Hard News: That Buzzing Sound
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What is this, urology day at PAS?
Bloody hell giso, you're supposed to be an ESOL. Show some common decency and stop showing us up :-)
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My standard prostate/prostrate gag doesn't work so well online huh.
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Re the Greens' stance on GE, I think they need to make a distinction between the manipulation of naturally-occuring genotypes and the creation of genetic hybrids using genes from entirely different organisms .
Where genes from one organism are inserted into the genotype of another organism we (humans) are really dabbling in stuff about which we know very little. What we do know is that genes tend not to act alone and that they combine to produce a wide variety of effects as those genes and gene-combinations are expressed at different stages of the organism's life-cycle.
I, for one, am very wary of the possibility of these trans-genic combinations going awry. Selective breeding is a very safe means of genetic 'manipulation'; transposition of genes from within an organism's genotype is a bit more suspect and trans-genic experimentation is risky enough that I feel it should be contained in labs until we have just cause to believe in its/their safety.
It might be in the Greens' interest to take such nuances on board & eschew the blanket ban.
[Not a Greens member, FWIW]
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Matthew
You mean like how, and you even conceded this was true, they sued farmers who'd had their crops contaminated by GE wheat that hadn't come from their own farms?
I didn't want to have to go over this again. But... the poor farmer in question went to the field on his property right next to a field of transgenic RR plants. He then sprayed a strip of the area with roundup hoping that there might be some stray transgenic seed, and he found some. That was all fine.
Then he took those seed and bulked them up by planting them out and spraying again until he had enough to plant his own field. That was NOT fine.
Note he actually went to considerable lengths to obtain patent protected seed to plant because he knew he would make more money using that seed than using ordinary seed. He was not some poor organic farmer whose crop was contaminated.
It's equivalent to living next door to a recording studio and using high tech listening devices to get a recording of a new band's album and then selling that.
That is why Monsanto took him to court. Much as I disliked the bad press it gave GE I understand why Monsanto wanted to protect something they had spent billions developing.
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Show some common decency and stop showing us up
I don't normally engage in such arseholery but between the catheter and the prostate I thought it was worth highlighting the trend.
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Re the Greens' stance on GE, I think they need to make a distinction between the manipulation of naturally-occuring genotypes and the creation of genetic hybrids using genes from entirely different organisms.
you mean like the current H1H1 which has 5 swine-flu genes, 2 avian flu genes and 1 human-flu genes? mother nature works that way too - with organisms incorporating DNA from other organisms all the time - often much less related than flu viruses (time to thank whoever donated mitochondria to our genome)
I agree we should be extremely careful doing that sort of thing, but if the result is a farm full of happily grazing pigs with a little bit of human DNA who can be 'milked' over their lifetime to make human insulin, or can donate cells that will live within the human body to do the same I don't think that's necessarily bad - 'mixing of DNA is evil' sounds a bit like something that comes down from a religious anti-miscegenation tract
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Bart - I kind of draw the line at being able to copyright or patent a genome - I think that way lies all sorts of potential future evils - should I have registered my kids at the patent office when they were born? (or the copyright office? and if so are they a derived work or a wholly new one - I did seriously consider sending in some toenail clippings)
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It's equivalent to living next door to a recording studio and using high tech listening devices to get a recording of a new band's album and then selling that.
These transparent attempts to use GE methods to transplant the zombie horror that is the copywrong thread onto this thread will not be allowed!
If Robbery and Mark start arguing in this thread then you're on your bike bucko.
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Stewart
Where genes from one organism are inserted into the genotype of another organism we (humans) are really dabbling in stuff about which we know very little.
By that I presume you mean stuff you know very little about. Actually we tend to know quite a lot about the experiments we do - not everything of course.
What we do know is that genes tend not to act alone
Yes they do, lots of times.
and that they combine to produce a wide variety of effects as those genes and gene-combinations are expressed at different stages of the organism's life-cycle.
Yeah neat isn't it :). Actually that's why I do this work because there is amazing stuff to learn - of course we can't do a lot of the experiments in NZ because the rules are so restrictive we can't afford to do the experiments even. Which is a pity because unless we can do the experiments we can never learn what combinations do what and where and when.
But your point is that you can't predict the interactions with certainty and I accept that point. But you can do testing to see what has changed and whether it is safe. that's what most of us researcher want the chance to do.
I, for one, am very wary of the possibility of these trans-genic combinations going awry.
Good then I presume you'll be all in favour of freeing up research so we can learn stuff. Oh and BTW nobody in this field is suggesting for a second we allow untested release.
Of course sadly from all the work we've done so far nobody has managed to make the scary combinations that you have referred to. Our ambition as evil mad scientists has thus far been a complete failures
Selective breeding is a very safe means of genetic 'manipulation'
Well no. This isn't true at all. It's really easy to breed very unsafe foods using selective breeding. Most plants have levels of toxic compounds in them and it's the exception rather than the rule that you can eat plants and NOT die.
You don't demand organic growers test the compounds they spray their plants with. Nor do you demand exhaustive testing for a new citrus hybrid. And that hybrid has mixed up genes in combinations never seen before in nature.
transposition of genes from within an organism's genotype is a bit more suspect...
No it isn't. It's orders of magnitude more precise than mixing whole genomes in selective breeding.
I get your concern. Believe me everyone working in this field gets your concern. None of us want anything to go "awry". We aren't paid by big business (I wish). We just want to use a safe and proven technology (15 years of millions of people eating transgenics) to try and improve the crops we grow in New Zealand.
Nobody is asking for a quick experiment in the lab and then straight to Foodtown. There is no way we would dream of widely planting crops we weren't sure were safe (as sure as is reasonably possible for anything).
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He has a Gold Card?
Gold-cards are only valid after 9am. This was before.
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Like, once the baby arrives she'll trade it for something smaller?
Like a LAV.
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Bart, I wasn't having a go at you or at research in GE in general, so go a bit easy with the condescension and sarcasm big fella.
I was outlining why some caution wrt GE can be part of Greens policy without going for a total ban. Please don't set me up as your opponent unless I specifically pick a fight with you.
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Bart - I kind of draw the line at being able to copyright or patent a genome
Paul - yeah it's a tough one. It gets at the heart of what patents are meant to do
... to allow publication of methods or discoveries so that others can build on them, while allowing the discoverer a period to profit...
which often doesn't seem to be the way it works out.The issue for me is developing a product using this kind of expensive research isn't cheap. Proving it was safe wasn't cheap either. In the case of Roundup ready and Bt crops developed by Monsanto it was literally billions of dollars.
But at the end the product was a seed that farmers really could gather and replant next season. So without any legal protection monsanto would have sold one seasons worth of seed and then gone bankrupt.
I know the Green Party would have cheered but it also would have ended the research completely since governments and businesses alike demand that research have some viable "product" at least possible.
To give you a local example New Zealand researchers have used selection to identify new fruit varieties. These are NOT transgenic at all, just the product of conventional breeding. But once you hand out the first plant any grower could take a cutting and "copy" that plant and there would be no way to get any money back for next years breeding programmes. As it is plant variety rights "protect" the breeders. Same for roses etc.
It is kind of patenting life but unless you can figure out a way to recover some of the costs of research without such a system then that's what we have to do.
Do you have a better suggestion for how it should be done?
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I could tell you Mark's answer: nobody's guaranteed a living. Not even transnational corporations.
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Sorry Stewart - fair call
Sometimes it's hard not to write some of this and sound condescending. My apologies I'll try harder.
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No worries, mate.
The written word is a little harder to inflect & interpret than the face-to-face spoken variety.
I personally would like the Greens to indicate that they have a good deal of diversity of opinion within their ranks and to indicate that they are not averse to changing their policies in the light of fresh evidence .
The rigid adherence to a held position despite changing evidence for/against that position is something thaty seems to afflict politicians of all varieties - they have to walk the line between 'flip-flop' and 'blinkered'.
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the poor farmer in question went to the field on his property right next to a field of transgenic RR plants. He then sprayed a strip of the area with roundup hoping that there might be some stray transgenic seed, and he found some. That was all fine.
Then he took those seed and bulked them up by planting them out and spraying again until he had enough to plant his own field. That was NOT fine.
The seeds got leaked onto his land. As far as I'm concerned, if you're going to leak lifeforms into the ecosystem, then you can't claim rights over those lifeforms.
This technology shouldn't be being developed by private business. Insofar as it needs to be pursued, it should be done by research bodies under national control, with the results available to all.
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it should be done by research bodies under national control, with the results available to all.
Now that's a message I'd like you to pass on to your MP please.
Seriously it is one of facts of research funding in NZ that we have to demonstrate a path to market for a product from our research. And demonstrate relationships with end-users (companies).
Essentially what that means is almost all government funding off research in New Zealand demands that the research be commercialised before it is funded.
Which makes what you want Rich, impossible.
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I know this is lively thread but when do you sleep???
When I can breathe while lying on my back. Fucking flu -- not the glam pig or avian variety, just the shitty common cold. Also get quite a bit of reading done when you're an insomniac. Thanks for asking.
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I don't normally engage in such arseholery but between the catheter and the prostate I thought it was worth highlighting the trend.
That's just Don being a dick ;-)
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I could tell you Mark's answer: nobody's guaranteed a living. Not even transnational corporations.
I've got very large amount of corporate welfare dished out in recent months that would say otherwise. Delicious irony how the free market isn't quite so attractive when you've got legislators writing cheques with one hand and errecting barriers to hobble your competition with the other.
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I could tell you Mark's answer: nobody's guaranteed a living. Not even transnational corporations.
No, no, no, ignoring comes before ridicule. Get it right.
And it doesn't stop it being true.
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Of course sadly from all the work we've done so far nobody has managed to make the scary combinations that you have referred to. Our ambition as evil mad scientists has thus far been a complete failures
Dammit, I want my frankenmato, Bart!
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Motorway pirates however...now THAT would be interesting...
I'm attempting to listen to the interview on Morning Report on my hopeless Telecom rural broadband (dial up was faster) - and it seems that Melissa Lee's ideal motorway will lead straight to the prison - so you're all perfectly safe, as long as you don't take the motorway.
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"I remember noting here that Asian passes as diversity in our leafy eastern suburbs.'
Delish... Perhaps the next ethnic sensitivity trainer could do a refresher course on why you don't show your own Eurocentric dumb-arseness by slapping a reductive and basically meaningless label on over a billion human beings into.
Your final assignment: Walk into a pub in Belfast, Glasgow or Cardiff and say "You English wankers all look alike to me."
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