charged with falsifying evidence. The debate was not about the evidence but the conclusions to be drawn from it. 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. Where's this list? You don't know about any conventional foods that are toxic? Try solanine for a start. They get withdrawn if they cause trouble that is plain obvious. Unfortunately that's not true. Only the ones that are immediately obvious get withdrawn. If 40% of people who ate gmos were going to sustain gmo-caused heart damage that killed them 25 years later, we may not know it until millions had been condemned to die. So why has this never happened before? Just like foods from plant mutations and cross-pollinating, only these are more likely What evidence is there on the relative incidences? Incidences of what? Who is doing studies comparing recent health changes in countries with GM food compared to countries with non-GM? Who is ready for what may show up in the next generation? Health is always being monitored by hundreds of thousands of health professionals. So you agree with me that we must have labelling of GMOs? For tracing purposes by manufacturers and regulators, yes. Without labeling it's difficult to impossible for the public or those professionals to make any connection between health damage and genetic engineering. Without labeling the public is being treated as guinea pigs in a giant uncontrolled experiment, So put a code on it that can be traced. For all we know, there could have already been a million illnesses and 10,000 deaths caused by GE and we wouldn't know it. Can you cite any example of this? Unknown cause of massive numbers of illnesses and deaths? In the US, year-to-year fluctuations in the number of deaths commonly exceed 10,000. Do they? From what causes? You are not blaming car accidents, are you? Have you got ANY evidence of any problems? Here's a start: http://www.purefood.org/ge/btcomments.cfm "Possible Human Health Hazards of Genetically Engineered Bt Crops" ^^^^^^^^^ http://www.foxbghsuit.com/exhibit%20r.htm Milk from cows given rBGH is no different from milk from cows given any other BGH. Whether we should treat cows at all ia the point here. Not a GE matter. http://www.psrast.org/bghsalmonella.htm Propaganda site about rBGH milk again. http://www.preventcancer.com/press/july8,98.htm More propaganda about "Monsanto milk" http://www.organicconsumers.org/rbgh/cancer091302.cfm More milk and hormone treatment of cows. http://www.factoryfarm.org/docs/rBGH-Hudson.doc http://www.psrast.org/pusztai.htm http://www.egroups.com/message/corp-ethics/1104 http://www.biotech-info.net/beneficials2.html http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/070903_ge.cfm http://www.bwf.org/gedebate.html#5 http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/frankenfish.cfm http://www.psrast.org/superwee.htm http://www.mindfully.org/GE/Superweed-Canola-Canada.htm http://www.organicconsumers.org/pate...nger090401.cfm http://www.psrast.org/soilfertfact.htm http://www.idiom.com/~for7gen/i/gecatast.htm and links therein, especially http://www.i-sis.org.uk/meltdown.php http://www.i-sis.org.uk/unstable.php http://www.vshiva.net/aticles/gmo_failure.htm http://www.psrast.org/prhortra.htm http://www.i-sis.org.uk/camvrecdis.php http://www.i-sis.org/CaMV.shtml http://www.i-sis.org/camv-mehd.shtml http://www.i-sis.org/terminsects-pr.shtml http://www.vshiva.net/aticles/risks_...nd_science.htm http://www.psrast.org/jftrypt.htm I've looked at the first five and not found any evidence of damage from GE. Have you actually got any? I really don't want to blow my download allocation on more empty URLs |
#5
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problems with genetic engineering
In sci.med.nutrition Jim Webster wrote:
: "Walter Epp" wrote in message : "Moosh:]" wrote: : 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? Such language is common is biology. Biologists refer to genes as selfish - for example. They /could/ constantly explain that yes, this is a metaphor - and no, they don't mean it literally - but after a little while that gets pretty tedious. Mutations that arise in nature tend to be systematically different from taking genes from one organisms and transferring them into an unrelated one. The latter technique is more powerful. As a consequence of the greater power, there is more scope for things going wrong. -- __________ |im |yler http://timtyler.org/ |
#6
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problems with genetic engineering
"Tim Tyler" wrote in message ... : anthropomorphic rubbish. Did they hold committee meetings while they did : this figuring out, or just hold a township meeting? Such language is common is biology. Biologists refer to genes as selfish - for example. They /could/ constantly explain that yes, this is a metaphor - and no, they don't mean it literally - but after a little while that gets pretty tedious. Mutations that arise in nature tend to be systematically different from taking genes from one organisms and transferring them into an unrelated one. The latter technique is more powerful. As a consequence of the greater power, there is more scope for things going wrong. except that there are an almost infinite number of mutations arising naturally all the time, whereas how many gm ones are there? Inevitably blind chance will throw up more powerful mutations than GM Jim Webster -- __________ |im |yler http://timtyler.org/ |
#7
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problems with genetic engineering
"Jim Webster" wrote
"Tim Tyler" wrote: Mutations that arise in nature tend to be systematically different from taking genes from one organisms and transferring them into an unrelated one. The latter technique is more powerful. As a consequence of the greater power, there is more scope for things going wrong. except that there are an almost infinite number of mutations arising naturally all the time, whereas how many gm ones are there? Insertions of arbitrary information are allowed in both cases. Inevitably blind chance will throw up more powerful mutations than GM Use of intelligent design and engineering can usually produce results more quickly than trying solutions at random. The tools available to genetic engineers are a superset of those nature uses. *As well* as point mumations, inversions, etc, they can (e.g.) take existing genes from a glowworm, and insert them into a mouse - something that would not normally happen in nature. -- TT |
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problems with genetic engineering
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#9
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problems with genetic engineering
On Fri, 8 Aug 2003 08:15:55 GMT, Tim Tyler posted:
In sci.med.nutrition Jim Webster wrote: : "Walter Epp" wrote in message : "Moosh:]" wrote: : 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? Such language is common is biology. In my experience, the authors scrupulously avoid it, but I obviously haven't read them all. Biologists refer to genes as selfish - for example. Because they are. That's not anthropomorphism. They /could/ constantly explain that yes, this is a metaphor - and no, they don't mean it literally - but after a little while that gets pretty tedious. Well Dawkins means it literally, I believe. Mutations that arise in nature tend to be systematically different from taking genes from one organisms and transferring them into an unrelated one. Different in what way? The latter technique is more powerful. More accurate, and gives a quicker result. As a consequence of the greater power, there is more scope for things going wrong. Why? The conventional slow methods have had millions of years to get into trouble, and they've sampled every trouble imaginable. Afterall, an amoeba gene is intrinsically the same as a human gene, just possibly a different sequence, but not necessarily. |
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problems with genetic engineering
Steve B wrote:
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." Let's see what we can learn from a little math exercise. If something has only a 1% selection pressure, so in each generation the portion of the population with a given trait is 99% of the portion of the previous generation, and they start out being 99% of the population, then in 1,000 generations, the 99% has been reduced to 0.004%. So if we have genes a, b, c, d such that the combination a & b or c & d fail to work together with only a 1% selective effect on population, then in 1,000 generations you have a population for which over 99.99% have neither a & b nor c & d - in other words, you have a population with a very high degree of correlation among these genes. 1,000 generations is a fleeting blip in evolutionary history. In a million generations the percentage is so infinitesimal that my calculator can't calculate it, the negative exponent is so large. Remember Nature has been doing this for a billion years. Thus almost all of the genes in any natural genome or gene pool have been related to each other and working together (or coevolving if you can't stand a human perspective Jim) for a very very very long time, and modern science is only beginning to get a clue of the web of interrelationships among them. Genomes and population gene pools are ecosystems. The tinkertoy mentality of genetic engineers that presumes you can randomly interchange genes from different places is out of touch with reality. Perfectly natural species taken out of context and inserted into other ecosystems have upset the balance of the ecosystem to become invasive exotics causing major damage, including snuffing out natives and pushing them to the brink of extinction. In the US there has been substantial damage from Kudzu, Dutch Elm disease, Gypsy Moths, and Zebra Mussels; Chestnut blight was catastrophic. The Glassy-winged Sharpshooter is considered a serious threat to California agriculture. The Irish potato blight killed a million people. A little-known fact is that these invaders typically start out as seemingly innocuous and often take decades to be recognized as a serious problem. Mimosa pigra (catclaw mimosa) was a minor weed in Australia for about a century before excluding other plants on a large scale. The Royal Horticultural Society awarded a gold medal for importation of Japanese Knotweed to Britain in the Victorian era, which was subsequently revoked when they realized what a big mistake it was. Now huge sums are being spent in an unsuccessful effort to control it. A study at Cornell University concluded that "nonindigenous species in the United States cause major environmental damage and losses totaling approximately $137 billion a year" (BioScience January 2000). Thus the cost to date of species taken out of context is already over a trillion dollars and no one knows how many more trillions will be incurred before things settle into some equilibrium. Species of Mass Destruction are the number one cause of biodiversity loss in the Great Lakes and are expected to be the leading cause of extinctions in North American freshwater ecosystems this century. Insects and diseases from Europe and Asia have caused damage in 70% of the 165 million acres of forest in the American Northeast and Midwest. Leafy Spurge has reduced the value of some ranch land by 90%. It stands to reason that the consequences of genes taken out of context may well have similar characteristics and similar orders of magnitude to species taken out of context, in which case we're liable to find ourselves decades from now with the Mooshes of the world just beginning to wake up as the evidence of harm becomes so obvious and pervasive it's impossible to ignore even with blinders on, at which point it will be decades too late to prevent incurring costs of trillions of dollars of damages over the ensuing decades or centuries or millenia or ... It has already been documented that a gene inserted by genetic engineering is 20 times more invasive than the same gene acquired by mutation with the natural genetic regulatory system intact. As Brian has posted, natural organisms have over millions of years evolved DNA repair mechanisms without which the error rates would be catastrophically high. Genetic engineering defeats natural repair mechanisms while introducing genetic instabilities. Given that gene pools are already stressed by man-made chemical and radiological mutagens, it may not take a very large increase in disruption from genetic engineering to push some beyond their repair capacity even if it doesn't by itself cause self-destruction (see http://www.i-sis.org.uk/meltdown.php). Most things in the world of life are nonlinear. The fact that you can increase something by x% without significant problems does not mean you can increase by an additional x% without serious problems. For a counter-intuitive example of a way GE can lead to extinction see http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/frankenfish.cfm Of course Nature will recover in some fashion eventually, but the costs could be not only economic but also the extinction of many species and sickness and death of many people before recovery is accomplished. -- delete N0SPAAM to reply by email |
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problems with genetic engineering
"Jim Webster" wrote:
"Walter Epp" wrote i "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? Given the fact that the result is so sophisticated that all of modern science has been unable to figure very much of it out, the process evidently has more intelligence than any human committee. Do you deny that DNA repair enzymes, RNA editing, methylation, gene silencing, gene conversion, reverse transcription, etc were established before humans came along? -- delete N0SPAAM to reply by email |
#12
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problems with genetic engineering
"Moosh:}" wrote:
On Tue, 05 Aug 2003 18:17:07 -0700, Walter Epp posted: Have you got ANY evidence of any problems? Here's a start: http://www.purefood.org/ge/btcomments.cfm "Possible Human Health Hazards of Genetically Engineered Bt Crops" ^^^^^^^^^ If you had bothered to read past the first line, you would have noticed that it documents case after case where biotech blind presumptions and conventional wisdom on which their safety arguments are based were proven wrong, and it cites peer-reviewed evidence that consuming genetically modified food harms mammals. http://www.foxbghsuit.com/exhibit%20r.htm Milk from cows given rBGH is no different from milk from cows given any other BGH. Whether we should treat cows at all ia the point here. Not a GE matter. What is your evidence there is no difference? If there is no difference how did Monsanto get a patent and trademark on it? Where are cows being fed non-GMO BGH and what are the methodologies and results of comparative studies of their health and the health of animals who eat their milk products? Where is the proof there were no byproducts or contaminants, as occurred with GE tryptophan? http://www.psrast.org/bghsalmonella.htm Propaganda site about rBGH milk again. So it's your position that the New England Journal of Medicine is "propaganda". Very interesting. http://www.preventcancer.com/press/july8,98.htm More propaganda about "Monsanto milk" So now the Lancet is "propaganda" too. http://www.organicconsumers.org/rbgh/cancer091302.cfm More milk and hormone treatment of cows. http://www.factoryfarm.org/docs/rBGH-Hudson.doc http://www.psrast.org/pusztai.htm http://www.egroups.com/message/corp-ethics/1104 http://www.biotech-info.net/beneficials2.html http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/070903_ge.cfm http://www.bwf.org/gedebate.html#5 http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/frankenfish.cfm http://www.psrast.org/superwee.htm http://www.mindfully.org/GE/Superweed-Canola-Canada.htm http://www.organicconsumers.org/pate...nger090401.cfm http://www.psrast.org/soilfertfact.htm http://www.idiom.com/~for7gen/i/gecatast.htm and links therein, especially http://www.i-sis.org.uk/meltdown.php http://www.i-sis.org.uk/unstable.php http://www.vshiva.net/aticles/gmo_failure.htm http://www.psrast.org/prhortra.htm http://www.i-sis.org.uk/camvrecdis.php http://www.i-sis.org/CaMV.shtml http://www.i-sis.org/camv-mehd.shtml http://www.i-sis.org/terminsects-pr.shtml http://www.vshiva.net/aticles/risks_...nd_science.htm http://www.psrast.org/jftrypt.htm I've looked at the first five and not found any evidence of damage from GE. Have you actually got any? I really don't want to blow my download allocation on more empty URLs An attention span of longer than 5 seconds is needed to grasp these issues. -- delete N0SPAAM to reply by email |
#13
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problems with genetic engineering
"Moosh:}" wrote:
On Tue, 05 Aug 2003 18:17:07 -0700, Walter Epp posted: "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. Genetic engineering has only a couple handfuls of years of experience. But it is all much the same thing. Every combination and permutation has been tried repeatedly over the aeons. Then show me documentation of the existence, prior to genetic engineering, of maize and cotton that expressed Bt, soy and canola that expressed Roundup-ready genes, bacteria that produced BGH, bacteria that produced tryptophan, potatoes that expressed snowdrop lectin, tomatoes with the FlavrSavr gene, strawyberries with the fish gene, salmon with the flounder growth hormone, etc. Those that are beneficial survive, those that aren't, go extinct or vestigial.. If you had read the references I posted, in particular http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/frankenfish.cfm, you would know it's not at all this simplistic, as the opposite can happen. Many of us do not accept the proposition that a few = millions. A few multiplied by millions is millions. If you can arbitrarily fudge one side by millions then I can fudge the other side by millions resulting in trillions. Such fudging has nothing to do with reality. When the tryptophan from GE sources killed some people it might not have been discovered if the symptoms were similar to some other lethal but fairly common disease. But that tryptophan affair was nothing to do with GE. Not true. The genetically engineered strains resulted in production of toxins not produced by non-GE strains, and the filtering levels in effect when the epidemic occurred had previously been in effect with non-GE strains without evidence of illness resulting. See http://www.psrast.org/jftrypt.htm for details. Quote: "It was later shown that the tryptophan produced in genetically engineered bacteria contained one or more highly toxic contaminants." So the contaminants weren't discovered. A quality control matter, not a unforseen difference between GE tryptophan and non-GE tryptophan. Hello! Wake up! The toxins were an unforeseen result of the GE strain which were not produced by the non-GE strain. The company made the mistake of listening to those who said there's no evidence of harm so there's nothing to worry about; it failed to take precautionary action and used the same filtering regime it had been using for years with non-GE bacteria on the assumption that they were substantially equivalent. As a result, the assumption was only proven wrong by a rude awakening in the form of an epidemic of disease and billions of dollars in lawsuits. Are we going to learn from this history or condemn ourselves to repeat it? 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. Where's this list? You don't know about any conventional foods that are toxic? Try solanine for a start. People have known for ages to avoid green potatos and potato sprouts. It forms when they are subjected to light and warmth, so storing them cool and dark prevents a problem. It tastes bitter, so your God-given senses can detect if there's something wrong. How many people exercising prudent handling have been harmed by solanine? Are you aware that solanine has been used as medicine to treat bronchitis, epilepsy, and asthma, so consuming the small amounts in normal food may be healthful? If you must avoid all solanine, you can refrain from eating nightshades. Without labelling, the typical person would have trouble avoiding GMOs in the typical supermarket. They get withdrawn if they cause trouble that is plain obvious. Unfortunately that's not true. Only the ones that are immediately obvious get withdrawn. If 40% of people who ate gmos were going to sustain gmo-caused heart damage that killed them 25 years later, we may not know it until millions had been condemned to die. So why has this never happened before? How do you know it hasn't happened already? Just like foods from plant mutations and cross-pollinating, only these are more likely What evidence is there on the relative incidences? Incidences of what? You said harm is more likely to occur from mutations and cross-pollinating than GE, ie the incidence of harmful products from natural means is greater than the incidence of harmful products from GE. What are the incidences and what is your evidence to back them up? Who is doing studies comparing recent health changes in countries with GM food compared to countries with non-GM? Who is ready for what may show up in the next generation? Health is always being monitored by hundreds of thousands of health professionals. So you agree with me that we must have labelling of GMOs? For tracing purposes by manufacturers and regulators, yes. Without labeling it's difficult to impossible for the public or those professionals to make any connection between health damage and genetic engineering. Without labeling the public is being treated as guinea pigs in a giant uncontrolled experiment, So put a code on it that can be traced. I'm glad we agree on the need for labelling GMOs. For all we know, there could have already been a million illnesses and 10,000 deaths caused by GE and we wouldn't know it. Can you cite any example of this? Unknown cause of massive numbers of illnesses and deaths? In the US, year-to-year fluctuations in the number of deaths commonly exceed 10,000. Do they? From what causes? You are not blaming car accidents, are you? The subject here was using aggregate death & disease rates to detect damage from GMOs. My point was that if there had already been 10,000 people killed by GMOs there is no way this could have been detected by the aggregate death rate, since the death toll from all other causes can and has gone up or down by 10,000. An additional point: if the disease statistics remain the same from year to year, this could be due to GMOs causing a continually increasing amount of damage in every year, if the damage from other causes was continually dropping due to people otherwise living healthier lifestyles. -- delete N0SPAAM to reply by email |
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problems with genetic engineering
Steve B wrote:
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." Let's see what we can learn from a little math exercise. If something has only a 1% selection pressure, so in each generation the portion of the population with a given trait is 99% of the portion of the previous generation, and they start out being 99% of the population, then in 1,000 generations, the 99% has been reduced to 0.004%. So if we have genes a, b, c, d such that the combination a & b or c & d fail to work together with only a 1% selective effect on population, then in 1,000 generations you have a population for which over 99.99% have neither a & b nor c & d - in other words, you have a population with a very high degree of correlation among these genes. 1,000 generations is a fleeting blip in evolutionary history. In a million generations the percentage is so infinitesimal that my calculator can't calculate it, the negative exponent is so large. Remember Nature has been doing this for a billion years. Thus almost all of the genes in any natural genome or gene pool have been related to each other and working together (or coevolving if you can't stand a human perspective Jim) for a very very very long time, and modern science is only beginning to get a clue of the web of interrelationships among them. Genomes and population gene pools are ecosystems. The tinkertoy mentality of genetic engineers that presumes you can randomly interchange genes from different places is out of touch with reality. Perfectly natural species taken out of context and inserted into other ecosystems have upset the balance of the ecosystem to become invasive exotics causing major damage, including snuffing out natives and pushing them to the brink of extinction. In the US there has been substantial damage from Kudzu, Dutch Elm disease, Gypsy Moths, and Zebra Mussels; Chestnut blight was catastrophic. The Glassy-winged Sharpshooter is considered a serious threat to California agriculture. The Irish potato blight killed a million people. A little-known fact is that these invaders typically start out as seemingly innocuous and often take decades to be recognized as a serious problem. Mimosa pigra (catclaw mimosa) was a minor weed in Australia for about a century before excluding other plants on a large scale. The Royal Horticultural Society awarded a gold medal for importation of Japanese Knotweed to Britain in the Victorian era, which was subsequently revoked when they realized what a big mistake it was. Now huge sums are being spent in an unsuccessful effort to control it. A study at Cornell University concluded that "nonindigenous species in the United States cause major environmental damage and losses totaling approximately $137 billion a year" (BioScience January 2000). Thus the cost to date of species taken out of context is already over a trillion dollars and no one knows how many more trillions will be incurred before things settle into some equilibrium. Species of Mass Destruction are the number one cause of biodiversity loss in the Great Lakes and are expected to be the leading cause of extinctions in North American freshwater ecosystems this century. Insects and diseases from Europe and Asia have caused damage in 70% of the 165 million acres of forest in the American Northeast and Midwest. Leafy Spurge has reduced the value of some ranch land by 90%. It stands to reason that the consequences of genes taken out of context may well have similar characteristics and similar orders of magnitude to species taken out of context, in which case we're liable to find ourselves decades from now with the Mooshes of the world just beginning to wake up as the evidence of harm becomes so obvious and pervasive it's impossible to ignore even with blinders on, at which point it will be decades too late to prevent incurring costs of trillions of dollars of damages over the ensuing decades or centuries or millenia or ... It has already been documented that a gene inserted by genetic engineering is 20 times more invasive than the same gene acquired by mutation with the natural genetic regulatory system intact. As Brian has posted, natural organisms have over millions of years evolved DNA repair mechanisms without which the error rates would be catastrophically high. Genetic engineering defeats natural repair mechanisms while introducing genetic instabilities. Given that gene pools are already stressed by man-made chemical and radiological mutagens, it may not take a very large increase in disruption from genetic engineering to push some beyond their repair capacity even if it doesn't by itself cause self-destruction (see http://www.i-sis.org.uk/meltdown.php). Most things in the world of life are nonlinear. The fact that you can increase something by x% without significant problems does not mean you can increase by an additional x% without serious problems. For a counter-intuitive example of a way GE can lead to extinction see http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/frankenfish.cfm Of course Nature will recover in some fashion eventually, but the costs could be not only economic but also the extinction of many species and sickness and death of many people before recovery is accomplished. -- delete N0SPAAM to reply by email |
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problems with genetic engineering
"Jim Webster" wrote:
"Walter Epp" wrote i "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? Given the fact that the result is so sophisticated that all of modern science has been unable to figure very much of it out, the process evidently has more intelligence than any human committee. Do you deny that DNA repair enzymes, RNA editing, methylation, gene silencing, gene conversion, reverse transcription, etc were established before humans came along? -- delete N0SPAAM to reply by email |
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