8 ms·

> not doing weird stuff like putting fish antifreeze genes in strawberries. Oooh! Weird! Modifying my immune system to be able to fight cancer is "weird" too,

by msla 4y ago

> not doing weird stuff like putting fish antifreeze genes in strawberries. Oooh! Weird! Modifying my immune system to be able to fight cancer is "weird" too, right? Is there a good reason to use "weird" as a criterion in any of this? Because I like being a GMO organism who isn't dying of cancer, and people using "weird" as a metric make me a bit uneasy about how much longer such treatments are going to be allowed. Remember: GMO isn't just about the "Organic" aisle at Amazon Whole Foods.

matthewdgreen 4y ago
I think “weird” here means “things that may have unexpected side effects.” Cancer treatments have loads of those but we put up with them because death is worse. Eating strawberries and rice maybe exists at a different point on the risk continuum.
- d4mi3n 4y ago
  This is true up to the point of food scarcity. Between geopolitical conflict and crop failures around the world this year due to severe heat waves, we’re looking at a rough few years ahead of us for the global food supply.
  - tsimionescu 4y ago
    So instead of stopping the wars and the global warming which increases the chance of the heat waves, we should jump straight to genetic engineering? Is that the better solution?
    - goatlover 4y ago
      More realistic as stopping wars and climate change are much harder. The war in Ukraine hasn’t ended despite the West’s efforts. And CO2 emissions continue on a large scale despite all warnings.
      - tsimionescu 4y ago
        The West's efforts have been to continue the war, not to stop it. When you're supplying arms, you're not acting to stop a war. Not saying that Ukraine didn't have a right to be defended, but it should be pretty objectively obvious that the war would have stopped long ago had the West not intervened. This would have been unjust and a massive slap to the people of Ukraine, and arguably worse for the world in other ways - so I'm not saying that we shouldn't have supplied them. But we also can't claim we are doing what we can to stop the war: we're (at best) doing what we can to help the right side to win, while prolonging the war.
        kortilla 4y ago
        >The West's efforts have been to continue the war, not to stop it. When you're supplying arms, you're not acting to stop a war. The lazy “military industrial complex” take. Tell me, how do you propose that the US should support stopping the war that doesn’t involve Ukraine ceasing to be independent and losing its leaders? Your comment is basically the same as, “The west’s efforts have been to prolong hunger, not to stop it. When you’re suppling food you’re not acting to stop hunger. It should have been objectively obvious that the hunger would have stopped long ago had we just let people starve to death.”
        tsimionescu 4y ago
        > Tell me, how do you propose that the US should support stopping the war that doesn’t involve Ukraine ceasing to be independent and losing its leaders? First of all, I have been very explicit that "stopping the war" and "the best thing that can be done for the people of Ukraine" are not necessarily aligned. The fastest way of stopping the war would have probably been to supply Russia with arms and know-how, but I am not in any way advocating for such a criminal act. Secondly, the West could have acted to capitalize on Ukraine's initial success in stopping the Russian blitzkrieg by convincing Ukraine's leaders to negotiate a neutrality agreement, similarly to Switzerland. Instead of seeking to join NATO and/or re-conquer the land they lost in 2014, Ukraine could have accepted the loss of Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea, and started to design a way to become a neutral country, dealing with both Russia and the EU. Instead, we have been supplying Ukraine with arms, intelligence and even targeting information and stoking their belief that they can actually win a war with Russia. If we are right, then of course this will be a massive benefit to the people of Ukraine and arguably all of Eastern Europe, with a relatively mild cost to the people of Russia (a huge cost to the leaders of Russia though). However, I believe that Russia will literally stop at nothing to prevent this outcome. I personally fully believe that Russia will nuke Ukraine before allowing it to win back the territory it has lost, especially Crimeea. And that outcome, if it comes to pass, will be the worst thing that could have happened to Ukraine and its people, and probably the entire world. It would be much worse than being conquered by Russia in the initial attack, and definitely much much worse than a negotiated peace where they would cede territory to Russia.
    - hypertele-Xii 4y ago
      Genetic engineering may in fact be easier than achieving world peace, yes.
brigandish 4y ago
Is there another situation where the words "fish", "antifreeze" and "strawberries" are used together to describe it and it doesn't sound weird? I'd be surprised if there were.
- jonplackett 4y ago
  “I’m just popping down to the shops do you need anything?” “Yes, could you get some fish and strawberries? Oh and some antifreeze, I hear it’s going to snow tomorrow” Seems totally normal to me. Nothing to worry about here…
  - leeoniya 4y ago
    reminds me of http://img0.joyreactor.com/pics/post/funny-pictures-meme-fish-plastic-bag-5267399.jpeg http://img0.joyreactor.com/pics/post/funny-pictures-meme-fis...
  - brigandish 4y ago
    If you think it's normal to put those three things together on a shopping list then I have a bridge to add to it. Edit: I think this reads as if I'm disagreeing, whereas I'm piling in together!
    - Turing_Machine 4y ago
      Are you not from the United States? Here, it's very common to find all of those things in one "super store". Walmart, Meijer in the Midwest, Fred Meyer in the Pacific Northwest, no doubt others in other regions of the country...
      - brigandish 4y ago
        I'm not from the United States and it's not strange to find those things in one store in many places, but it's also weird to find them as the three things on a shopping list. We could play this game all day but I'm not going to shift from: a) those three objects together are going to sound weird in pretty much any situation b) regardless of the effectiveness, mixing genes from a list of things that sound like they would never mix under natural circumstances in any other way than a lab sounds weird
vostok 4y ago
When I've talked to anti-GMO people in real life, they seem to (1) be anti-Roundup and similar pesticides more so than literally anti-GMO or (2) be anti-IP laws that won't allow farmers to use seeds from their last crop.
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  Yes, the opposition is as much about things like patents on seeds and refusing to allow farmers to harvest seeds for their next planting season. There's also the problem of making plants resistant to herbicides, then applying more herbicides, so you get lots of herbicide runoff into lakes and streams. This is really more about upping sales for the chemical manufacturer. Also there are better methods for getting rid of weeds, I particularly like these field-crawling robots that identify weed seedlings with AI-vision and blast them with IR lasers.
  - vostok 4y ago
    That's a great point. I forgot to mention the IP issues. I hope you don't mind that I've edited my comment to include them.
- Turing_Machine 4y ago
  The overwhelming majority of farmers haven't "used seeds from their last crop" for well over a hundred years.
  - aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
    And why is that? Actually?
    - Turing_Machine 4y ago
      Because modern hybrid seeds give much more productivity, but do not breed true. Corn variety 1 + Corn variety 2 -> Hybrid with high productivity, disease-resistance, or some other desirable trait (or a combination of desirable traits). However, the seeds from the hybrid will not be the same as the hybrid. Classically, you'll get some seeds that are more like CV1, some seeds that are like CV2, and some that are like the hybrid (in practice the genetics can be more complicated than that, but that's basically what's going to happen). If CV1 is resistant to devastating disease D1, and CV2 is resistant to devastating disease D2, the hybrid might be resistant to both D1 and D2. Great! But the seeds from the hybrid are different. 1/4 the seeds from the hybrid will be susceptible to D#1 and 1/4 will be susceptible to D#2, and 1/2 will still be resistant to both. That means that "saving your seeds" = 50% crop loss to disease, if both diseases are present.
photochemsyn 4y ago
Well, your immune system is already capable of identifying and deleting cells that have escaped the normal cell cycle control and have become cancerous, but if there's damage to your immune system then it can lose that capability. Immune system damage can occur by many means: viral infections, chemical carcinogens, ionizing radiation, etc. Using gene editing technology to repair your immune system using a human template wouldn't be transgenic technology and is probably a relatively safe use of CRISPR gene editing, for example. Throwing in some shark genes to see what happened, because some species of sharks don't seem to get cancer IIRC, that would not be such a great idea I don't think.
puchatek 4y ago
You and your clones are not gonna be spread around in nature and multiply uncontrollably. Also you and your clones are not gonna be eaten by predators and affect them in unforeseeable ways (i hope). Those differences matter to the people who worry about GMO technologies. The fact that the development is spearheaded by for-profit companies does not help either.
- justinpowers 4y ago
  Well some ancient ape’s “clones” have already spread around and multiplied uncontrollably. Who’s to stay that this one’s won’t either?
  - krageon 4y ago
    Apes do not clone themselves, now or in the past. Unless you believe in fairy tales :)
    - justinpowers 4y ago
      It was a jo…oh never mind. Forgot where I was.
undersuit 4y ago
Your immune system already fights cancer. Strawberries don't need to prevent their blood from freezing in the arctic.
- echelon 4y ago
  Frost resistance genes make for more arable land and greater crop yields. It's a desirable trait.
  - undersuit 4y ago
    Yes, and many plant species with berries evolved a natural resistance to frost without getting a boost from fish proteins. Why not use genes from plants that already grow in colder latitudes like gooseberries or huckleberries?
    - aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
      Selective breeding is far more stable and proven than editing. And honestly doesn't get the credit it deserves for its current position in food security — because you can't patent cooperating with nature.
- krageon 4y ago
  Strawberries don't need to exist in the first place. Nothing does. That doesn't mean we don't want to cultivate them in places that may have a cold climate.
  - undersuit 4y ago
    Fine your immune system doesn't need to exist either.
Dylan16807 4y ago
> Modifying my immune system to be able to fight cancer is "weird" too, right? By adding genes? Definitely! > people using "weird" as a metric make me a bit uneasy about how much longer such treatments are going to be allowed. It shouldn't. This is at most a concern for inheritable modifications.
- krageon 4y ago
  > By adding genes? Definitely! It might be weird, but it works and it cures people of cancer. You quite simply cannot convince me that's not a positive result for everyone.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    Did I say or imply I wanted to do that? Is the last line of my previous comment not clear enough? It's weird but there's no concern.
ALittleLight 4y ago
If you were dying of cancer and told your doctor you planned on drinking a lot of tea I assume your doctor would be like "Yeah, sure - couldn't hurt." Drinking tea is not weird, lots of people do it, and there are no real risks because you're dying anyway. On the other hand, if you were like "I'm a biohacker, I'm going to genetically modify a virus to infect me and alter my immune system." Then I assume the doctor would say "Hey, let me get some people to take a look at that." Because that is weird and there are risks. "Weird" doesn't mean good or bad, it means unusual. Unusual things have the property that we don't do what they will cause, because they haven't been done much, because they are unusual. Genetic biohacking probably does have a greater chance of saving your life, or increasing your farm yields, but there are possible downsides to it that are not present in more mundane interventions.

by msla 4y ago

matthewdgreen 4y ago

I think “weird” here means “things that may have unexpected side effects.” Cancer treatments have loads of those but we put up with them because death is worse. Eating strawberries and rice maybe exists at a different point on the risk continuum.

d4mi3n 4y ago
This is true up to the point of food scarcity. Between geopolitical conflict and crop failures around the world this year due to severe heat waves, we’re looking at a rough few years ahead of us for the global food supply.
- tsimionescu 4y ago
  So instead of stopping the wars and the global warming which increases the chance of the heat waves, we should jump straight to genetic engineering? Is that the better solution?
  - goatlover 4y ago
    More realistic as stopping wars and climate change are much harder. The war in Ukraine hasn’t ended despite the West’s efforts. And CO2 emissions continue on a large scale despite all warnings.
    - tsimionescu 4y ago
      The West's efforts have been to continue the war, not to stop it. When you're supplying arms, you're not acting to stop a war. Not saying that Ukraine didn't have a right to be defended, but it should be pretty objectively obvious that the war would have stopped long ago had the West not intervened. This would have been unjust and a massive slap to the people of Ukraine, and arguably worse for the world in other ways - so I'm not saying that we shouldn't have supplied them. But we also can't claim we are doing what we can to stop the war: we're (at best) doing what we can to help the right side to win, while prolonging the war.
      - kortilla 4y ago
        >The West's efforts have been to continue the war, not to stop it. When you're supplying arms, you're not acting to stop a war. The lazy “military industrial complex” take. Tell me, how do you propose that the US should support stopping the war that doesn’t involve Ukraine ceasing to be independent and losing its leaders? Your comment is basically the same as, “The west’s efforts have been to prolong hunger, not to stop it. When you’re suppling food you’re not acting to stop hunger. It should have been objectively obvious that the hunger would have stopped long ago had we just let people starve to death.”
        tsimionescu 4y ago
        > Tell me, how do you propose that the US should support stopping the war that doesn’t involve Ukraine ceasing to be independent and losing its leaders? First of all, I have been very explicit that "stopping the war" and "the best thing that can be done for the people of Ukraine" are not necessarily aligned. The fastest way of stopping the war would have probably been to supply Russia with arms and know-how, but I am not in any way advocating for such a criminal act. Secondly, the West could have acted to capitalize on Ukraine's initial success in stopping the Russian blitzkrieg by convincing Ukraine's leaders to negotiate a neutrality agreement, similarly to Switzerland. Instead of seeking to join NATO and/or re-conquer the land they lost in 2014, Ukraine could have accepted the loss of Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea, and started to design a way to become a neutral country, dealing with both Russia and the EU. Instead, we have been supplying Ukraine with arms, intelligence and even targeting information and stoking their belief that they can actually win a war with Russia. If we are right, then of course this will be a massive benefit to the people of Ukraine and arguably all of Eastern Europe, with a relatively mild cost to the people of Russia (a huge cost to the leaders of Russia though). However, I believe that Russia will literally stop at nothing to prevent this outcome. I personally fully believe that Russia will nuke Ukraine before allowing it to win back the territory it has lost, especially Crimeea. And that outcome, if it comes to pass, will be the worst thing that could have happened to Ukraine and its people, and probably the entire world. It would be much worse than being conquered by Russia in the initial attack, and definitely much much worse than a negotiated peace where they would cede territory to Russia.
  - hypertele-Xii 4y ago
    Genetic engineering may in fact be easier than achieving world peace, yes.

brigandish 4y ago

Is there another situation where the words "fish", "antifreeze" and "strawberries" are used together to describe it and it doesn't sound weird? I'd be surprised if there were.

jonplackett 4y ago
“I’m just popping down to the shops do you need anything?” “Yes, could you get some fish and strawberries? Oh and some antifreeze, I hear it’s going to snow tomorrow” Seems totally normal to me. Nothing to worry about here…
- leeoniya 4y ago
  reminds me of http://img0.joyreactor.com/pics/post/funny-pictures-meme-fish-plastic-bag-5267399.jpeg http://img0.joyreactor.com/pics/post/funny-pictures-meme-fis...
- brigandish 4y ago
  If you think it's normal to put those three things together on a shopping list then I have a bridge to add to it. Edit: I think this reads as if I'm disagreeing, whereas I'm piling in together!
  - Turing_Machine 4y ago
    Are you not from the United States? Here, it's very common to find all of those things in one "super store". Walmart, Meijer in the Midwest, Fred Meyer in the Pacific Northwest, no doubt others in other regions of the country...
    - brigandish 4y ago
      I'm not from the United States and it's not strange to find those things in one store in many places, but it's also weird to find them as the three things on a shopping list. We could play this game all day but I'm not going to shift from: a) those three objects together are going to sound weird in pretty much any situation b) regardless of the effectiveness, mixing genes from a list of things that sound like they would never mix under natural circumstances in any other way than a lab sounds weird

vostok 4y ago

When I've talked to anti-GMO people in real life, they seem to (1) be anti-Roundup and similar pesticides more so than literally anti-GMO or (2) be anti-IP laws that won't allow farmers to use seeds from their last crop.

photochemsyn 4y ago
Yes, the opposition is as much about things like patents on seeds and refusing to allow farmers to harvest seeds for their next planting season. There's also the problem of making plants resistant to herbicides, then applying more herbicides, so you get lots of herbicide runoff into lakes and streams. This is really more about upping sales for the chemical manufacturer. Also there are better methods for getting rid of weeds, I particularly like these field-crawling robots that identify weed seedlings with AI-vision and blast them with IR lasers.
- vostok 4y ago
  That's a great point. I forgot to mention the IP issues. I hope you don't mind that I've edited my comment to include them.
Turing_Machine 4y ago
The overwhelming majority of farmers haven't "used seeds from their last crop" for well over a hundred years.
- aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
  And why is that? Actually?
  - Turing_Machine 4y ago
    Because modern hybrid seeds give much more productivity, but do not breed true. Corn variety 1 + Corn variety 2 -> Hybrid with high productivity, disease-resistance, or some other desirable trait (or a combination of desirable traits). However, the seeds from the hybrid will not be the same as the hybrid. Classically, you'll get some seeds that are more like CV1, some seeds that are like CV2, and some that are like the hybrid (in practice the genetics can be more complicated than that, but that's basically what's going to happen). If CV1 is resistant to devastating disease D1, and CV2 is resistant to devastating disease D2, the hybrid might be resistant to both D1 and D2. Great! But the seeds from the hybrid are different. 1/4 the seeds from the hybrid will be susceptible to D#1 and 1/4 will be susceptible to D#2, and 1/2 will still be resistant to both. That means that "saving your seeds" = 50% crop loss to disease, if both diseases are present.

photochemsyn 4y ago

Well, your immune system is already capable of identifying and deleting cells that have escaped the normal cell cycle control and have become cancerous, but if there's damage to your immune system then it can lose that capability. Immune system damage can occur by many means: viral infections, chemical carcinogens, ionizing radiation, etc. Using gene editing technology to repair your immune system using a human template wouldn't be transgenic technology and is probably a relatively safe use of CRISPR gene editing, for example. Throwing in some shark genes to see what happened, because some species of sharks don't seem to get cancer IIRC, that would not be such a great idea I don't think.

puchatek 4y ago

You and your clones are not gonna be spread around in nature and multiply uncontrollably. Also you and your clones are not gonna be eaten by predators and affect them in unforeseeable ways (i hope). Those differences matter to the people who worry about GMO technologies. The fact that the development is spearheaded by for-profit companies does not help either.

justinpowers 4y ago
Well some ancient ape’s “clones” have already spread around and multiplied uncontrollably. Who’s to stay that this one’s won’t either?
- krageon 4y ago
  Apes do not clone themselves, now or in the past. Unless you believe in fairy tales :)
  - justinpowers 4y ago
    It was a jo…oh never mind. Forgot where I was.

undersuit 4y ago

Your immune system already fights cancer. Strawberries don't need to prevent their blood from freezing in the arctic.

echelon 4y ago
Frost resistance genes make for more arable land and greater crop yields. It's a desirable trait.
- undersuit 4y ago
  Yes, and many plant species with berries evolved a natural resistance to frost without getting a boost from fish proteins. Why not use genes from plants that already grow in colder latitudes like gooseberries or huckleberries?
  - aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
    Selective breeding is far more stable and proven than editing. And honestly doesn't get the credit it deserves for its current position in food security — because you can't patent cooperating with nature.
krageon 4y ago
Strawberries don't need to exist in the first place. Nothing does. That doesn't mean we don't want to cultivate them in places that may have a cold climate.
- undersuit 4y ago
  Fine your immune system doesn't need to exist either.

Dylan16807 4y ago

> Modifying my immune system to be able to fight cancer is "weird" too, right? By adding genes? Definitely! > people using "weird" as a metric make me a bit uneasy about how much longer such treatments are going to be allowed. It shouldn't. This is at most a concern for inheritable modifications.

krageon 4y ago
> By adding genes? Definitely! It might be weird, but it works and it cures people of cancer. You quite simply cannot convince me that's not a positive result for everyone.
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  Did I say or imply I wanted to do that? Is the last line of my previous comment not clear enough? It's weird but there's no concern.

ALittleLight 4y ago

If you were dying of cancer and told your doctor you planned on drinking a lot of tea I assume your doctor would be like "Yeah, sure - couldn't hurt." Drinking tea is not weird, lots of people do it, and there are no real risks because you're dying anyway. On the other hand, if you were like "I'm a biohacker, I'm going to genetically modify a virus to infect me and alter my immune system." Then I assume the doctor would say "Hey, let me get some people to take a look at that." Because that is weird and there are risks. "Weird" doesn't mean good or bad, it means unusual. Unusual things have the property that we don't do what they will cause, because they haven't been done much, because they are unusual. Genetic biohacking probably does have a greater chance of saving your life, or increasing your farm yields, but there are possible downsides to it that are not present in more mundane interventions.