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A high degree if genetic selections is a high risk thing. For a long time you just get a lot more of what ever you want, milk, eggs, etc. And then a virus appea
by fghh45sdfhr3 14y ago
A high degree if genetic selections is a high risk thing. For a long time you just get a lot more of what ever you want, milk, eggs, etc. And then a virus appears and kills 99.9% or more of your animals because they were all so closely related.
The free market rewards the up side of closely related species but does not cost you anything for the potential catastrophe. Day to day the probability of a catastrophic disease is near 0, but in the very long term it is near certain. Our free markets have no smart way of pricing that kind of stuff.
That's why we've already lost several varieties of banana to diseases.
- Falling3 14y agoOh yeah that's particularly scary (if you happen to like bananas). Most commercial bananas plants are clones. This leads to strict regulations on commercial bananas and it's still pretty likely we'll see them disappear one day.
- Qworg 14y agoWoah, wait a moment. One variety of commercial banana is mostly clones (the traditional yellow Chicquita/Dole type). There are many other kinds of bananas - less familiar, but also different genetically. Bananas won't disappear - only one type will.
- pm90 14y agoHey, I found your comment on bananas interesting. Where can I read up more about it?
- lightcatcher 14y agoI'm also interested, did some quick searching and found http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_disease http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_disease
- soperj 14y agolook up gros michel
- fghh45sdfhr3 14y agoThis is a good start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gros_Michel_banana http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gros_Michel_banana Many wild, seed packet bananas exist, but all (as far as I know?) bananas that we eat have no seeds and are actually all clones. Thus they are all under the extinction by disease threat. Someone could in theory continually keep developing new strains of bananas in case of future diseases. Practically however there is no profit in that. You could argue a charity or NGO should do stuff like this.
- ajross 14y agoThis book (pop science kind of thing) was a lot of fun too: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1594630380 http://www.amazon.com/dp/1594630380 Note that the Gros Michel isn't extinct. It's still grown as a boutique item. But the blight is apparently persistent in fields, and thus it can't be grown in quanitity without huge risk to the plantation.
- mng2 14y agoThere was a nice article in the New Yorker last year about it. Not available online but you can probably find it at your local library. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/01/10/110110fa_fact_peed http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/01/10/110110fa_fact_...
- dctoedt 14y ago> Our free markets have no smart way of pricing that kind of [potential disease catastrophe]. So true. Ireland's devastating "potato famine" was another example of the catastrophe that can result from free-market-drive overdependence on a single monoculture --- in this case the "lumper" potato variety, which was susceptible to the Phytophthora infestans blight --- with no genetic diversity [1]. It's estimated that the famine led to the death or emigration (in roughly equal numbers) of some 20% of the island's population [2]. (One of my grandmothers was first-generation Irish-American; I remember her telling stories of the famine that she'd heard passed down in her family.) [1] http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/agriculture_02 http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/agriculture... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)#Blight_in_Ireland http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)#Blight_i...