4 ms·

Also, while reading these, take the time to watch "Kingdom of Men" again to get a feel for what the real issue actually looks like. Living organisms appear (IMO

by moens 13y ago

Also, while reading these, take the time to watch "Kingdom of Men" again to get a feel for what the real issue actually looks like. Living organisms appear (IMO, and subtly in other research) to be able to detect code base tampering, and reject it. How do they reject it? Infertility. I am a farmer and it is difficult as hell to create a non-GMO farm (non-GMO contaminated mulch and compost, non-GMO animal feeds, non-GMO source animals, non-GMO seed). The OP is correct in all points about Monsanto's power over seed production, but misses what SciAm (and almost everyone else) misses: Genetic material is code being used in a production environment! As such it needs to be protected. Code contamination (forks) need to be registered publicly and isolated with extreme prejudice from the production environment. We didn't write the code, and as far as I am concerned, I feel that Monsanto as a policy maker (by default or by lobbing) and any of the most advanced geneticists are script kiddies on a Galactic scale. We will get to adequate understanding it time, but that time is not now. Who gives a fk if you or your grandmother can live a longer or more pain-free life if the result is a global genetic seg-fault? I don't. My answer is to set up my own isolated farm, as free of GM as I can make it. As I see it, existing organisms do have a genetic conversation (via viruses and other single cell organisms) and will resist and correct some amount of genetic contamination. Honestly I have my doubts that even this will work, but its the most I can do. Food for thought.

jeena 13y ago
I'm not sure I follow, you say "Genetic material is code being used in a production environment!" as far as I understand it we have been researching for decades and haven't found real problems, at least not more then with older alternatives like radiation and chemicals to speed up the production of genetic changes. It confuses me that people are ok with, like the article calls it, the shotgun approach (radiation, chemicals) but not with the surgeon approach (using a scalpel and replacing only the genes we want to), I honestly don't understand why.
- moens 13y ago
  I am not saying that we should eliminate genetic research. I am saying that we need to isolate genetic modification from the general genetic pool until we understand what we are doing. Until half a year ago "we" (geneticists) thought that upwards of 80% of the genome was junk DNA... oops, I guess not. I think that we have to be a little more cautious. A lot more cautious. If (as I feel is the case) genetic material is code, and we (all Earth based life) is a production environment... I just cannot express how sloppy I feel we have been in the last 20 years. Policy, research, implementation... its not like we don't know how to run a clean software environment, how to do safe development... but in the genetic world? Hack, reverse engineer, install trap doors, holy fuck, we brought down a root level dns server? Cool! We are awesome! We must be geniuses! We are 13 and loving it.
  - hga 13y ago
    "Until half a year ago "we" (geneticists) thought that upwards of 80% of the genome was junk DNA... oops, I guess not." That wasn't my impression when I left this field for chemistry in 1989. Back then "we" were saying "this doesn't code for specific proteins, is it junk, or does it have function?" The consensus then was "junk", and the recent claim otherwise is speculative as I read it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junk_DNA#Junk_DNA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junk_DNA#Junk_DNA The flip side is by then we were realizing that DNA moves around a lot more than we'd though, and transgenic organisms were common in nature ... or at least tries, Nature is much more a script-kiddie than us and most of those "attempts" fail.
    - moens 13y ago
      Right, I am not and never was a geneticist. The point I am trying to make is that we assume too much. I would say that this statement, "Nature is much more a script-kiddie than us" is just such an assumption. How much of transgenic communication is accidental and how much is necessary with the design (sorry, probably political phrasing here...) parameters. I would assert that we just don't know yet. In any case, to use, "Nature is the bigger ignorant hacker, we can be ignorant hackers too if it lines our pockets" is a terrible argument IMO.
      - hga 13y ago
        Ah, but I was a budding geneticist from 1977-1989 (even "practicing" in the summer of 1977), and based on what I observed of the field then you are seriously overstating your case. My comment about Nature is not based on an "assumption" but on what people in the field learned during that period. Very conveniently the period started just after the Asilomar Conference (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asilomar_conference_on_recombinant_DNA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asilomar_conference_on_recombin...), and I studied all this in detail before finances forced me into a sordid, initially on and off career of programming. Or at least as view your "accidental" vs. "necessary with the design" concept; I don't give much credence to the latter, and I think it doesn't affect the argument that Nature has proved this to be generally safe. Final note: if I and the others who believe this are correct, it's not merely a "lines our pockets", it's also a "X fewer people stave to death or suffer from malnutrition".

by moens 13y ago

jeena 13y ago

I'm not sure I follow, you say "Genetic material is code being used in a production environment!" as far as I understand it we have been researching for decades and haven't found real problems, at least not more then with older alternatives like radiation and chemicals to speed up the production of genetic changes. It confuses me that people are ok with, like the article calls it, the shotgun approach (radiation, chemicals) but not with the surgeon approach (using a scalpel and replacing only the genes we want to), I honestly don't understand why.

moens 13y ago
I am not saying that we should eliminate genetic research. I am saying that we need to isolate genetic modification from the general genetic pool until we understand what we are doing. Until half a year ago "we" (geneticists) thought that upwards of 80% of the genome was junk DNA... oops, I guess not. I think that we have to be a little more cautious. A lot more cautious. If (as I feel is the case) genetic material is code, and we (all Earth based life) is a production environment... I just cannot express how sloppy I feel we have been in the last 20 years. Policy, research, implementation... its not like we don't know how to run a clean software environment, how to do safe development... but in the genetic world? Hack, reverse engineer, install trap doors, holy fuck, we brought down a root level dns server? Cool! We are awesome! We must be geniuses! We are 13 and loving it.
- hga 13y ago
  "Until half a year ago "we" (geneticists) thought that upwards of 80% of the genome was junk DNA... oops, I guess not." That wasn't my impression when I left this field for chemistry in 1989. Back then "we" were saying "this doesn't code for specific proteins, is it junk, or does it have function?" The consensus then was "junk", and the recent claim otherwise is speculative as I read it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junk_DNA#Junk_DNA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junk_DNA#Junk_DNA The flip side is by then we were realizing that DNA moves around a lot more than we'd though, and transgenic organisms were common in nature ... or at least tries, Nature is much more a script-kiddie than us and most of those "attempts" fail.
  - moens 13y ago
    Right, I am not and never was a geneticist. The point I am trying to make is that we assume too much. I would say that this statement, "Nature is much more a script-kiddie than us" is just such an assumption. How much of transgenic communication is accidental and how much is necessary with the design (sorry, probably political phrasing here...) parameters. I would assert that we just don't know yet. In any case, to use, "Nature is the bigger ignorant hacker, we can be ignorant hackers too if it lines our pockets" is a terrible argument IMO.
    - hga 13y ago
      Ah, but I was a budding geneticist from 1977-1989 (even "practicing" in the summer of 1977), and based on what I observed of the field then you are seriously overstating your case. My comment about Nature is not based on an "assumption" but on what people in the field learned during that period. Very conveniently the period started just after the Asilomar Conference (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asilomar_conference_on_recombinant_DNA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asilomar_conference_on_recombin...), and I studied all this in detail before finances forced me into a sordid, initially on and off career of programming. Or at least as view your "accidental" vs. "necessary with the design" concept; I don't give much credence to the latter, and I think it doesn't affect the argument that Nature has proved this to be generally safe. Final note: if I and the others who believe this are correct, it's not merely a "lines our pockets", it's also a "X fewer people stave to death or suffer from malnutrition".