6 ms·

My opinion continues to be tools like CRISPR and genome editing techniques are just that--tools. Can be used for good or bad purposes depending on your context

My opinion continues to be tools like CRISPR and genome editing techniques are just that--tools. Can be used for good or bad purposes depending on your context and bias. Most people associate these genome modification tools as inherently bad because the first generation of them were tied to herbicide and pesticide resistance. Whether you agree with those applications or not, its clear those tools worked and were extremely powerful. I would personally argue they work too well and the 2nd and 3rd order effects are doing the most damage. But these tools exist in regulatory frameworks that are archaic and rigid and when billions of dollars are on the line companies figure out ways to play in between the lines. An optimistic person might want these tools to be used to increase taste profiles, shelf-life, nutritional content, range of adaptation, etc. A pessimist probably sees this as a faster way to add more herbicide or pesticide traits to enable those chemicals to be applied. I'm very bullish on genome editing tech. Lots of these comments are applying 1990s thinking to a 2030 and beyond tech. Akin to 1950s 'futuristic' predictions showing flying cars.

sjmm1989 5y ago
Anyone who has ever eaten bread or a banana, has already been technically in some fashion or another, eating GMO's. Norman Borlaug helped rid us of Wheat rust, which took a more 'natural' approach to gene editing. The banana has been a mutant for decades now.
- qqtt 5y ago
  Also lemons, broccoli, and pretty much any modern vegetable or fruit - humans have been selectively growing plants since humans have had the knowledge of how to grow things period.
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    What does that have to do with GMOs?
    - qqtt 5y ago
      That by selective growing of plants over thousands of years, we have altered the genetic make up of the foods we consume. While "GMO" is a "new technique", reductively this isn't exactly another dimension compared to over many years isolating and growing things like broccoli and lemons. Yes, GMO is a new technique to modify food sources away from "naturally occurring processes" - but again things like lemons and broccoli are also not naturally occurring in nature.
      - hiptobecubic 5y ago
        This stupid, pedantic way of talking about the issue helps no one.
        qqtt 5y ago
        Saying declarative short (and virolic) sentences like this also helps no one. Humans already eat a wide variety of foods as part of their daily diet that have no natural occurrence (lemons, broccoli, many different kinds of meat) - they were specifically bred that way. Some people have concerns about GMO in the same angle - that since for example these cattle are bred to endure climate change and they have no 'naturally occurring' example, there might be something inherently unsafe about them. Yes, GMO is a new technique, but there is an intelligible way to connect the dots between the GMO and what humans have been doing with our food supply for thousands of years.
      - dekhn 5y ago
        The physical process of GMO is extremely different from humans applying selection to crops. There is little to no transfer learning to be applied.
- kickout 5y ago
  The banana is a seedless triploid (seeds don't form because they have an odd number of chromosome pairs). This is a common mechanism in fruits to achieve seedless varieties that can then be propagated vegetatively. The term GMO has functionally lost all meaning to me as anyone can load up a straw man defining it how they need it to be defined at that point in time. Borlaug was a great plant breeder, but some of his inventions ushered in those tricky 2nd and 3rd order effects that I alluded to earlier. Namely, the response of (wheat) crops to synthetic fertilizer and how much synthetic fertilizer is both an economic boom and and environmental quagmire. Interesting debates no doubt
- samatman 5y ago
  Speaking as someone who has genetically modified several organisms, please don't do this. Genetic engineering is a distinctive and new technique for modifying the genomes of organisms, and the results of genetic engineering are referred to as GMOs. The rhetorical flourish of decompiling the acronym and pretending it is descriptive rather than nominal does no one any favors. It's disingenuous, and doesn't alleviate someone's distrust of genetic engineering, because they know perfectly well that you know what they meant and are deflecting the conversation.
  - foobiekr 5y ago
    Exactly this.
  - sjmm1989 5y ago
    No, I took the actual definition, and you just don't like it. Just because other people are ignorant or arrogant, doesn't mean we should cater to their ignorance or arrogance. But it does mean we should make it easier to differentiate the key differences by not re-using the same acronym over and over again. Instead of calling the 'new methods' GMO's, we should be calling them something else, instead of confusing the dummies. The new techniques folk like you are using should get a whole new acronym to go with it... Not just labelled GMO, yet again. It just confuses the dummies. And we live in democracies mostly, so you should be concerned about that.
    - Nbox9 5y ago
      > No, I took the actual definition, and you just don't like it. You didn’t take the actual definition. Look at the GMO wiki, and the first sentence defines the term in such a way to restrict it to organisms created with more modern techniques. When having conversations with people it’s important to have a shared vocabulary with people. Having a different vocabulary creates miscommunications. It can be especially hard to assume best intent of people are using a non-standard definition because it is a technique purposefully done around scientific and academic jargon to achieve political ends.
      - 5y ago
- Jon_Lowtek 5y ago
  Are you trying to conflate "selective breeding" and "genetic modification" or do you mean "US Americans" when you say "anyone"? If by "Anyone" you mean "US Americans", then you are probably referring to that vitamin A added GMO "golden banana" that is field tested there. But in that case there would be no need to say "technically in some fashion or another". (EDIT: i must have misinterpreted a single source, there is a lack of secondary sources confirming any large scale availability of this banana in the USA. Sorry! The field test is in Uganda not America) The banana we are used to (Cavendish, ~99% world export market share) is not a GMO, because that term has a definition and a meaning, no matter how much people try to conflate "selective breeding" and "genetically modified organism". What you are doing is called "muddying the water" and in general it is not helpful in serious debate, except when you aim for winning an argument, instead of reaching consent or discovering a deeper truth. I am not saying it is invalid to make a comparison between selective breeding and gene editing, highlighting the similarities. Doing that is perfectly fine. What is not ok, in my opinion, is trying to attempt to redefine and twist the words used by the other side of an argument to describe their position such that they can not express their position anymore. Note that sometimes word definitions are vague and reaching a common understanding can look similar to this pattern, but in this case the "technically in some fashion or another" gives the intention away.
foobiekr 5y ago
You know, I agree with you, I think there's not necessarily a problem with CRISPR or GMOs or mutagenic selective breeding, or whatever. But there are real issues: novel introductions make it harder to define how we talk about food safety in general, since almost all of it is based on both a very poor science (nutrition science is a dumpster fire) and long-term use by humans (GRAS) where previous generations were test subjects. The industry around this basically ignores these issues and pretends they don't exist and they label anyone raising issues as "anti-science." Put another way: industries _usually_ don't end up untrusted because people are crazy, they _usually_ earned it, and GMO big ag has earned it in spades. It's not just the original go to market being terminator seeds and submarining in patents, or to enable soaking fields with RoundUp, it's also that when people talk about GMOs, they're often talking about transgenic GMOs, things like Flavr Savr and the generally borderline-gaslighting issue around the industry and FDA pretending that labeling food with actual information would be bad (which has come up over and over, not just with GMOs). There's also the disingenuous approach to pretending that modern genetic engineering is "just" accelerated breeding, which frankly isn't true and mostly relies on the fact that modern breeding uses mutagens to accelerate a process which makes coming up with a useful definition of GRAS quite difficult. Basically the industry's argument was "GMO is no worse/different than what we've been doing for thirty years that you didn't know about, so it's fine" which, shocking, has kind of fallen flat because it is an outright lie. Gaslighting is an overused term, but the industry's"it's just selective breeding!" argument is really pretty phony, and that's ignoring transgenic GMOs. Before I get labeled "anti-science", I'm actually pro GMO, pro-GMO food and so on. But only in a functional regulatory environment, which we do not have at the moment.
- kickout 5y ago
  All good points. Another topic lost in these debates is _very real alternatives_. People lament fields soaked in glyphosate or neonics. True, there are real problems with these actives. Unfortunately, these chemicals largely replaced _even more dangerous_ chemicals like DDT and other nasty organs-phosphates (I think sarin gas was discovered while searching for pesticides?). It's unfortunate people don't have complete information and make the assumption of glyphosate/whatever or nothing when that reality never really ever existed.
WheelsAtLarge 5y ago
The big issue with gene editing is the unintended consequences. Everything is fine now but will it always be that way? We deal with consequences by applying patches. So it's patch after patch after patch until the problem gets so bad that we start over. We can do that with things. But for genes that have spread over a population it will be next to impossible. Good luck to the future generations that will have to deal with the genes that get modified today.
- kickout 5y ago
  I agree with your core statement of a series of patches to fix things that get deployed, but I'm not so pessimistic we won't have better/faster/more accurate tools to deploy those patches. I generally never want to bet against human ingenuity, despite problems _seem_ unsolvable to our current understanding.

sjmm1989 5y ago

Anyone who has ever eaten bread or a banana, has already been technically in some fashion or another, eating GMO's. Norman Borlaug helped rid us of Wheat rust, which took a more 'natural' approach to gene editing. The banana has been a mutant for decades now.

qqtt 5y ago
Also lemons, broccoli, and pretty much any modern vegetable or fruit - humans have been selectively growing plants since humans have had the knowledge of how to grow things period.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  What does that have to do with GMOs?
  - qqtt 5y ago
    That by selective growing of plants over thousands of years, we have altered the genetic make up of the foods we consume. While "GMO" is a "new technique", reductively this isn't exactly another dimension compared to over many years isolating and growing things like broccoli and lemons. Yes, GMO is a new technique to modify food sources away from "naturally occurring processes" - but again things like lemons and broccoli are also not naturally occurring in nature.
    - hiptobecubic 5y ago
      This stupid, pedantic way of talking about the issue helps no one.
      - qqtt 5y ago
        Saying declarative short (and virolic) sentences like this also helps no one. Humans already eat a wide variety of foods as part of their daily diet that have no natural occurrence (lemons, broccoli, many different kinds of meat) - they were specifically bred that way. Some people have concerns about GMO in the same angle - that since for example these cattle are bred to endure climate change and they have no 'naturally occurring' example, there might be something inherently unsafe about them. Yes, GMO is a new technique, but there is an intelligible way to connect the dots between the GMO and what humans have been doing with our food supply for thousands of years.
    - dekhn 5y ago
      The physical process of GMO is extremely different from humans applying selection to crops. There is little to no transfer learning to be applied.
kickout 5y ago
The banana is a seedless triploid (seeds don't form because they have an odd number of chromosome pairs). This is a common mechanism in fruits to achieve seedless varieties that can then be propagated vegetatively. The term GMO has functionally lost all meaning to me as anyone can load up a straw man defining it how they need it to be defined at that point in time. Borlaug was a great plant breeder, but some of his inventions ushered in those tricky 2nd and 3rd order effects that I alluded to earlier. Namely, the response of (wheat) crops to synthetic fertilizer and how much synthetic fertilizer is both an economic boom and and environmental quagmire. Interesting debates no doubt
samatman 5y ago
Speaking as someone who has genetically modified several organisms, please don't do this. Genetic engineering is a distinctive and new technique for modifying the genomes of organisms, and the results of genetic engineering are referred to as GMOs. The rhetorical flourish of decompiling the acronym and pretending it is descriptive rather than nominal does no one any favors. It's disingenuous, and doesn't alleviate someone's distrust of genetic engineering, because they know perfectly well that you know what they meant and are deflecting the conversation.
- foobiekr 5y ago
  Exactly this.
- sjmm1989 5y ago
  No, I took the actual definition, and you just don't like it. Just because other people are ignorant or arrogant, doesn't mean we should cater to their ignorance or arrogance. But it does mean we should make it easier to differentiate the key differences by not re-using the same acronym over and over again. Instead of calling the 'new methods' GMO's, we should be calling them something else, instead of confusing the dummies. The new techniques folk like you are using should get a whole new acronym to go with it... Not just labelled GMO, yet again. It just confuses the dummies. And we live in democracies mostly, so you should be concerned about that.
  - Nbox9 5y ago
    > No, I took the actual definition, and you just don't like it. You didn’t take the actual definition. Look at the GMO wiki, and the first sentence defines the term in such a way to restrict it to organisms created with more modern techniques. When having conversations with people it’s important to have a shared vocabulary with people. Having a different vocabulary creates miscommunications. It can be especially hard to assume best intent of people are using a non-standard definition because it is a technique purposefully done around scientific and academic jargon to achieve political ends.
    - 5y ago
Jon_Lowtek 5y ago
Are you trying to conflate "selective breeding" and "genetic modification" or do you mean "US Americans" when you say "anyone"? If by "Anyone" you mean "US Americans", then you are probably referring to that vitamin A added GMO "golden banana" that is field tested there. But in that case there would be no need to say "technically in some fashion or another". (EDIT: i must have misinterpreted a single source, there is a lack of secondary sources confirming any large scale availability of this banana in the USA. Sorry! The field test is in Uganda not America) The banana we are used to (Cavendish, ~99% world export market share) is not a GMO, because that term has a definition and a meaning, no matter how much people try to conflate "selective breeding" and "genetically modified organism". What you are doing is called "muddying the water" and in general it is not helpful in serious debate, except when you aim for winning an argument, instead of reaching consent or discovering a deeper truth. I am not saying it is invalid to make a comparison between selective breeding and gene editing, highlighting the similarities. Doing that is perfectly fine. What is not ok, in my opinion, is trying to attempt to redefine and twist the words used by the other side of an argument to describe their position such that they can not express their position anymore. Note that sometimes word definitions are vague and reaching a common understanding can look similar to this pattern, but in this case the "technically in some fashion or another" gives the intention away.

foobiekr 5y ago

You know, I agree with you, I think there's not necessarily a problem with CRISPR or GMOs or mutagenic selective breeding, or whatever. But there are real issues: novel introductions make it harder to define how we talk about food safety in general, since almost all of it is based on both a very poor science (nutrition science is a dumpster fire) and long-term use by humans (GRAS) where previous generations were test subjects. The industry around this basically ignores these issues and pretends they don't exist and they label anyone raising issues as "anti-science." Put another way: industries _usually_ don't end up untrusted because people are crazy, they _usually_ earned it, and GMO big ag has earned it in spades. It's not just the original go to market being terminator seeds and submarining in patents, or to enable soaking fields with RoundUp, it's also that when people talk about GMOs, they're often talking about transgenic GMOs, things like Flavr Savr and the generally borderline-gaslighting issue around the industry and FDA pretending that labeling food with actual information would be bad (which has come up over and over, not just with GMOs). There's also the disingenuous approach to pretending that modern genetic engineering is "just" accelerated breeding, which frankly isn't true and mostly relies on the fact that modern breeding uses mutagens to accelerate a process which makes coming up with a useful definition of GRAS quite difficult. Basically the industry's argument was "GMO is no worse/different than what we've been doing for thirty years that you didn't know about, so it's fine" which, shocking, has kind of fallen flat because it is an outright lie. Gaslighting is an overused term, but the industry's"it's just selective breeding!" argument is really pretty phony, and that's ignoring transgenic GMOs. Before I get labeled "anti-science", I'm actually pro GMO, pro-GMO food and so on. But only in a functional regulatory environment, which we do not have at the moment.

kickout 5y ago
All good points. Another topic lost in these debates is _very real alternatives_. People lament fields soaked in glyphosate or neonics. True, there are real problems with these actives. Unfortunately, these chemicals largely replaced _even more dangerous_ chemicals like DDT and other nasty organs-phosphates (I think sarin gas was discovered while searching for pesticides?). It's unfortunate people don't have complete information and make the assumption of glyphosate/whatever or nothing when that reality never really ever existed.

WheelsAtLarge 5y ago

The big issue with gene editing is the unintended consequences. Everything is fine now but will it always be that way? We deal with consequences by applying patches. So it's patch after patch after patch until the problem gets so bad that we start over. We can do that with things. But for genes that have spread over a population it will be next to impossible. Good luck to the future generations that will have to deal with the genes that get modified today.

kickout 5y ago
I agree with your core statement of a series of patches to fix things that get deployed, but I'm not so pessimistic we won't have better/faster/more accurate tools to deploy those patches. I generally never want to bet against human ingenuity, despite problems _seem_ unsolvable to our current understanding.