Wheat is one of the most ‘altered’ food crops since ancient times…so hybridization is nothing new, but this is an interesting study, and points out one of the problems with genetic alteration (in this case, not genetic alteration in the lab, but a crossbred strain) and with two other features of modern agriculture—monoculture (everybody growing the same breed of the same crop) and mass production (you take agricultural products from all over the nation and mix them together first at the granary, then at the processing plant (the mills) and then again at the producer (the bakery).
We may be close to an era when farmers and manufacturers are asked to keep records of what strain of wheat or strawberries or peanuts they’re selling—and they can legislate it. But—there are gentle breezes that blow pollen from one field to another; and there are bees and butterflies, and change happens that has nothing to do with recombinant DNA. There are just some risks that come with district-spanning distribution. You cure famines with one hand—and you produce problems in the wider population with the other.
While many people are scared to death of ‘frankenfood’, things that have been genetically altered, I suggest we have a) the very beginning of a science, and there WILL be mistakes. b) we should be careful, because of paragraph A. But also c) genetics is also how we track down what may have changed and figure out what we can do to ‘defuse’ the problem, ie, create a variety without the problem, and we can do it a lot faster and more safely in the annual generations of wheat, than in ourselves.
Food genetics is not a black and white issue, and labs aren’t the only place gene combination takes place. It goes on in every field.
There’s a huge difference between natural pollination processes and in-lab injection of ‘alien’ DNA (jellyfish DNA in a plant etc) that would never ever happen in the natural world. Without total transparancy of these processes, consumers cannot make educated choices, i.e. avoid products with allergen DNA. The safest thing those with such concerns can do is avoid all non-organic products. It’s not a matter of being ‘scared to death’….it’s an educated choice.
My mom is convinced frankenfood caused my celiac, but I’ve had it since the late ’80s (even if not diagnosed yet I was still a sickly kid) so I am not sure unless the problem with crops goes that far back. I do know that natural variety keeps pests away and doesn’t require the splicing and pesticides. Too bad America wants uniformity in their crops. Can’t have an apple or a potato look slightly different than the others. I watch a program about a farmer from another country who couldn’t sell his carrots to us because they didn’t look quite right. Nothing was wrong with them beyond the lack of being cookie cutter. SMH
The jellyfish dna that has been used in other species is because it shows up—literally. It doesn’t convey any benefit and I am NOT for using it in commercial products (glow fish, etc) that are sold over the counter. These experiments belong in labs, and recombinants should NOT be let out where they can mix with native stock…including in the aquarium trade. The caulerpa mess in the Mediterranean and the lionfish incidence in the Caribbean are a real good examples of what happens when things get ‘moved’ from where they belong, let alone when genetic novelties get loosed.
Unfortunately, by the very nature of wheat and other crops, ‘study’ patches require an actual field, and the growing conditions of nature.
We’re in a period of ‘interesting times’ re genetics. We know just enough to get into trouble, but we don’t have enlightened enough voters, and while, after dealing with some legislators on science matters, I am impressed with their ability to quick-study, they’re always vulnerable to filtration of the information that gets to them.
If we don’t do the studies we can’t get the information.
If we can’t get the information the science can’t develop.
But the science CANNOT be funded by commercial interests, and this is very important. Commercial interests want ‘product’. And if ‘product’ or ‘spinoff’ happens to be glowing fish, and a new little industry—we don’t know enough yet to say this is safe to let out.
Chromosomes and their components are chemicals, or a sequence of chemicals, and we used to suppose they did only one thing, ie, that there was a ‘tall’ gene and a ‘blue-eyed’ gene that only governed one thing in its whole existence. But genes aren’t one-purpose: they don’t do just one thing, and if you think about the number of chemical transactions in your own body during any one moment, this should make a certain sense. Some genes are active in one way during, say, fetal development, then ‘wait’. You change one thing here, at this age, and something else may result, later. This is another way in which short-lived organisms are ‘safer’ than others, because you can watch the full development and natural process you may have affected…but even with a small fish, you’ve got a critter that lives for more than one year, and that has many more organs than a wheat plant. This is brand new science. And when we leave the funding for research to companies with an economic interest, for instance, in agriculture—there’s a natural pressure to produce something ‘useful now.’
Here’s an instance in which I think there should be a genetic organization like NASA, whose mandate is not to make money, but to receive independent funding from, yes, the taxpayers, to release its patents to industry ONLY after sufficient testing.
Here’s my most important point. We cannot put this genie back into the bottle of Universal Ignorance—we know now what we know, and we are one of a number of countries capable of this research.
If we do not DO the research necessary to cope with a ‘breakout,’ we can only sit and cross our fingers that some enterprising bee or bug with altered pollen or some escaped aquarium pet does not make its way out of a research project in China, Russia, Japan, France, England, or India…and bestow its gift elsewhere, on a very round planet with no visas for inbound fishes or pollen. We are obliged to bring ourselves up to capability. This is no longer abstract science. It has become technology. To a certain extent it is technology we have been practicing for a long time, as farmers select the grain they want to plant and the sheep they want to breed, but it is now going to run perhaps even faster than our development of electronics since the transistor.
We need study, which includes lab and field work. We need preparation. We need an agency that isn’t motivated by commercial rivalry or political ideology. And we need it seriously funded, long-term staffed, and we need to get our national science interests off the political bargaining table, be it NASA or my putative genetics agency, or whatever it is. This sort of agency doesn’t COST money: they both save money and create prosperity. They’re ready targets for shyster critics pandering to an undereducated constituency—but don’t panic: if WE fail to do the work, other nations will. And our best scientists will either work for seed companies, or go to other countries to work.
CJ, if I take your drift, in general I agree with your position. For one thing, besides all the natural hybridizing, mankind has been deliberately doing it for some 10,000 years, the general period of the “Agricultural Revolution”. Corn hasn’t looked like teosinte for thousands of years. It’s not just mankind pressing on Darwin’s “Natural Selection”. Simplest example: is a mule a “franken animal”? Laying it all at the feet of modern Science is intellectual dishonesty. 🙁
So since before historical times mankind has been making plants and animals that never appeared in nature, so call ’em all “frankenfoods” or none. 😉
The transplantation of “glow in the dark” genes have been useful lab experiments to show how molecular biology really works. The intent wasn’t to introduce them into the food supply. I’ll leave it to individual preference what to think of the GITD bunnies and kittens! It is important to understand how the processes work, demonstrated by experimentation, but again it is dishonest to be outraged at particular examples. The knowledge of these same proceses also leads us to cures to various genetic diseases, e.g. CF, MS, ALS, et al.
And, well, not to put too fine a point on it, there are now so much Monsanto “Round-Up Resistant” varieties planted, controlled by licensing, that you can’t buy heritage varieties of seed in commercial quantities anymore. Outlaw it and starve. Not saying that good or bad, just that that’s where we are now!
p.s. You can’t even grow your own corn and sell it for seed because natural cross-pollination from Monsanto’s licensed varieties violates those licenses. In other words, anybody in the county plants Monsanto seed, then Monsanto owns what you grow for seed, but since it’s crossbred and not entirely the “real thing” they insist on it being destroyed.
New TV series called “Perception” (which has an interesting premise, BTW)– latest episode involved a company that had “funded” a college professor who doing research in genetics to genetically engineer a strain of corn, which strain it patented. The professor warned that the pollen from this plant strain was extremely dominant and would “take over” if it blew into another field. He was bought off and silenced by threats to withdraw his funding. The pollen blew into neighboring fields and took over, the company sued the neighboring farmers for patent infringement, bankrupted them and bought their land cheap, including a farm that had been in the family for over 100 years. That was the motive for multiple revenge homicides (the company’s lawyer, the banker the company used, the CEO of the company, etc.). A “fictional” scenario, but given that it’s been demonstrated that the most useful (and common) personality traits for those who climb to the top of the corporate ladder are those of a psychopath, — I immediately thought of a certain “Company” in a certain set of books by a certain author I like, and thought, ‘not far fetched at all. Extremely near-fetched, in fact. . .’
The premise is non-fiction, only the development. Do a little research on Monsanto. It’s been the basis of a documentary on PBS (Frontline?).
No doubt that’s the basis of the show you saw–as in true SciFi tradition, take the facts you know and extrapolate to a logical conclusion.
RAH wrote a(n autobiographical) story (“How long has this been going on?”?) about a mustered out military officer who took a historical story, reset it, made minor changes to characters and sold it–for what he considered an easy paycheck.
My sister tells me our 20th great grandfathers were Edward III of England, father of Edward “The Black Prince” (yes, of “Ruby” fame) and Peter/Pedro I of Spain–from whom the Black Prince got the ruby. What Edward III’s mother, Isabella “The She-Wolf of France”, did to get him on the throne makes a rip-roaring good story: intrigue, treason, murder, and all.
History is a real good basis for fiction! 😉
oh, you need to read the Perfect King – interesting evidence for Edward 11 not being murdered, being alive a long way into his son’s reign, big cover up job, this book thinks he went on living in Italy under the protection of the Medicis, and died a natural death. 😀 history is fun!
The use of bt genes to add insect resistence to corn crops has I have read a bad effect on the monarch butterfly population. As you said – wind blows the pollen about, and insects encounter it in other places.
One of my concerns is the problems posed for neighboring farmers who may be saving their own seeds and run afoul of the Monsanto’s of the world because they end up with genetics in their crops for which they have not been licensed. – This has already happened a few years ago.
Nope…I disagree with this statement. Making a critter/plant with genes inserted that it would never encounter in nature is quite different from natural selection for specific traits over time. And the consequences are unnatural….as in the manipulated pollen contaminating adjacent ‘clean’ crops to their detriment (both legally and naturally).
The point is: a mule doesn’t occur in nature–it’s man made! Dogs are man-made. So are Persian cats. The processes of genetic recombination used in agricultural hybridization are exactly the same as what is done in the lab. The only difference is how the genes get together. Human insulin genes will never get into yeasts, unless you put them there. You’d do that because human insulin works much better for diabetics than pig insulin does!
Florigene/Sun Tory put delphinidin genes from a petunia into a rose by lab work and made blue roses. (Well, they’re still a bit lavenderish because of the pH, but they’ll get the pH adjusted.) Is that a fearful “franken rose”?
I hybridize rhododendrons, and I’m crossing with previous hybrids of species that would never occur in nature–they’re home ranges are too far apart. They’re very pretty and smell nicer than anything similar you’d find in the wild. Why are these less dangerous, not “franken rhodies”?
The processes involved in “GM” are exactly the same as what mankind has been doing for 10,000 years!
OK…well the statement I disagreed with disappeared from my post upon surfacing in the forum. I was disagreeing with the following statement: “So since before historical times mankind has been making plants and animals that never appeared in nature, so call ’em all “frankenfoods’ or none.”
Disagree if you wish, but, respectfully, it’s still true.
Actually, it’s NOT true. But I’ll take these kinds of discussions to the geneticists down the hall, I guess (shrug).
I personally take the position that we will have to cope with these things, and that the answer to protecting ourselves is MORE genetic study, because these things are not done just by one company in one country, and will get out of the lab. I’d couple that with—we have a seed repository in cold storage; but we need heritage seed protected in MORE repositories around the world.
We do changes with animal breeding that I don’t think are good, as well, but it goes on—our dear Shu is a case in point, and he was bred running the woods in open country in Washington: a little kitten who’s a cross of a perfectly ordinary little American felis domestica with a dam whose stock likely arrived on wooden ships in the age of sail, and a sire whose ancestors were running the forests of Asia less than 10 generations ago, and whose forebears flew in by jet. He’s certainly brought in some ‘hybrid’ vigor—as in—his jumps can reach the top of curtain rods, and he has his odd little manners—communicating with his teeth, not a bite, not nearly, just a little pressure to say let me down. His partner is another genetic anomaly, a Scottish Fold, which is a wonderful cat but should NEVER be allowed to breed into the general population: disabilities can come with a double cross of that genetic strain, so they always have to be outbred. OTOH, infusing the strength and agility of the Asian cat into the world’s domestic strains does not seem such a bad thing. His fur is different—feels more like a short-haired dog; his vertical agility is amazing; his attack tactics, hardwired, are more leopard-like than domestic cat. So the Scottish Fold happened by mutation—from one barn cat in Scotland, and has been reproduced all around the world in a few generations; the Bengal importation is now running wild in the woods of Washington, while New York City may still have its law against maintaining Bengals under the now-mistaken impression they’re a wild animal…
And meanwhile there is an association, the TCA, a registry dedicated to preserving the longer-nosed Persian and the round-headed Siamese.
But while Bengals may be breeding in the woods in Washington—they don’t do so carried on the wind. Corn is one of the WORST wind-borne pollinators, (firs have to be the worst)–ironically, plants, that you THINK would stay put and not wander off and breed undesirably, are one of the most aggressive reproducers on the planet, and trees and grasses of all sorts are among the worst. THey’ve had a fuss about strawberries, likewise. And putting peanut genes into things that aren’t peanuts, when all of a sudden we have more people allergic to peanuts than ever appeared before…
Since peanuts were an import heavily studied and messed with, one wonders if we have not, in making bigger peanuts, produced a bigger problem. Another thing I wonder—is whether airlines, by favoring peanuts as inflight snacks, haven’t increased the allergic exposure the same way recirculating air can be a problem with contagion on a plane. Certain sensitivities can worsen through exposure (I now react REALLY badly to neomycin ointment, say, when it used to be mild, and crab has gotten to be very, very serious through repeated incidences) —so who knows? Maybe airplanes really exacerbated the peanut problem; or agricultural research (before genetics) made a change in peanuts; or both simultaneously.
We’re learning a lot—but there’s sure a lot we don’t know. And while allergists split hairs over the difference between a food sensitivity and an allergy—we’ve got signs on restaurant doors about ‘peanuts served on premises.’ Which to me is quite surreal.
Yes indeed, there is a great deal of hysteria on both sides of the fence, not unlike our current vitriol of Republicans vs. Democrats. Monsanto wants to build and license as many genetic strains as it can get its mercenary little hands on, while outside their fields, protesters picket with signs that accuse “Frankenfoods!!!” but little more content or scientific thought. Rational grounds have to be somewhere in the middle. Test the bejeebers out of any new modifications for side effects before you release it for use, but realize that you do in fact have to grow it under real life conditions to do that testing, and be realistic. You shouldn’t be able to sue your neighbors for ‘stealing’ your gene stock if you were unable to control it, i.e., windborne pollen, and you shouldn’t go around cutting down your other neighbor’s papaya trees that were genetically modified to resist ringspot virus because you disapprove on general principles (this happened on the Big Island, where this disease is a problem).
What *I* wish we’d allow more of is irradiation of various foods to lengthen shelf life and eliminate pest insects. The typical American seems to believe it makes their food radioactive. It can have some effect—but radioactivity isn’t one. You’re more apt to get sick off what we do allow. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_irradiation
I want to be able to buy shelf-stable milk. Can’t do it here in Oklahoma.
It all boils down to the point CJ was making, knowledge, and one I don’t think she quite made as explicitly but should go without saying at all times and places, wisdom! Most times money is the enemy of wisdom, unfortunately.