venturabananas

They are very different in how they are accomplished. But, they are similar in that they both involve humans combining genes in ways that nature had never managed to.

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momoese

A human looking at his plants and selecting the best one that grows or tastes better does not in any way compare to gene slicing for herbicide/pesticide resistance.

venturabananas

It's not all that different then breeding and selecting varieties that are herbicide and pesticide resistant. It's mainly about the mechanism that places the new combination of nucleotides in the DNA -- mutation and selection or gene splicing.

A point a friend who has made transgenic organisms made to me was that GM organisms are often not very stable. They have molecular mechanisms that cause them to tend to lose the inserted genes.

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venturabananas

And gene splicing is a natural process. Viruses have been doing it for millions of years.

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momoese

Making a plant resistant to a chemical cocktail your company created and comparing it natural selection is not the same no matter how you try to spin it.

venturabananas

You called it natural selection, but what has produced all our food plants is artificial selection. Natural selection would produce plants resistant to that cocktail of chemicals given enough time. It probably wouldn't be something you wanted to eat.

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venturabananas

Just like natural selection has produced antibiotic resistant bacteria, which are likely to be a serious threat to human health in the near future. Don't hang out in hospitals, where they use all those antibiotics and the antibiotic resistant bacteria evolve.

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Richard

That is what we call a cultivar. A hybrid is the result of natural or induced breeding.

I agree with that. However, most GMO's do not fall into this category of yours.

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venturabananas

Just to clarify, I'm not advocating the use of GMOs. I just think we need to think about these things rationally. There is nothing inherently evil or wrong with GMOs, and there are situations where they might make a lot of sense. For example, in introducing disease or pest resistance.

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Richard

One of the groups here in La Jolla is working on GMO algae to produce pharmaceuticals.

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venturabananas

All the big pharmaceuticals are using GMOs to make drugs these days, from what I can tell. For example, insulin.

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fmu65

One of concerns I have heard has been that GMO crops are already creating resistant pests and diseases. I think that is a potential short-term concern that should be addressed. The long-term effect of GMOs on human health has not (to my knowledge) been sufficiently explored in scientific research. Most of the data used to confirm safety comes from those who have created the GMOs and are dependant on the income.

Richard

Depending on the crop, many farmers would agree with you about GMO herbicide-resistant plants. Industry publications have been reporting that the nuisance weeds in farming regions (e.g., southern central valley of CA) have become so resistant to herbicides that farmers have gone back to manual controls (e.g., harrowing). This is an expense for the farmer that the GMO herbicide-resistant plants were intended to eliminate. Consequently these farmers are no longer going to the added expense of purchasing the GMO herbicide-resistant seed.

On the otherhand, I doubt you'll see them retract from using crops engineered for high-yield -- especially in the case of corn. Presently the corn farmers are focused on high-fructose, but as the world demand for protein increases this will undoubtedly change.

Another issue is contamination of gene-pools. On the small scale there is the much-publicized issue of one farmer's crop cross-pollinating a neighboring farmer's seed crop. On the global scale there are GMO-variants of species that easily cross-breed escaping into the wild -- such is the case with Rapeseed.

I'm not sure the public will ever be satisfied on this issue.

I can understand health concerns regarding GMO crops whose actual end-product is chemically different than the non-GMO counterpart. I believe the largest contributor here is cotton, which we all ultimately have daily skin contact.

I do not understand concerns with regard to GMO crops whose product is chemically identical at the molecular level with the non-GMO counterpart. There are many examples here including wine and corn syrup.

I also do not understand concerns with non-toxic GMO crops fed to livestock that are later butchered for human consumption. The altered genes simply do not survive the digestion process.

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