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Old 06-08-2003, 03:22 AM
Walter Epp
 
Posts: n/a
Default 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

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Old 06-08-2003, 08:22 AM
Jim Webster
 
Posts: n/a
Default 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


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Old 06-08-2003, 08:02 PM
Steve B
 
Posts: n/a
Default 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.
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Old 07-08-2003, 08:42 AM
Moosh:}
 
Posts: n/a
Default 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
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Old 08-08-2003, 10:34 AM
Tim Tyler
 
Posts: n/a
Default 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/


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Old 08-08-2003, 12:34 PM
Jim Webster
 
Posts: n/a
Default 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/



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Old 09-08-2003, 05:32 PM
Tim Tyler
 
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Default 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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Old 12-08-2003, 10:35 AM
Mooshie peas
 
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Default problems with genetic engineering

On 9 Aug 2003 08:31:09 -0700, (Tim Tyler) posted:

"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.


Allowed by whom?

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.


Well we have millions of years to catch up on.

The tools available to genetic engineers are a superset of those
nature uses.


But in the end, they only do the same job.

*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.


Of course it would. The mouse gene and glowworm genes are just
slightly different variations of code in exactly the same material.
Same thing almost certainly occurred in both organisms, but a mouse
that glows in the dark goes extinct due to owls, whereas the glowworm
succeeds in finding a mate.
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Old 12-08-2003, 11:47 AM
Mooshie peas
 
Posts: n/a
Default 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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Old 12-08-2003, 05:13 PM
Walter Epp
 
Posts: n/a
Default 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.

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Old 12-08-2003, 05:13 PM
Walter Epp
 
Posts: n/a
Default 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?

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Old 12-08-2003, 05:13 PM
Walter Epp
 
Posts: n/a
Default 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.

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Old 12-08-2003, 05:14 PM
Walter Epp
 
Posts: n/a
Default 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.

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Old 12-08-2003, 05:24 PM
Walter Epp
 
Posts: n/a
Default 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.

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Old 12-08-2003, 05:24 PM
Walter Epp
 
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Default 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?

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