7/7/2004: Blue roses

[lumberjim]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

If you've had McDonald's fries, you've et GE food, engineered to produce potatoes that are longer than the usual in order to fit into their fry holders and be easily eaten.

just a little mini-fact

and you probably didn't know it, either. I think that's fucked up. they want to put warning labels on cd's that contain explicit lyrics, but there are no GMO labels on food that they sell you so that you can consume it, taking it into your own physical composition. They don't tell you. you wouldn't think to ask. much of the produce you buy at the supermarket is GMO. there are lawsuits against farmers who's crops cross polinate with GMO corn, for chrissakes. too many hands in the soup, if you ask me. why do we have to control every little detail? where's the harmony, people?!

[lumberjim]

yeah, that's what i was thinking. i don't trust MAN to figure out, in a few years, what it took evolution millions of years to perfect. there HAS to be something they've missed. but then, i'm a hippie weirdo, so.....

[OnyxCougar]

Originally Posted by lumberjim

yeah, that's what i was thinking. i don't trust MAN to figure out, in a few years, what it took evolution millions of years to perfect. there HAS to be something they've missed. but then, i'm a hippie weirdo, so.....

You know what I'm gonna say here, Jimbo... just pretend I said it....

[lumberjim]

Originally Posted by OnyxCougar

You know what I'm gonna say here, Jimbo... just pretend I said it....

you'd better say it. i can't decide if it's gonna be a hippie weirdo crack, or an evolution/creator correction. probably the latter, but.....I don't know if you are christian this week or pagan, or what.

[LabRat]

when i taught my undergrads as a grad student, and we were on the topic of biotechnology someone would always bring up how eating bioengeneered food could be harmful. so i explained it this way:

no matter what you are eating, carrot, pork chop, filet mignon, you are consuming (among other things) the dna of that thing. you have yet to turn green from your side salad, or sprout udders after cosuming a big mac, because the dna is degraded in your stomach.

human beings have been 'genetically engineering' food for as long as they have been around. we select two of the most proliferative tomato plants and cross pollinate them, so we get a whole batch of proliferative plants. then we take the most productive two from that batch and do it over. i did this for a summer when i worked for pioneer except we were criossing soybeans for their oil content. this is also BTW how natural selection works...only mother nature is doing the selecting.

[dasviper]

I think the big difference (speaking as someone who hasn't set foot in a bio lab since ninth grade), is that when you cross tomatoes, you get tomato DNA + tomato DNA, which can basically only yield tomato DNA; you really are doing nothing different than nature has done for billions of years, or animals/people have done for millions.

However, when you want to put insulin production into your eggplants, or whatever (which is a totally cool goal, actually; the medical uses of GM seem a lot more worth the risk, to me), you're mixing eggplant DNA + pig insulin DNA. Which nature hasn't been doing, as far as I know. So, while you might be getting insulin just fine, there's no precedent for what else these two disparate DNA's will do together. Clearly, it's not the deoxyribonucleic acid itself that you're concerned about when you eat the GM food; it's the organism itself, and its products and byproducts.

Originally Posted by LabRat

when i taught my undergrads as a grad student, and we were on the topic of biotechnology someone would always bring up how eating bioengeneered food could be harmful. so i explained it this way:

no matter what you are eating, carrot, pork chop, filet mignon, you are consuming (among other things) the dna of that thing. you have yet to turn green from your side salad, or sprout udders after cosuming a big mac, because the dna is degraded in your stomach.

human beings have been 'genetically engineering' food for as long as they have been around. we select two of the most proliferative tomato plants and cross pollinate them, so we get a whole batch of proliferative plants. then we take the most productive two from that batch and do it over. i did this for a summer when i worked for pioneer except we were criossing soybeans for their oil content. this is also BTW how natural selection works...only mother nature is doing the selecting.

[jaguar]

Olestra, like pretty much all replacement fats and sugars is about the worst 'food' you can eat, all of that stuff is nasty and nearly all has well demonstrated side effects.

As for GE in general, it's a nice idea but the testing being done is nowhere near through enough, nowhere near long enough and the negative results seem to be being glossed over as minor hiccups. I have about as much faith in Monsanto being interested in the good of the public as Saddam being careful about huamn rights. Beyond that the whole thing is fucked up because companies can own genes, yet another example of how utterly screwed our entire IP system is becoming.

I understand the relationship between GE and natural selection but there is no way naturally a sequence from a cod is going to end up in a potato in one generation. It's not just enhancing natural selection, it's doing things that in no way could naturally occur, that's a fundamental difference.

Lobbiests in the US have your government so tightly by the balls the idea of labelling GM never was very trendy, over here people get seriously anal about it and it's helped spark off a major organic food movement as well, there are now massive selections of organic products in all major supermarkets. While there are questions about the requirements for some of the labelling people taking a stronger interest in the quality of their food can only be a good thing.

[LabRat]

Originally Posted by jaguar

As for GE in general, it's a nice idea but the testing being done is nowhere near through enough, nowhere near long enough and the negative results seem to be being glossed over as minor hiccups. I have about as much faith in Monsanto being interested in the good of the public as Saddam being careful about huamn rights. Beyond that the whole thing is fucked up because companies can own genes, yet another example of how utterly screwed our entire IP system is becoming.

I understand the relationship between GE and natural selection but there is no way naturally a sequence from a cod is going to end up in a potato in one generation.

I wholeheartedly agree on both points. frankly i feel the main reason that there is genetic engeneering in food at all is because we are lazy. we want 1 food that is going to taste good, give us all the vitamins we need and not take up any room or money to produce so it's cheap and easy to fix. Sha Right. i am in science, and i do genetic engineering, but i am on the discovery side of things. I feel like we need to know FULLY how things work first before we start tinkering with them trying to make them 'better'.

[jaguar]

Oh I know why it's being done, the profit motive is huge. Particularly monsanto who have created this funky synergy (argh, I can't beleive I just used that) between RoundUp and their GE crops that not only locks farmers into only using their seed but only their chemicals as well.

Sometimes I think the greatest problem with humanity is our willingness to trade quality for price.

[glatt]

Originally Posted by jaguar

Oh I know why it's being done, the profit motive is huge. . .

Sometimes I think the greatest problem with humanity is our willingness to trade quality for price.

It's not just the genetic manipulation that is scary.

I'm personally much more concerned with the use of antibiotics. All the meat eaten in the US comes from animals who have been fed large quantities of antibiotics, whether they need it or not. It's understandable. The farmers want to have healthy animals. Healthy animals are bigger, and have more meat on them. A sick animal may even die. Dead and sickly animals cost the farmer money. A nice plump chicken looks more appealing to the consumer in the store than a skinny sickly looking one.

Only problem is that there are traces of antibiotics left in the meat once we start eating them. Overuse of antibiotics allows germs to get stronger. The weak bacteria die from the antibiotic, and the strong ones live and have children.

The country is basically conducting a strain improvement program on its bacteria. Breeding the bacteria to be more resistant to antibiotics. The antibacterial soap and everything else only makes it worse.

If I were dictator, I would forbid the use of antibiotics in animals. They should only be for human use, under close scrutiny by a doctor.

[lumberjim]

right. talk about fucking with the primordial ooze.....

[jaguar]

You're right glatt. It's a similar syndrome to hospitals - all the drugs help breed some really nasty little fuckers that will make SARS (which was blown out of all proportion anyway) look like nothing. In short, we eat shit.

There is always this little voice in the back of my head that occasionally reminds me I might quite easily have eaten BCE meat when I lived in England (which means I can't give blood for about 30 odd years) and won't know about it for another 20 or so.

[elSicomoro]

Every time I think of The Glass Menagerie, I keep thinking of that sketch from The State that features the US men's bikini thong roller blading team.

[wolf]

When I saw these I immediately thought of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.

Nice, but I also think they are more purple than blue. It could be just the way they come up in the photos, though.

[jaguar]

This is the poetry police, you're under arrest for 1 class grevious bodily harm of the english language, step away from the keyboard and keep your hands where we can see them.