h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I agree that GM food is not the way to address famine and hunger in third world countries. There is alot more to thier suffering than just a simple lack of appropriate crops and a slightly enhanced yield per acre squared is not really going to matter to them.
Surely these people in a more desperate situation than ourselves, the fortunate few, are going to be even more open to abuse inflicted by the use of crops that may well irreparably damage their and the global environment.
I for one do not trust the environment to the large multinationals who treat the already fragile balance of the planet as nothing more than a market place that can be milked for profit.
I dont believe for a second that any of these companies have any kind of environemtal conscience or the ability to self regulate thier actions or products.
A large agri company will look at a. profit and b. can we get away with selling this product without tarnishing our reputation and so damaging future sales of our products.
I cant see a way that you can plant a GM crop and keep that crop sealed from its surrounding environment. Contamination must have occured already, whether it has been damaging so far remains to be seen.

I think a few facts, as opposed to hearsay, might help this debate: the formula for 'golden rice' was not invented by a multinational but a university scientist, who has made it freely available to anyone who wants to use it. A particular multinational is planning to give away the finished rice for free. Moreover, the biochemical pathway for golden rice was extracted from daffodils, not carrots. The pathway consists of genes encoding for three proteins, each of which is an enzyme involved in the pathway for beta-carotene. Beta carotene prevents vitamin A blindness. Work is now in progress to increase yields of this substance within the rice, so people can grown their own vitamin A. Look at http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/business/highlights/highlight180500.shtml.
Like I said, the issue is a lot more complex than many of the participants so far have acknowledged nd demands rather a more considered response than the reflexive demonisation of a few multinationals, or of the geneticists involved in this work.

I agree we should treat poor people in the Third World equitably: cancel the debts by all means. But don't treat them as children, and allow them to make up their own minds on the subject. For a start, we could refrain from exporting to them the particularly British, smugly ignorant brand of anti-scientific sentiment that has disfigured this debate since it started, and which would rather condemn out-of-hand before trying to understand the issues involved. Greenpeace should stay out of this one.

People from the Third World have come to realise that our charity is highly flaky at best and are trying to stand on their own two feet in their own way. We do them, and ourselves, no favours by telling them how to run their lives espeically when we have made such a mess of it so far.

One would assume then that the starving people being offered this rice have been advised of the whole GM issue and have been allowed to make a choice then and not been "treated as children" who dont really know what is good for them.
Also concern about GM modification is not some strange British quirk or witch hunting or a knee jerk reaction. It is the valid questioning of the introduction of potentially harmful plants and/or substances into the global environment.
I'm not saying never use GM products, what I am saying is I dont assume they are safe because a college professor tells me that they are and certainly not because and agrichemical company tells me that they are. I dont believe that analysing the actual motivation behind these companies is demonising them, unless that motivation once identified could justify that label.
I dont believe that the use of GM crops has been researched enough to justify their use and I dont feel that the agrichemical companies or governments are the ones to regulate it anyway. Their judgement cannot be trusted on a global issue of this kind.

When a newspaper prints a load of rubbish about a pop star's love life everbody universally agrees that newspapers print rubbish. When they print a story about GM food being 'bad' suddenly everyone jumps up and down in fear and loathing. Why is the latter subject more believable than the former? It isn't, the newspapers are guilty of writing misinformed rubbish on both subjects. Also mountains tend to be made out of molehills - a few isolated (and regrettable) bad cases are highlighted and continually gone on about. You hear the same three bad cases time and again - this is against thousands of success stories which noone ever hears about.

There should be genuine debate about this. I find the Luddite 'all GM is bad' very depressing. Remeber TV was supposedly going to destroy human civilsation when it first appeared.

The best anti-GM argument I have heard here is that by Fraulein Grafenberg on the previous page - the terminator gene being used to force farmers to keep paying the Agrochemical companies is indeed a problem imho. I believe this puts them in a potential position of enormous power and they should not be allowed to do this.

Contrary to other arguments I also believe (as one who has used GM bacteria in the lab) that GM crops are almost certain to be highly disadvataged in the wild over a long term as the unnatural genes tend to mean that the plant will use more energy for a weird unnecessary purpose than a wild one and so will eventually be selected out of the gene pool in the stiff competition of the survival of the fittest.

In terms of demonising scientists I find the hysteria some people have of this quite amusing. Do they not know that before the evil scientists discovered penicillin that your average person did not live above the age of around 40 and there was something like a 1 in 6 child mortality rate. Cholera, diptheria, tetanus, measels, smallpox and TB were big, yet very ordinary killers even in the western nations such as UK and USA. This is the world the Luddites wish us to return to.

Orcus

So how do we find out whether they are harmful, without field trials? Who then has the right to exercise one's judgement on this issue? The doctrine 'if it might go wrong, do nothing' would lead to total paralysis: witness the 'Red Flag' act. I can't see how three genes coding for beta carotene in a daffodil could possibly be harmful even if they did escape into the genomes of other organisms.

I personally have a lot of problems with Monsanto's (now discarded) tactic of inserting 'terminator' genes into their seeds to that they cannot be re-used. I have problems with agrochemicals companies monopolising the seed market. But I also have even more profound problems with developing countries being denied access to GM simply because it offends OUR western sensibilities.

Sociologists are fond of stating that science is simply a social construct. It isn't, but our attitudes toward it most certainly are. To free ourselves from our prejudices, we have to examine each case according to its own merits, especially on such a sensitive issue. I would implore everyone who has strong opinions on this matter to get as informed as possible, as quickly as possible. What the hell, it might reveal some optimistic prospects for the future of agriculture, instead of all this doom and gloom.

I agree that a little information is dangerous and accept that you have both probably done alot more research into this whole issue than I have.
I still feel that you cannot justify further damage to our environment for the sake of testing GM crops. We are only on the doorstep of the whole gene manipulation issue and I think that we could so easily adopt a "kid in a gunshop mentality".
I am definitely not against scientific study and its application in the real world. I hope I'm not going to have to wear the "Luddite" hat
I find the reports of direct action taken by various organisations to destroy crops etc deplorable and counter productive but I also find the attitude that we should just go ahead with GM products because no one has thought of a good reason not to somewhat alarming.

I think that getting rid of Vitamin A blindness is a pretty good reason for deploying GM foods, don't you? Or increasing yields in poor third-world soils by overcoming aluminium toxicity?

I understand and sympathise with your caution Colin, but I think that along with the right to hold an opinion goes the responsibility to modify it once the evidence against it becomes convincing. Many of those opposed to GM foods 'on principle' simply haven't explored any, let alone all the arguments in any meaningful depth, and remain, ostrich-like, with their heads buried firmly in the sand of their own preconceptions. Unfortunately (and I'm not saying this in your case, ans you have shown perfectly justfiable and rational fears), behaving like an ostrich leaves one with only one remain orifice from which to speak on a subject.

If you're genuinely interested and want to read more about the subject, post your email address and I'll try to find you some (balanced) links. If not, I'll draw my own conclusions.

Regards
FM

I think there is really no reason to talk about Third World countries here. They´re not the main source to benefit from GM food. Why would a company give seeds to Africa when they can´t pay for it? But a big problem is if a country that is dependent on a single crop, like some countries are, were hit by a disease that eliminated those. Perhaps a man-made one. A company could then get complete control of the country by giving them sterile crops, that would have to be bought each year.

As for the cross-pollination. It is true that a tomato that is made to be fresh longer could exchange genes with others in nature. But it would not have an advantage compared to the others, it would probably more be a disadvantage, so they would probably die out by themselves.

But again, more lab trials before field trials.

Felonious Monk, I don't think most people are entirely opposed to GM technology, but it's clear that the potential adverse consequences, however unlikely, are enormous and it's equally clear that science has something of a blind spot when carrying out proper risk assessments. It is not the public that is being irrational here, it's the scientists.

You say that science isn't a social construct. Maybe it isn't, but scientists are no more immune to prejudicial assessments of data than anyone else. The vast bulk of GM research is proponent-funded, and - as has been superbly demonstrated by tobacco concerns in the past - this is not a paragon of objectivity. In a climate where biotech firms' PR machines equate the absence of evidence with the absence of risk, where's the incentive for them to look for it?

And it's not as if there isn't any justification for concern or evidence of monumental stupidity in this field. For example, antibiotic resistance genes are routinely introduced into GMOs, not because antibiotic resistance is a worthwhile trait to have in the organisms, but merely because it makes them easy to identify as GMOs. As any medical organization will tell you, this practice runs the risk of bacteria also acquiring such genes with predictably unpleasant results, and there is already at least one documented case of genes from a GM plant finding their way into the genome of bacteria.

There's also the problem of counter-productivity in much GM development: if a plant is modified to be resistant to a pesticide then over time the resistance will spread to weeds, completely negating the initial benefit. The current tally of transgenically resistant weeds discovered now stands at well over 100.

Then there are the examples of people who completely failed to switch their brains on: Pioneer Hi-Bred modified soya plants by adding part of the genome from brazil nuts to increase methionine levels which makes the soya more nutritious. With flawless logic it was decided that because soya, methionine and brazil nuts are all perfectly safe, the new GM soya must be safe too. Unless you suffer from a nut allergy... To their credit the manufacturers withdrew the product as soon as they noticed and so no-one was hurt, however had it happened a little later things might not have gone so well: thanks to the GM lobby, the US government draws no distinction between GM and non-GM soya - it's all treated as one homogenous product - so nut allergy sufferers would've had to avoid all products containing soya.

Incidentally, you forgot to mention one thing about 'golden rice': yes, it does contain the intended beta-carotene but the changes also unexpectedly introduced a good deal of xanthophylls. As far as I know xanthophylls aren't a big problem for humans, but the real problem is that things like this just don't show up on the standard tests like total protein and amino acid profiling. A similar example is that of glutelin-reduced rice which yielded an unanticipated and unnoticed increase in allergenic prolamins.

I'm reminded of when someone at Los Alamos pointed out prior to the first nuclear test that there was a possibility they might ignite the atmosphere and so wipe out the entire planet. People shrugged, went ahead with the test and only then sat down to work out if it was possible or not. On balance, I'm still not convinced these people know what they're doing

I don't demonise scientists, my sister and brother in law are biochemists, I wouldn't dare. I respect science but, as someelse has said already, our government and multinationals play politics and PR games with it.

What Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace do is often too extreme for my taste but I still support them because given the enormous resources on the other side of the debate there would be little debate without their like.

Last night I was looking for updates on the Monarch butterfly issue and found that the original fears were overplayed. (Because in the wild as opposed to the lab the caterpillars choose not to eat the GM pollen dusted milkweed.) But I also found that the scientist that originally raised the possibility of a problem - and that is literally all he did - reportedly found it difficult to get research grants afterwards. I have no way of knowing if that's true but given what I do know about how funding works it's feasible.

I watched the reconstruction on TV of the meetings where scientists were advising the government over BSE and nvCJD. Some of the scientists played word games worthy of Humphrey from "Yes Minister". One withheld facts because they weren't to the advantage of the people paying for him to be at that meeting.

It's wrong to demonise s but its not wrong to question what we're told and to ask for the facts behind the statement that GM won't harm the environment. As someone said earlier a few more facts would be good. On both sides of the argument.

FM, Colin the Goldfish may not wish to publish his email here. If he chooses not to, your concluding he talks through the other orifice when in fact he may just be protecting his privacy would be leaping to a concusion with insufficient evidence .

concusion = conclusion

Wazungu, all your points are perfectly reasonable, and have elevated the level of this debate from the typical emotional spasms that generally follow this topic being broached. I personally don't have a problem with ANY shade of informed opinion (such as your own) on this topic, just a problem with uninformed prejudice and crass anti-scientific feeling masquerading as considered opinion (and don't tell me that there isn't a lot of that about). I also have a problem with our national paranoia about potential risks when the highly quantifiable risks of well-known dangerous substances i.e. tobacco are almost hardly ever mentioned. Tobacco had a pretty good go at killing my father so far, and may yet succeed

To put my money where my mouth is, here's my email address: [email protected]. If you want to know hom I came by my own opninions, I'll be happy to send you some links.

Regards
FM

Thanks Colin, FM, Mycroft et al for raising the tone and the information content.

I hope I'm not a Luddite, but I have a cautious habit of asking questions around a subject.

If you can plant three foreign genes in a rice species, which code for proteins on the pathway to beta-carotene, you've succeeded in manipulating a vastly complicated chemical machine which is simultaneously performing many other tasks. Impressive.

How complex is the modification which reduces a plant's susceptibility to Roundup? Or the one which makes tomatoes last a couple of days extra on the shelf? How many genes, and stages, are involved?

And how many tries does it take? How many slightly different varieties are produced and evaluated before the desired effect is demonstrated? And how much is this because you can introduce genes, but you don't know if they'll take hold in the right place, so you have do a lot of variants - perhaps blind, with no notion of how they'll turn out?

And then when you have the plant you think you want, how do you reproduce it? Are all the seeds you sell pure clones? How long before you have to produce another one? Or do you just put out one of the 80%-OK varieties every year, knowing that it will eventually invite its own special parasite, or fungus, or whatever?

I think most of the genetic modifications will either fail and not be taken up, or work and be harmless. Not all - once in a while we could have a real problem. But it's the economics. This thing can only work if you can guarantee the sale of vast quantities of seed and the continued turnover of new varieties. Terminator genes were a step too far (though I'm sure they'll be back) but the corporations will want to sell seed year after year. They have to control the markets.

FM I have emailed an email that will get through to me. Please let me know if it doesn't get through to you. I'm not sure I deserved the comments re elevating the discussion but any good GM links would be welcome.

I spent hours the other night trying to find sites with impartial reports on the with very limited success. All those I came on were selective in what they said. But then I didn't manage to read all three thousand odd of them .

Hi FM I'm still wading through the stuff you sent. its pretty good so far.
I'll come back to this forum with further comments once I have fully digested it I think.

Please point me at some of this source material, via [email protected].