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Isn't the point of GMO technology that you can use it to accomplish this "in the lab" rather than in the field?

danuker 4y ago
I'd be fine with GMO if it weren't for the pesticides that come with it. https://nutritionfacts.org/video/is-monsantos-roundup-pesticide-glyphosate-safe/ https://nutritionfacts.org/video/is-monsantos-roundup-pestic... > But pure glyphosate isn’t sprayed on crops, Roundup is, which contains a variety of adjuvants and surfactants meant to help the glyphosate penetrate into tissues. And indeed when the study was repeated with what’s actually sprayed on GMO crops, there were toxic and hormonal effects even at doses smaller than the 1 or 2% concentration that’s used out on the fields. > Roundup was found to be 100 times more toxic than glyphosate itself. Moreover, Roundup turned out to be among the most toxic pesticide they tested.
- hinkley 4y ago
  At this point any time someone switches from talking about Roundup to glyphosate, they either have an agenda, or they picked up their argument from people who do. Some of the 'inactive' ingredients in Roundup are more toxic than glyphosate, and stick around longer. Spraying it directly on yourself, the glyphosate may or may not be your immediate concern, but touching something that was sprayed weeks ago the glyphosate is the least of your problems, so making it an argument about glyphosate is one you can kind of win. It's very much like the tobacco lobby playbook. Nicotine may not be that bad for you (unless you're a bug) but you aren't smoking nicotine. You're smoking a broadleaf plant exposed to soil minerals and four kinds of pesticides and antifungal compounds (fungi and human livers are susceptible to many of the same chemicals) which may or may not have prevented fungal volatiles from ending up in your lungs alongside the trace amounts of uranium.
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    And the smoke is fully of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are strong carcinogens.
saalweachter 4y ago
You know, I wonder if GMO technology has advanced enough to replace hybridization. Hybrids give you two different chromosomes, uniformly in your population. You take population AA and aa and get Aa. The next generation you're back to a mix of AA/Aa/aa. There's no reason -- in the abstract -- you couldn't duplicate your gene and put two copies of it on the same chromosome, one A and one a, so that you can skip the hybridization. But does that work with current technology? I don't know!
not2b 4y ago
But then the GMO company patents the result, and it's not legal for a farmer to do what farmers have been doing for ten thousand years: save some of the seeds from the crop and plant them the next year, or give some to a neighboring farmer. Getting out of that trap is a prime motivation for "open source seeds" projects.
- pfdietz 4y ago
  Aside from, you know, the vast uptake of hybrid seeds, which couldn't be saved for reuse either. Anyway, why exactly is this tradition so important that it would swamp the social benefits from improved plants obtained from GMOs (and such benefits must exist, or else farmers would not use these seeds)? This sounds like reflexive conservatism, wanting an old thing just because it is old, and damning changes just because they are changes.
- kuhewa 4y ago
  > save some of the seeds from the crop and plant them the next year, or give some to a neighboring farmer That hasn't been the predominant practice for the majority of farms for coming up on a century. Cross pollinated hybrid seeds are just way too productive to justify growing your own open pollinated varieties. That 'trap' didn't arise with GMOs
epistasis 4y ago
That was the promise, and the fear, around GMO, but it really hasn't had that much of an effect. Biologically, the point editing allowed by generic modification, even with our enhanced skills from CRISPR/Cas9, only allows small changes. Generic modification by molecular techniques is just another tool, that does not supercede or override any of the past forms of generic modification by breeding that humans have been doing ever since we were humans.

I'd be fine with GMO if it weren't for the pesticides that come with it. https://nutritionfacts.org/video/is-monsantos-roundup-pesticide-glyphosate-safe/ https://nutritionfacts.org/video/is-monsantos-roundup-pestic... > But pure glyphosate isn’t sprayed on crops, Roundup is, which contains a variety of adjuvants and surfactants meant to help the glyphosate penetrate into tissues. And indeed when the study was repeated with what’s actually sprayed on GMO crops, there were toxic and hormonal effects even at doses smaller than the 1 or 2% concentration that’s used out on the fields. > Roundup was found to be 100 times more toxic than glyphosate itself. Moreover, Roundup turned out to be among the most toxic pesticide they tested.

hinkley 4y ago
At this point any time someone switches from talking about Roundup to glyphosate, they either have an agenda, or they picked up their argument from people who do. Some of the 'inactive' ingredients in Roundup are more toxic than glyphosate, and stick around longer. Spraying it directly on yourself, the glyphosate may or may not be your immediate concern, but touching something that was sprayed weeks ago the glyphosate is the least of your problems, so making it an argument about glyphosate is one you can kind of win. It's very much like the tobacco lobby playbook. Nicotine may not be that bad for you (unless you're a bug) but you aren't smoking nicotine. You're smoking a broadleaf plant exposed to soil minerals and four kinds of pesticides and antifungal compounds (fungi and human livers are susceptible to many of the same chemicals) which may or may not have prevented fungal volatiles from ending up in your lungs alongside the trace amounts of uranium.
- pfdietz 4y ago
  And the smoke is fully of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are strong carcinogens.

saalweachter 4y ago

You know, I wonder if GMO technology has advanced enough to replace hybridization. Hybrids give you two different chromosomes, uniformly in your population. You take population AA and aa and get Aa. The next generation you're back to a mix of AA/Aa/aa. There's no reason -- in the abstract -- you couldn't duplicate your gene and put two copies of it on the same chromosome, one A and one a, so that you can skip the hybridization. But does that work with current technology? I don't know!

not2b 4y ago

But then the GMO company patents the result, and it's not legal for a farmer to do what farmers have been doing for ten thousand years: save some of the seeds from the crop and plant them the next year, or give some to a neighboring farmer. Getting out of that trap is a prime motivation for "open source seeds" projects.

pfdietz 4y ago
Aside from, you know, the vast uptake of hybrid seeds, which couldn't be saved for reuse either. Anyway, why exactly is this tradition so important that it would swamp the social benefits from improved plants obtained from GMOs (and such benefits must exist, or else farmers would not use these seeds)? This sounds like reflexive conservatism, wanting an old thing just because it is old, and damning changes just because they are changes.
kuhewa 4y ago
> save some of the seeds from the crop and plant them the next year, or give some to a neighboring farmer That hasn't been the predominant practice for the majority of farms for coming up on a century. Cross pollinated hybrid seeds are just way too productive to justify growing your own open pollinated varieties. That 'trap' didn't arise with GMOs

epistasis 4y ago

That was the promise, and the fear, around GMO, but it really hasn't had that much of an effect. Biologically, the point editing allowed by generic modification, even with our enhanced skills from CRISPR/Cas9, only allows small changes. Generic modification by molecular techniques is just another tool, that does not supercede or override any of the past forms of generic modification by breeding that humans have been doing ever since we were humans.