Posts by Bart Janssen
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the raw sexual magnetism.
I had that problem once. I had myself degaussed, and it cleared right up. I still have a slight bias state though.
Surely you needed to reverse the polarity.
I'm pretty sure OSH has determined sexual magnetism needs to be heated to 65C for at least 30 minutes to be safe.
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Where I draw the line is trying to register patents on plant varieties that are already widely used merely by virtue of having isolated and described their genomes.
No disagreement here either. Most scientists run for cover when the lawyers start talking because it makes our heads hurt.
The problem has always been trying to adapt an old law (Patent Law) to a new world. It made sense that "discovering" a chemical should be patented. usually because it was associated with a (non-intuitive) isolation method.
Legally it made sense to extend that to "discovering" the sequence of the genome of, say apples. But out in the real world away from the lawyers it just doesn't make sense.
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Andrew if you fail to defend your patent protection against one farmer you may as well just give the seeds away. Some might argue that that's what should be done. But what you seem to be arguing is that farmers have some kind of right to simply use the GE crops that Monsanto developed for free. Again some might argue that is true. But Monsanto is within it's rights and it isn't unreasonable for them to use the law to defend those rights.
This isn't Monsanto being big meanies. In fact particularly outside the US Monsanto have been pretty generous, especially to small holders.
If you want to see the global results of the uptake of these crops on small farmers worldwide this report has some numbers
As for Monsanto's insidious PR plot - rofl.
As far as the science community is concerned Monsanto's failure to carry out even the most basic PR effort is one of the big reasons we see so much opposition to GE. Their initial PR efforts consisted of "piss off you ignorant shits, us businessmen know best".
To describe that as an insidious PR plot?
Yes there has been a huge effort on the part of the scientific community and the biotech industry (including Monsanto) to address issues raised and in general try and explain (without being condescending) why we believe the technology is both safe and beneficial.
Some folks (myself included) have the feeling that some of those arguing against GE have their own agenda and are using PR just as vigorously (and more competently). For example the Organic Consumers Association site you linked might be interpreted as supporting the Organic farming industry, which is quite a big business.
My time spent posting here about GE is my own and is taken from work I should be doing at the bench. But I'm doing it because there is a lot of misinformation still out there and I can pass on the stuff I know.
It is not my intention to argue ideology with you. If you believe GE is somehow "wrong" that's fine by me. Where I will respond is if you state things that are not the whole story or just not correct. I don't expect to change your mind and wouldn't dream of imposing my ideology in that way.
Oh and as for that piece of crap research that was published in Nature purporting to prove GE corn had introgressed into native maize... BULLSHIT. It was bullshit when it was published and it's bullshit now. The methological errors were in fact gaping holes in basic technique that undergrads spotted in the first reading of the paper. Nature F'd up, but it made a nice headline for them - good lord this is almost like mediawatch. When the scientific community screamed loud and hard that Nature had F'd up they had to remove the paper - that or give up pretending to be any kind of scientific journal. But the damage had been done because it allowed sites like the one you linked to pretend the paper was real and Monsanto had squashed it.
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informed that water is a lot harder than you'd think.
So I should wear protective clothing before I shower?
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it should be done by research bodies under national control, with the results available to all.
Now that's a message I'd like you to pass on to your MP please.
Seriously it is one of facts of research funding in NZ that we have to demonstrate a path to market for a product from our research. And demonstrate relationships with end-users (companies).
Essentially what that means is almost all government funding off research in New Zealand demands that the research be commercialised before it is funded.
Which makes what you want Rich, impossible.
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Sorry Stewart - fair call
Sometimes it's hard not to write some of this and sound condescending. My apologies I'll try harder.
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Bart - I kind of draw the line at being able to copyright or patent a genome
Paul - yeah it's a tough one. It gets at the heart of what patents are meant to do
... to allow publication of methods or discoveries so that others can build on them, while allowing the discoverer a period to profit...
which often doesn't seem to be the way it works out.The issue for me is developing a product using this kind of expensive research isn't cheap. Proving it was safe wasn't cheap either. In the case of Roundup ready and Bt crops developed by Monsanto it was literally billions of dollars.
But at the end the product was a seed that farmers really could gather and replant next season. So without any legal protection monsanto would have sold one seasons worth of seed and then gone bankrupt.
I know the Green Party would have cheered but it also would have ended the research completely since governments and businesses alike demand that research have some viable "product" at least possible.
To give you a local example New Zealand researchers have used selection to identify new fruit varieties. These are NOT transgenic at all, just the product of conventional breeding. But once you hand out the first plant any grower could take a cutting and "copy" that plant and there would be no way to get any money back for next years breeding programmes. As it is plant variety rights "protect" the breeders. Same for roses etc.
It is kind of patenting life but unless you can figure out a way to recover some of the costs of research without such a system then that's what we have to do.
Do you have a better suggestion for how it should be done?
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Stewart
Where genes from one organism are inserted into the genotype of another organism we (humans) are really dabbling in stuff about which we know very little.
By that I presume you mean stuff you know very little about. Actually we tend to know quite a lot about the experiments we do - not everything of course.
What we do know is that genes tend not to act alone
Yes they do, lots of times.
and that they combine to produce a wide variety of effects as those genes and gene-combinations are expressed at different stages of the organism's life-cycle.
Yeah neat isn't it :). Actually that's why I do this work because there is amazing stuff to learn - of course we can't do a lot of the experiments in NZ because the rules are so restrictive we can't afford to do the experiments even. Which is a pity because unless we can do the experiments we can never learn what combinations do what and where and when.
But your point is that you can't predict the interactions with certainty and I accept that point. But you can do testing to see what has changed and whether it is safe. that's what most of us researcher want the chance to do.
I, for one, am very wary of the possibility of these trans-genic combinations going awry.
Good then I presume you'll be all in favour of freeing up research so we can learn stuff. Oh and BTW nobody in this field is suggesting for a second we allow untested release.
Of course sadly from all the work we've done so far nobody has managed to make the scary combinations that you have referred to. Our ambition as evil mad scientists has thus far been a complete failures
Selective breeding is a very safe means of genetic 'manipulation'
Well no. This isn't true at all. It's really easy to breed very unsafe foods using selective breeding. Most plants have levels of toxic compounds in them and it's the exception rather than the rule that you can eat plants and NOT die.
You don't demand organic growers test the compounds they spray their plants with. Nor do you demand exhaustive testing for a new citrus hybrid. And that hybrid has mixed up genes in combinations never seen before in nature.
transposition of genes from within an organism's genotype is a bit more suspect...
No it isn't. It's orders of magnitude more precise than mixing whole genomes in selective breeding.
I get your concern. Believe me everyone working in this field gets your concern. None of us want anything to go "awry". We aren't paid by big business (I wish). We just want to use a safe and proven technology (15 years of millions of people eating transgenics) to try and improve the crops we grow in New Zealand.
Nobody is asking for a quick experiment in the lab and then straight to Foodtown. There is no way we would dream of widely planting crops we weren't sure were safe (as sure as is reasonably possible for anything).
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Matthew
You mean like how, and you even conceded this was true, they sued farmers who'd had their crops contaminated by GE wheat that hadn't come from their own farms?
I didn't want to have to go over this again. But... the poor farmer in question went to the field on his property right next to a field of transgenic RR plants. He then sprayed a strip of the area with roundup hoping that there might be some stray transgenic seed, and he found some. That was all fine.
Then he took those seed and bulked them up by planting them out and spraying again until he had enough to plant his own field. That was NOT fine.
Note he actually went to considerable lengths to obtain patent protected seed to plant because he knew he would make more money using that seed than using ordinary seed. He was not some poor organic farmer whose crop was contaminated.
It's equivalent to living next door to a recording studio and using high tech listening devices to get a recording of a new band's album and then selling that.
That is why Monsanto took him to court. Much as I disliked the bad press it gave GE I understand why Monsanto wanted to protect something they had spent billions developing.
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Does anyone here really believe that the track record of multinational corporations will result in a ethical, responsible approach to GE, or more of the same irresponsible cost externalisation ?
Um I do. Seriously Mikaere, Monsanto has been incredibly careful in the release of it's GE products. They keep a really close eye on farmers to make sure the farmers maintain refuges that have, thus far protected against BT resistance. They've been really responsible about the way the crops have gone through safety assessment.
Don't get me wrong I hate the way business driven by maximising shareholder benefit has done disgusting things. And Monsanto in it prior incarnations has been as bad as any. But on GE they've been pretty damn good.
But the other half of your statement is that you believe that only big business can develop GE crops. If that is true now it is only because of the ridiculously complex and restrictive research and development environment created by opponents of GE. Most of the GE research is done in (small) government labs. And is done by incredibly honourable and devoted scientists, almost all of whom would like nothing better than to have their work help save the planet. But we can't get out of the lab without some "person" destroying the experiments, and that's after going through the incredibly thorough and expensive ERMA process.
Saying that the Greens risk-averse position on GE is akin to saying that all GE is evil...
Sorry that's kind of unfair. The Greens version of "risk averse" demands that we prove 100% safety before we are allowed to do anything out of the lab. Never mind that similar demands are not made of organic crops or herbal remedies, the real problem with such a stance, as you and the greens know, is that nothing absolutely nothing can ever ever be proven 100% safe. So it is exactly the same as a complete ban.
Let me be clear none of the scientists working on GE believe that we should do anything other than test thoroughly to make as sure as is reasonable that what is done is safe. And we get pretty pissed off ourselves when someone stuffs up. But the key is reasonable risk and balancing that against reward. At the moment I don't feel the Green party are reasonable on this issue.