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Analyze This: GMOs
13 years ago
Hah! Just when you thought you were safe, just when you thought you had a month or two to breathe after the last journal...
WRONG!
Get reading, buster.
Do you remember when genetics used to be cool?
Everybody remembers TMNT, where mysterious glowy green science stuff (Mutagen) could radically and instantaneously imbue lowly creatures like turtles and rats and humans with incredible (and often bizarre) characteristics through a radical genetic transformation. People also remember Jurassic Park and Michael Crichton's wondrous adventure into a land populated by long-extinct creatures resuscitated by old dead mosquitoes and more science stuff, and those magic letters: D-N-A. Whatever happened to these happy, youthful days where toying around with genetics like a kitten with a ball of string seemed like such a rip-roaring good time?
Time is what happened. We grew up- at least partly, and so did the field of biotechnology- at least partly.
Suddenly, a fantastical future where we could manipulate genes and transform people and creatures and things not in the slow march of generations, but in one generation or one year or one month isn't all that far away. It's visible, and in some ways it's already here. Suddenly it's not just fun and games-- it's serious business, and it could define the coming decades in really big ways.
Case in point? The controversy over GMOs. What is a GMO? Essentially, a genetically modified organism. It could be fish bred to be pretty and phosphorescent pets, corn engineered to resist pesticides, microbes engineered to produce useful chemicals, the list goes on-- and that's just the stuff that's already with us.
What's the controversy? On the surface, there's the very visible protest crowd with a familiar litany of grievances. GMOs cause cancer, destroy the environment, spread like weeds, destroy cultures, come into your house uninvited, drink all your beer, rape your housepets, and crash on your couch a mumbling, urine-soaked mess. And so on.
But what's really behind the controversy? What makes people so upset? These are the questions I'd like to discuss.
Personally, I believe that GMOs are so controversial because they represent not just an uncertain future, but an ugly present defined by large agribusiness corporations with the power to seize enormous tracts of land armed by their patented GMOs. Because genetically modified crops have patented genes, and because they can reproduce or cross-breed with local species, any future plant that contains a patented gene, by law, becomes the property of whoever created the GMO. This means that if your farm is next to another farm that grows GMOs, you'll be 'illegally' growing GMOs within the space of a year or two and forced into a lot of legal and financial trouble with big agribusiness companies.
On the other hand, GMOs have benefits that can't be ignored. Plants engineered to resist plagues of insects or fungus or weeds translate directly into more food, and more food means one of two things: more food security or more people. We are in the midst of a new Green Revolution, and the reality is that it'll be up to people like us to decide at some point what is or isn't acceptable.
I know. Responsibility sucks, doesn't it?
WRONG!
Get reading, buster.
Do you remember when genetics used to be cool?
Everybody remembers TMNT, where mysterious glowy green science stuff (Mutagen) could radically and instantaneously imbue lowly creatures like turtles and rats and humans with incredible (and often bizarre) characteristics through a radical genetic transformation. People also remember Jurassic Park and Michael Crichton's wondrous adventure into a land populated by long-extinct creatures resuscitated by old dead mosquitoes and more science stuff, and those magic letters: D-N-A. Whatever happened to these happy, youthful days where toying around with genetics like a kitten with a ball of string seemed like such a rip-roaring good time?
Time is what happened. We grew up- at least partly, and so did the field of biotechnology- at least partly.
Suddenly, a fantastical future where we could manipulate genes and transform people and creatures and things not in the slow march of generations, but in one generation or one year or one month isn't all that far away. It's visible, and in some ways it's already here. Suddenly it's not just fun and games-- it's serious business, and it could define the coming decades in really big ways.
Case in point? The controversy over GMOs. What is a GMO? Essentially, a genetically modified organism. It could be fish bred to be pretty and phosphorescent pets, corn engineered to resist pesticides, microbes engineered to produce useful chemicals, the list goes on-- and that's just the stuff that's already with us.
What's the controversy? On the surface, there's the very visible protest crowd with a familiar litany of grievances. GMOs cause cancer, destroy the environment, spread like weeds, destroy cultures, come into your house uninvited, drink all your beer, rape your housepets, and crash on your couch a mumbling, urine-soaked mess. And so on.
But what's really behind the controversy? What makes people so upset? These are the questions I'd like to discuss.
Personally, I believe that GMOs are so controversial because they represent not just an uncertain future, but an ugly present defined by large agribusiness corporations with the power to seize enormous tracts of land armed by their patented GMOs. Because genetically modified crops have patented genes, and because they can reproduce or cross-breed with local species, any future plant that contains a patented gene, by law, becomes the property of whoever created the GMO. This means that if your farm is next to another farm that grows GMOs, you'll be 'illegally' growing GMOs within the space of a year or two and forced into a lot of legal and financial trouble with big agribusiness companies.
On the other hand, GMOs have benefits that can't be ignored. Plants engineered to resist plagues of insects or fungus or weeds translate directly into more food, and more food means one of two things: more food security or more people. We are in the midst of a new Green Revolution, and the reality is that it'll be up to people like us to decide at some point what is or isn't acceptable.
I know. Responsibility sucks, doesn't it?
It's more likely than you think.
(Free GMO check now! Click here!)
http://www.ted.com/talks/johanna_bl.....e_culture.html
In my opinion, what Myriad has done simply reeks.
Eh kills raptors with chaos theory and doesn't afraid of anything.
Alright, but seriously, the potential of GMOs is incredible and I don't think we should be so afraid of them. However, I'd feel a lot more comfortable if companies like Monsanto would agree to different forms of Intellectual Property/Patent ownership so that 200,000 more Indian farmers don't have to commit suicide in the face of debt indirectly (but not in-deliberately) caused by the company.
Personally I'm of the opinion that the idea being GMOs is sound and can be one of the most beneficial things we've come up with in recent years if used correctly and if control of them is handled by responsible individuals with foresight. Unfortunately, the present big name holder of this technology is a modern, real-life embodiment of an evil 80's cyberpunk corporation with an army of paid tools that know how to exploit people's general ignorance of one simple fact, the plant kingdom can exchange genetic information a lot more freely then the animal kingdom. Animals generally cannot breed outside of their genus and even then the results are a sterile mutant that will likely have a short life spent in agony from multiple medical conditions.
Plants on the other hand... we've pretty much been messing with plants since Mendel drew his first squares. The only difference is now we can grossly modify traits and give them a whole mess of characteristics we couldn't even dream of before. The problem is we cannot control pollination mechanics (wind, insects, or animals) and likely never will. Not only does this mean we can't control where the wild seeds end up, but we also can't control the transfer of information between different species of plants unless you're willing to contain your GMO crops in laboratory conditions for all of eternity. The main problem with this is that currently we have an emphasis on producing plants resistant to commerical-grade herbicides. Now what do you think would happen if those plants share pollen with a species of weed....?
And then there's the controversy with patenting genes, I'm pretty much in your camp. I disagree with the practice but at the same time I agree that R&D costs money and eggheads need to eat like the rest of us.
And yes, 'dem Monsanto muh-fuggas be 'col bluuded, y'know wha I'm sayin'?
Kunkmeister up above shared a link to a pretty inspirational TED talk that, extrapolated, would be a better, more human way of conducting biotechnology business. Since we're not creating new genes, but rather using specific gene sequences that already exist in different organisms, we should look at the trade much like a fashion developer combines and switches around different elements and pieces of apparel to create something new and appealing, but not viciously guarded by lawyered-up companies. If you try to restrict and regulate something that's utilitarian, you may end up stifling creativity rather than fostering it.
In superfurs on the other hand, reading into the subject taught me that one, people who say Poison Ivy (of Batman fame) is a potential planet killer are total dumbfucks. And two, there is STILL a scary amount of shit that she could do (and hasn't) that would be fairly well-grounded in real world science. In my own superfur setting, I have technically five, such "plant benders" of my own; all of them are pretty different simply because of how they specialize and where they stand on the power versus finesse scale.
And yeah I agree, Monsanto is a textbook example of how to ensure there will be no sympathy for you when things blow up in your face. And with their current focus seeming to be on pest and herbicide-resistant plants, I'm just waiting for the reports of superweeds in America to start making the rounds. I just hope that when it happens, we catch it before it turns into something on the level of BP's own screwup. Because when you think about all the chaos it could potentially cause, a nuke starts to look like a toy in the face of a weed resistant to all known herbicides.
Hmmm, interesting idea and probably the way we'll have to do it if or when we break Monsanto's chokehold on the market (possibly by chopping their fingers off.) Will have to give it a read later.
Traditionally farmers use Roundup (invented by Monsanto) to kill it but in the past ten years some pig weed has shown resistance to this herbicide
There are pesticides that can kill it that are newer and more expensive than Roundup, but the spread of resistant pigweed has caused many in my area to change farming methods. GMO plants however are not to blame for this super weed. It is the practice killing off plants with herbicide year after year. These plants develop the exact same way that drug resistant bacteria develops in hospitals and demonstrate natures ability to rapidly evolve/change/adapt under specialized conditions. That said i am all for GMO's. It is the only way maintain a steady food supply as the earth's population increases. GMO's use less water and need less fertilizer that non GMO's both of witch are scarce resources. We barely have enough water as is in parts of the country due to agriculture use and any farmland must me constantly replenished with various fertilizers primarily nitrogen. One kilo if nitrogen requires about 1.5 liters of gas or diesel so growing food requires a vast amount of OIL. Anything that cuts water and oil consumption is ok with me.
That would be thousands of years, in case some people were wondering.
So, overall, I'm not jumping on the bandwagon of "All new foods are going to kill us all and turn us into mindless zombies!" Is it possible? Statistically I suppose so, but there are a lot simpler ways to get people craving your food more (Kentucky Fried Chicken found that when they were simply injecting more chicken fat into their pieces, their turn around jumped skyward until they were told to knock it off). But, the whole "patented gene" thing is certainly an eyebrow raiser. Living things, in general, are pretty indiscriminate in their fucking, especially plants. So, at that point, a southwardly breeze would cause a whole group of people knocks from the gene equivalent of the RIAA.
But, yes, there does need to be discussion on this by lawmakers, sooner rather than later, since, yes, the future is now in this case, and right now, the various special interest groups are the only ones talking about this, and for some bizarre reason, almost all their conclusions seem to be ones that support their groups.
And yes, I wholeheartedly agree that it's silly to argue against genetic engineering at the tip of a syringe when we've been doing it by generational selection for millennia, even as far back as prehistory. I don't see these guys shrieking at the sight of a pomeranian and crying about how it's a genetic abomination.
I mean, just look at that face! http://www.furaffinity.net/view/8266141/
It's been a couple years but i think they said that decision directly lead to something like twenty five thousand people dying of starvation and disease that was aggravated because their bodies were literally too weak from lack of food to fight it off.
But, see, because it's theoretically possible that something COULD be wrong with it (no matter how much testing goes to show that, in fact, there isn't) and they don't fully understand everything to do with it, it's AUTOMATICALLY BAD. This is, literally, ignorant. I'm not one to say just let everyone go willy nilly and plant what they want where they want without any regards to whether it IS safe, but if they go through the efforts, and prove "Hey, yeah, this is literally no more dangerous than 'natural' wheat, and not only grows better but has even more real nutrition in it", then yes, grow the fuck out of it and sell it and yes give it away for free to starving people in need.
Just don't come over to my house with a bill for royalties, because your plants are a bunch of sluts that got their pollen all over my flowers!