Golden Rice Trial Caught Up in Ethical Tangle

oh yeah, by the way.............

It ticks a person off, with companies like Monsanto and their GMO grains contaminating farmers fields and then holding the farmer liable.

I was floored when I read about Monsanto. It is hard to believe that they are able to do business like that. One of the bigger things I hear is that all of our crops will be of the same strain and can easily be wiped out with disease. They used to be diverse and a disease would only wipe out much smaller crops. I guess that is why Monsanto is an investor in the seed bank. Just waiting for something to happen.

It really sucked, that is the reason big companies and esspecially attorneys have no respect.

Actually, any farmer in the world can grow golden rice free of charge. To help prevent childhood blindness in poor countries Monsanto gave away all proprietary rights, but that won't get them any thanks from anticapitalist bigots and superstitious Ludites. Complaining that one bowl of golden rice only provides 60% the vitamin A a kid needs is especially idiotic. Even if the kid's parents cannot afford to buy him a second bowl of golden rice, or an egg, giving the kid regular rice (with almost NO vitamin A) will not make him healthier.

GMO means genitically modified...I would question what was modified and if I trust the people who explain what they have modified and if its total effect has been studied. Hater blogs come from anouncements like "we have a modified grain that causes sterility which will benifit overpopulated countries". GMO can be a good thing, but it can also be used as a weapon of mass destruction. Is THAT a good thing? Who do you trust? Ethics of people who seek power should always be questioned, biological engineering should ALWAYS be questioned. We should ALWAYS be informed, and we should ALWAYS have a choice to make our own decisions.

Tomatoes are actually part of the nightshade family

You are correct.

Tomatoes are actually part of the nightshade family. but with everything, we have been manipulating genes for a very long time, to control the outcome. It's just that this is much quicker.

Do people think apple tree grow from apple seeds. No, to get consistency, apples trees like cherries trees are grafted.

You can take an apple tree that bears the best tasting apples, take the seed out of one the apples, and from those seeds, not one tree will be the same or would even compare to the tree it came from.

We have been genetically modifing plants and animals ever since we planted our roots........ so to speak.

And secondly, if it wasn't for doing this, there would be a food shortage.

I agree. I'm tired of comments from from hater blogs that seem to revel in malicious ignorance. Nearly everything we eat was genetically modified - it was just done slowly, in the fields by clever farmers over decades, rather than by biologists in a lab within a few years.

In this case, Monsanto had nothing to do with what happened. The study was performed in China with rice that has the potential to minimize the likelihood of childhood blindness. An outside source came to the defense of the sacked researchers, saying they used the proper type of consent form. This appears to be an internal political squabble within China.

Its interesting, Dairy farmers in this country who spent years (50-60) increasing production from their cows from AI selective breeding. can now export embryos from these cattle to Japan and Japan can a herd produces like that in 2-5 years.

There is a big difference between AI-selective breeding and GMO. Selective breeding produces a cow that produces more milk. GMO can produce a cow that eats meat instead of grass. Monsanto developed grain that can MODIFY A HUMAN twenty years ago, and that was quietly anounced in a news blog. Do some races cause problems? Why not feed them corn or rice that causes sterility or limits their lifespan? Money controls government, not 'we the people'. Government secrecy does what ever the hell it wants to promote more government to exert more control by government. What are the limits? Why not tweak a gene so a benign strain can modify itself to lie silently in wait and then a couple generations later wreak havoc? The simple view of GMO's are good or bad covers up an ethics question that is much deeper. I question corporate ethics that control the development of GMO products.

The point that I was making is what took years for Selective Breeding, compared to what takes only 3-5 years on emybro transplants.

What may have been missed, and I agree with Jmeuller that this is s short cut as compared to evolution. And that actually results from GMO do not appear until later on.

Friends,

1. There is a significant difference between "genetically modified" and the results of selective breeding. In GM, typically genetic material from a non-related species is introduced into the DNA of the target species. This is something that is poorly understood in terms of its rate of occurrence in the natural environment, although there are biological mechanisms whereby it can and does happen.

2. The golden rice is GM because the genetic information was obtained from a selected hybrid of the sweet potato, an unrelated species. This is not hybridization or cross-pollination. Those in this 'blog who dismiss GM because "we have been doing it for thousands of years" are "comparing apples to oranges"--literally.

3. I looked at the Tufts University's filed research proposal and the other references in the original posting. Unfortunately the article regarding the dismissal of the Chinese researchers was not in English, so I couldn't read it.

4. The most obvious concern to me was that the study was using isotope-labeled forms of the β Carotene (specifically the hydrogen isotope deuterium and carbon-13). My memory is that both of these are non-radioactive. However the thought of isotopes is a point of alarm to many.

5. Beyond all these are the valid question of ethics in patenting and the possibly legal but immoral defense of patented plants against neighbors whose fields have been contaminated by the natural spread of GM DNA in plant pollen.

--JMM

Charlotte von Vershuer is the granddaughter of famed genetics and eugenics researcher Orto von Verschuer, mentor of Joseph Mengele's research at Birkenau/Auschwitz.

Her Golden Rice is missing genes related to our immune support micronutrients normally in rice.

https://pwias.ubc.ca/profile/charlotte-von-verschuer