No new nukes for UK???

[Peter Scott]

I'm afraid you are right. I don't know why. Perhaps it is the poor quality of much science training. I should know as I have worked in that area and seen how poor it has become. Or perhaps under-educated people have always had a problem with rigorous logic but now have a chance to spout their ill-thought-out ideas through the variety of mass-media available to them.

If things were different, I would call myself an environmentalist, but I get depressed at the poverty of many of the opinions that are touted. One such area is genetic modification. Instinctively I am against it until proven safe. However GM soya, tomatoes and maize have now been eaten for a couple of decades without any apparent problems arising. I am happy to change my mind, as we certainly need speedy evolution of more hardy crops if we are not to starve.

How very very true!

[The Natural Philosopher]

I've never been against GM per se, but it needs careful watching. It could lead to unforeseen results.

But what doesn't? Rabbits in Australia, then myxmatosis..

The whole use of pesticides n the 60's. leading to dead raptors..the probable link between pesticides and falling bee populations.

Science is amoral. It needs to be *applied* morally if you want a moral result.

[Peter Scott]

GM makes profound changes to the very fundamentals of life, the DNA. It is a technology that has the potential for very dire consequences, as well as great benefits. The widespread introduction of said GM crops, before extensive testing as food on living beings, was a very dangerous experiment. Luckily we seem to have got away with it. Like Mengele's data, I don't approve of how it was done, but the data is priceless.

Rachel Carson's book, Silent Spring, was an eye-opener in the 60s or was it 50s? People were more trusting and ignorant then. We still make mistakes of course, but I think we're more open and informed now. Television has helped in bringing people's attention to these things, for example the destruction of coral reefs.

The gathering and analysis of scientific knowledge is amoral I agree. Scientists are not though. Most think about the consequences of what they do. Many would like more say in decision-making and are disgusted when irrational decisions are made against the evidence, for example over recreational drugs.

[Tim Streater]

Indeed, but I'm not aware that anyone against GM ever came up with a sound reason that it might be bad for you.

[Tim Streater]

What is so profound about adding or replacing a gene in DNA? Bacteria do it all the time.

This is very mealy-mouthed - you'll have to do better and list some of the "dire consequences".

[Peter Scott]

Mealy-mouthed! Hmmph. Not what I'm usually accused of.

Never before have we mixed genes from totally different organisms, animals and plants for example, or viruses. Selective breeding in the past has been on the basis of accelerated evolution of the genes of one organism by breeding from those with desired qualities.

It is the DNA that determines the nature of the organism, so mixing alien genes has the potential for highly dangerous variation. After all, small changes in a virus changes its virulence. Adding alien genes is a trial and error process. No-one could have had any idea what might result. Yes, the experiments are done in a sealed environment with the destruction of anything shown to be hazardous, but no-one knew what would happen when apparently benign new gene forms inter-acted with those in nature.

What consequences? New virulent diseases as a result of the mixing of the viruses used. Cancers produced by toxic effects of digestion of alien materials. Animal species being wiped out by variants of their genes used in other GM organisms. The point is that these were unknown unknowns. I am sure I could think of more, but you get the point. As I said this was one of the most profound experiments ever done, and we are lucky.

[Skipweasel]

However, they do it themselves all the time.

[Tim Streater]

A gene is a gene, from wherever it comes. My sister whinged to me once about "putting a fish gene in wheat" or somesuch, as if her complaint had some meaning. There could easily be a mutation that changes a gene in, say, a human, to be the same as one found in a plant. That variation might be fatal for humans and so would not survive, or it might make your muscles 2% stronger.

As I said, gene mixing happens all the time, most commonly with bacteria. Humans and chimps share 99% or so of their genetic material, so is it a human gene of a chimp gene? Humans and plants also share a big fraction of their genetic material - hardly surprising given our ultimate common ancestry.

I suspect you'd find they have quite a good idea what might happen.

You're just making this up as you go along, with no idea whether it actually means anything. I find this kind of doomsaying absurd.

[Peter Scott]

I think that you are just being narrow-minded, assuming that because nothing bad did happen that it could not have done. Are you sure that all of the people working on GM knew exactly where their researches would lead? It wouldn't have been much use if they did. We have never in the past deliberately combined genetic material from different organisms. You must know that it is a definition of a species that it can reproduce. Yes, there has been genetic mixing over time but most of these mixes died out because they were non-viable or for reasons we can know nothing about. Yes, a complex organism is the result of combinations of many smaller organisms over aeons of time, but many many will have died out as a result of natural selection. I am not doom-saying at all. Simply pointing out that science has been conducting an experiment with no real idea if it might go badly wrong. We have to go on doing it for the sake of feeding the world but should not ignore the possible consequences.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I am not so sure: it is after all merely weird cross breeding.

All domestic animals are genetically modified: we just do it faster these days.

The Internet has been the single biggest thing after TV and radio, in terms of speeding up the spread of ideas, good or bad.

Indeed.

[The Natural Philosopher]

The tow arguments that I thought were valid were that it might go mad and breakout and take over habitats, and the exact reverse, it would be essentially sterile, and thereby leave people addicted to more GM seeds for their crops.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Of course we have.

every time you catch a cold its DNA mingles with yours..

Selective breeding in the

Yep. don't shag any sheep, you get rampant were rabbits! Teeth like Jaws.

I think the long and the short of it, is that pretty much this experiment was done a billion years ago. And we are the result.

[The Natural Philosopher]

If that were a reason not to do something, we might as well paralyse ourselves now.

Are you sure that

You remind me of the story about the young prince and the lion: An old woman cursed him because he was a snotty little brat, and sad 'you will die when you meet a lion'

Hid parents were so scared, they never let him out of the palace grounds, and he grew up isolated.

One day, while exploring an old disused part of the palace, he came across a picture of a Lion. He was furious "WHO left this picture here?" he screamed and banged his fists on the wall, where an old rusty nail from another picture, cut his hand, and he died of septicaemia three days later...

:-)

[Tim Streater]

But you still haven't enumerated any known possible consequences:

1st Plymouth Brother: I think Sarah must be a witch - she's got a black cat! 2nd PB: Better drown her then, she seems nice enough but you can't be too careful! She might turn me into a turnip.

You're like those who stopped that postie in Wales (iirc) from doing his round because it involved going over two styles and crossing a filed. You've identified a risk without quantifying it. After all, the postie might fall on his face and drown in some cow-poo. Well, he *might*, eh? And because no-one can say that it'll *never* happen, his round is cut.

It's the same with GM.

[Jules Richardson]

do they make CFLs that big?

[The Natural Philosopher]

"WHY are you tearing up telephone books and throwing them out of the train?" "Keeps the Elephants away" "There aren't any Elephants in this country!". "Shows how effective it is!" "Are you a politician?"

[The Natural Philosopher]

No, but pissed teenagers will try it anywhere.

[Andy Champ]

Umm.. mixing their DNA in with the host is exactly what retroviruses (best known being HIV/AIDS) and there is a growing theory that eukaryote organisms evolved from assemblies of prokaryotes working in symbiosis. The separate inheritance of the partial DNA of mitochondria is why you can track the maternal line - and it is only partial DNA.

Take this with caution, I am many years out of the field.

Andy

p.s. "Silent Spring" first published 1962 it says in my copy.

[Andy Champ]

Ever hear of a mule?

Andy

[Huge]

You can make up as many fictional consequences as you like, it doesn't make any of them true.