Yes to embryo cell research

[hellfish6 7]

I would agree to some extent that stem cell research is probably a good thing, as long as the embryos are used carefully and only for scientific research to curing diseases.  Cloning of humans, on the other hand, would be a very, very bad thing, and definately should not be allowed anywhere.  There's pretty much no legitimate reason to clone a human, and there would be very, very little, if any benefits, to doing it, whereas there would be very large risks involved.  

Whoa, whoa, whoa... nobody is saying anything about cloning a human being here. Stem cell therapy is totally different. Stem cell research uses only fertilized embryos that are, I think, between 16 and 64 days old. Outside of this limit, and the cells are totally useless for research purposes. And, if someone wants to get super prickly about this, even the Catholic Church has said that embryos under 60 days old are not considered to be living. If I dig around for my old university notes, I'm sure I'll have a source here somewhere.

I think you'd be hard pressed to find anybody in favor of cloning. I, for one, think we have too many people on the planet. The last thing I think we need is more mouths to feed.

That said, I don't think there's anything wrong with trying to help people out, especially for things they have no control over, like genetic maladies and byproducts of our environment. Someone who has a broken spine from a collision with a drunk driver should have a chance to walk again. Life may not be fair, but that doesn't mean it can't be.

Quote[/b] ]Also, abortion is nothing short of murder. Part of max's sig a few months ago expressed (IMO)the views of many liberals well, "Kill babies, not convicts". Not to try to pull this off-topic, just it was mentioned in the first post.

I think you're wrong. But we're not going to talk about this. I think we've all had talks about this with friends and enemies in the past and nobody is going to change anybody's mind about it. And, FYI, Max's little quip was meant as a joke and nothing more.

[Harnu 0]

Stem cell research as I understand it should definately be looked into. All the possibilities it can have for the diseases it can cure. Cloning I'd probably be against. I.E. The last thing you need it two of the wrong person.

Quote[/b] ]Part of max's sig a few months ago expressed (IMO)the views of many liberals well, "Kill babies, not convicts". Not to try to pull this off-topic, just it was mentioned in the first post.

If that is the one I'm thinking of, that was during an MP game on OFP. If you could have read everything before hand, you'd knows it's just a joke.

Quote[/b] ]And why a person with low metabolism and low physical "wear" is likely to live longer than someone like a football player or weight lifting dude.

Tack one more on the "Reasons I'll die early" list

[hellfish6 7]

Stem cell research as I understand it should definately be looked into.  All the possibilities it can have for the diseases it can cure.  Cloning I'd probably be against.  I.E.  The last thing you need it two of the wrong person.

Well, you can clone Hitler, but it will be Hitler only in genetics. When you clone something, you don't get a full size exact replica of the host. You get a fertilized egg that is born and grows up exposed to a different world. So you can clone anybody you want to and it will be a fundamentally different person. Nature vs. Nurture and all of that.

[Harnu 0]

Doh! I forgot about that lol.  I've been doing some exercise the past hour and don't think 100% straight afterwards.  (Not saying I think straight before hand, but hey   )

[hellfish6 7]

Ah... oxygen deprivation. Good for you! Stem cells can cure that...

[denoir 0]

Well, you can clone Hitler, but it will be Hitler only in genetics. When you clone something, you don't get a full size exact replica of the host. You get a fertilized egg that is born and grows up exposed to a different world. So you can clone anybody you want to and it will be a fundamentally different person. Nature vs. Nurture and all of that.

Exactly. A very good example of it: CopyCat/CarbonCopy - the world's first cloned cat. They have a picture of the original as well.

And we've had clones since the dawn of man kind - monozygotic twins.

No, the real issue with biotech is creating plants and animals that get out in the eco system and which the eco system can't handle. So while I'm all for research in the are, I think we should be waaay more careful before exposing people and nature to it. Our current knowledge of the long term effects of GM are non-existent and GM has the potential of fucking up the world really, really bad.

So, I'd like to see much more testing and research before planting that GM tomato that after a few normal rounds of mutation starts reproducing like hell and killing all the other plants. We have to know better what we are doing. It's quite possible that it will turn out that it's harmless. The potential bad things that could happen make it however very important to invastigate all the effects of GM properly.

[hellfish6 7]

We have GM crops everywhere around me right now. Drive about thirty minutes in any direction and you'll pass GMO fields. It's kinda creepy, but in more of a "What exactly did they do to my food" kind of way instead of a "Killer tomatoes from Monsanto" kind of way.

[denoir 0]

I'm not so worried about the food part. I'm sure they do testing to see that it isn't toxic or anything. And it's not exacly like you mate with your food, so I don't see any genetic threat to people.

The problem is that our knowledge of genetics is still very limited. When they're chaning the DNA of wheat or whatever, they just change some small bits that they have seen can be changed to achieve some effect. They do not however know what other effects changing those small bits might have. Plus the bastard mutates in nature. If it goes wrong it would be very bad as it could ruin the eco system.

And I'm not talking about the environmentalist "you have to recycle or you'll ruin the eco system". I'm talking really bad stuff such as one plant becoming completely dominant through efficient reproduction and becuase it kills all other plant life. The same concerns you might have for biological warfare applies in principle here as well. If you loose control over the biosystem then you're screwed.

Quote[/b] ]. It's kinda creepy, but in more of a "What exactly did they do to my food" kind of way

Oh, nothing dramatic - they just took fish-DNA and inserted it so that it would be more resiliant

[Oligo 1]

Denoir, you don't seem to know all the facts behind GMO plants and animals. However, I don't have time to write a reply now, but I'll get back to this tomorrow.

[Baron Hurlothrumbo IIX 0]

When they're chaning the DNA of wheat or whatever, they just change some small bits that they have seen can be changed to achieve some effect. They do not however know what other effects changing those small bits might have. Plus the bastard mutates in nature.

IMO GM is no different from plants mutating by themselves or selective breeding for specific genes. They could all produce some bastard mutant that decimates the competition but they are all equally unlikely to.

[DJ_Mittens 0]

I would agree to some extent that stem cell research is probably a good thing, as long as the embryos are used carefully and only for scientific research to curing diseases.  Cloning of humans, on the other hand, would be a very, very bad thing, and definately should not be allowed anywhere.  There's pretty much no legitimate reason to clone a human, and there would be very, very little, if any benefits, to doing it, whereas there would be very large risks involved.  

Whoa, whoa, whoa... nobody is saying anything about cloning a human being here. Stem cell therapy is totally different. Stem cell research uses only fertilized embryos that are, I think, between 16 and 64 days old. Outside of this limit, and the cells are totally useless for research purposes. And, if someone wants to get super prickly about this, even the Catholic Church has said that embryos under 60 days old are not considered to be living. If I dig around for my old university notes, I'm sure I'll have a source here somewhere.

I think you'd be hard pressed to find anybody in favor of cloning. I, for one, think we have too many people on the planet. The last thing I think we need is more mouths to feed.

That said, I don't think there's anything wrong with trying to help people out, especially for things they have no control over, like genetic maladies and byproducts of our environment. Someone who has a broken spine from a collision with a drunk driver should have a chance to walk again. Life may not be fair, but that doesn't mean it can't be.

Quote[/b] ]Also, abortion is nothing short of murder.  Part of max's sig a few months ago expressed (IMO)the views of many liberals well, "Kill babies, not convicts".  Not to try to pull this off-topic, just it was mentioned in the first post.

I think you're wrong. But we're not going to talk about this. I think we've all had talks about this with friends and enemies in the past and nobody is going to change anybody's mind about it. And, FYI, Max's little quip was meant as a joke and nothing more.

Are you kidding me? What if someone lost their pet dog or cat, or what if they lost a family member in a tragic accident? Watch 6th Day, that's what would happen with cloning technology.

[EiZei 0]

I would not call 6th day a realistic or indepth documentary about cloning.

[Tamme 0]

The doll was annoying. I hated it.

[hellfish6 7]

Are you kidding me?  What if someone lost their pet dog or cat, or what if they lost a family member in a tragic accident?  Watch 6th Day, that's what would happen with cloning technology.

You're serious? Look at what Denoir posted just above about the cloned cat. It'll have almost the exact same DNA, but even if it looked like your dead pet/relative, it still wouldn't be that person! You can clone me, and I promise you that whomever pops out will not be me. It won't have my experiences, my musical taste, my general disdain for captialism, and it probably won't look too much like me either.

[theavonlady 2]

You can clone me, and I promise you that whomever pops out will not be me.

Cloned moderators.

Do you really want this folks?

[hellfish6 7]

Even I don't want that...

[Oligo 1]

Okay, here is my rant on GMO plants. I'm trying to make it an objective one.

Typical multi-celled eukaryotic organisms like humans and soy beans have around one billion base pairs (bp) of DNA, give or take a few orders of magnitude. A typical gene is a stretch of sequence of about 500 to 10000 bp in length. The chemical structure of DNA in all organisms is the same, it's the sequence of the four bases (A,G,C,T) that is different. However, the sequence homology between different species is astounding, especially in the case of "household genes", the most numerous of genes, which are responsible for basic metabolic processes. Furthermore, since the genetic code is degenerate (many different words can mean the same thing), the functional homology between different species is even greater than the sequence homology. One big happy family.

Now, what we do in genetic engineering is take one or a few of those 500-10000 bp genes and transfer them from one organism to another or we destroy one or more genes to make the organism function better for us. Examples:

Tomatoes spoil easily, because tomatoes have a gene, which codes for an enzyme which hastens the spoiling of the tomato. Obviously the tomato needs this gene in order to compete better against other plants or it wouldn't have it. We humans surely don't want rapidly spoiling tomatoes, so we have engineered a tomato called "FlavrSavr" in which that one gene has been deleted. So this species is better for us, but weaker in competition against other plants. No risk of übertomatoes developing here, right?

Rice does not have vitamin A. People who mostly exist on rice diets have a lot of vitamin A deficiency (ceuses blindness). By introducing three new genes to rice (two from a flower species, one from a species of bacteria), researchers have been able to get a species of rice which has A vitamin in it (Golden Rice). Unfortunately it currently does not have enough of it to make a major nutritional impact (it can only provide 8% of the daily recommended intake), but research is ongoing. These three new genes offer the plant only an extra energy expediture, so Golden Rice is at a competitive disadvantage in nature. No chance of überrice developing, right?

Plants can get frostbite and die, every northern farmer knows this. Frostbite is caused by the crystallization of water (ice) inside plant cells in low temperatures, which causes disruption of the cell machinery. With genetic engineering we can introduce one gene from certain fish to certain plants. This gene codes for a protein, which, when present, inhibits water crystal formation in cells. Thus the cold tolerance of these plants is better than that of the normal plants (but not infinite). Therefore these plants could fare better against other plants in nature in very cold areas. However, producing the protein in every cell consumes a lot of resources, which is a competitive disadvantage for the plant. Could überweeds take over if they got a hold of this gene?

Weeds are killed from fields by the use of pesticides, which do not harm the plants being cultivated, but also do not rapidly break up in nature. Glyphosate is a pesticide, which kills all plants and breaks up in nature very rapidly (soil bacteria eat it). With genetic engineering researchers have introduced a gene to some plants (like soy beans), which makes them resistant to glyphosate. Thus fields can be treated with glyphosate and only weeds are killed. The gene, of course, is a metabolic burden to the planty that carries it. Could überweeds take over if they got a hold of this gene?

In order to better judge the last two questions, you have to consider such thing as antibiotic resistance of bacteria. When subjected to antibiotics, some bacteria pick up antibiotic resistance genes from the environment or get them by mutations of their own genome. But once the antibiotics are taken out (and this has been proven several times), the bacteria start kicking out the resistance genes, since having them in an environment free of antibiotics is a waste of energy better spent on outbreeding the competition. This is why antibiotics resistant infections often happen in hospitals, which are environments rich in antibiotics. Having useless genes is a competitive disadvantage, people!

To conclude, in my opinion regulating genetic engineering with regulations that make sense is a good thing, but the witch hunt we have been seeing especially in Europe is downright idiotic. Greenpeace sucks arse. Thank you.

[theavonlady 2]

Could überweeds take over if they got a hold of this gene?

Are you being sarcastic or is there a way that these modified genes could transfer over from one species to another?

Quote[/b] ]Greenpeace sucks

LOL! But only to an extent. You have to admit there would be a lot more environmental abuse without them in cases most people would agree upon.

[hellfish6 7]

I think your post is one of the most intelligent things I've read in a long time, as it sounds like you know what you're talking about in a more-than-casual-interest kind of way.

Except this part:

Quote[/b] ]Greenpeace sucks arse

As a member of Greenpeace, I have to disagree with you. I do not suck arse nor does anyone else I know. I don't know exactly why they're opposing GMOs in Europe (I'm more of a wildlife/resource person myself) but I would think they'd have good reason. The only thing I can think of right now is that American GMOs would, if used/sold in Europe, rapidly destroy the European agricultural sector. Europe simply doesn't have the kinds of investments in GMOs that America has, and therefore is trying to protect itself and its farmers. Not an altogether bad thing, IMHO.

Morally, and being as that I fancy myself a Socialist, I'd much rather have my veggies coming from Pierre down the road than some chemist/geneticist over at ADM or Monsanto. But, I'm an American, so I have very little choice in the matter. I buy organic when I can, but I can't always.

[Oligo 1]

Are you being sarcastic or is there a way that these modified genes could transfer over from one species to another?

I'm not being sarcastic and yes, there are theoretically two ways such transfer could be possible:

1. If cross-pollination of for example a weed with pollen from GM plants were to produce viable offspring, this offspring could have the extra gene in it. Such offspring would probably be sickly as compared to the parent plants (conflicting genes and such) and would probably lose in competition in nature. Also, if genetic exchange with cross-pollination would be commonplace in nature, there would be a lot of cases of food poisoning (people eating plants with toxin generating genes transferred from toxic plants).

2. Some plant viruses and bacteria can pick up DNA from their host and transfer it to a new host as they infect a new plant. This is probably also quite rare, since genetic exchange between plants seems to be quite rare in nature (see above).

You also have to remember that nature is a master of adaptation to competition meaning that the species we find in nature are pretty damn well optimized for survival. It is my personal opinion that we could not (currently) generate an überplant even if we tried our damnest to do it. We can only improve on areas the nature is not interested in improving, like suitability for human consumption and farming properties.

[Oligo 1]

Hellfish6, here are some points:

Me saying "greenpeace sucks arse" just reflects my frustration and like you noticed, it was written under the clause "in my opinion". I used to like greenpeace, but then I realized that they oppose everything new just for the sake of opposition, since their arguments are always designed to make the average Joe alarmed. Their opposition of the Golden Rice for example is ridiculous: They say that since you can only get about 8% of your daily recommended intake of vitamin A from Golden Rice, it is not worth eating. Answer me this, is it better to get 8% than nothing?

About Pierre down the road, well, where do you think Pierre gets his seeds? Since nobody anywhere I believe is farming the natural variants of edible plants, but the variants produced by thousands of years of selective plant breeding, Pierre buys his seeds from seed companies every once and a while in order to keep his plants maximally producing. So Pierre down the road could buy his seeds from Monsanto and farm away, thus enabling you still to buy your veggies from Pierre. Remember that if Pierre uses glyphosate resistant GMO seeds he can use environmentally friendly pesticide which does not screw up nature like the other pesticides do.

[CosmicCastaway 0]

With things like genetic modification of plants, whilst it can provide benefits to the human population (not to mention profits to the companies that produce them), there are definate fears (especially in Europe) about the supposed 'contamination' of the natural environment.

The issue of plant species 'escaping' into the wider environment is quite real, the long term effects of such contamination are yet to be determined however. (Most studies up to this point have been woefully inadequate) Perhaps a more important issue with the modifaction of certain plant species, would be the adaptation of the insect species to the changes. There are certain crops that have been modified to produce their own insecticide. Whilst this may be effective in the short term, nature has a knack of adapting to changing circumstances, and it would not be long before a more adapted variant of the plants previous pest popped up.

But as we can see from cases such as the 'Golden rice' possibly preventing blindness (they used a gene from the Daffodil for that one), the need is generally very obvious, whilst the ramifications of such modification are much less so.

So, genetic modification has potential, however as with most things the development of such technology is driven by the need for profit. (Not a sense of altruism on the part of the companies involved) As such, the promotion of the widespread use of such technology is being pushed, generally with very little long term testing and study.

[Oligo 1]

The issue of modified plant species escaping into the environment is something the opponents of GMO plants always bring up without understanding a few basic facts: 1. Nothing in this world is truly separate from the environment, 2. GMO species are already cultivated in the U.S. so their "escape in to the world" has happened already and 3. the genes that have been introduced into the GMO plants are natural genes from different species, thus they are already present in the environment. Besides, I know of many experiments done in countries with free legislation, where insane amounts of GMOs have been dumped into the environment without any harmful result, but lots of beneficial results, especially in the area of environmental clean up.

About the plants that produce their own pesticide: Into these plants, a gene from an insect virus (Baculovirus) has been introduced. This gene codes for a protein, which can form holes in the surface of the digestive tract of some insects (=dead insect). This gene has been present in the nature for ages, baculoviruses are probably much older than humans. Yet, insects have not developed a resistence to the porin gene. Also, if the insects did develop a resistence to porin producing GMO plants, it would not make any difference, except maybe to the cash flow of the company producing the GMO seeds. Remember that insects becoming resistent to chemical pesticides has not stopped us using chemical pesticides. DDT still saves lives in the third world (and that is some bad shit).

And finally, about the motivation of the scientists developing GMO crops: Scientists need money to work (like we all do) and what best funder but a commercial company. If such products as Golden Rice or RoundUp resistant plants are made with such obvious benefits to the whole humankind, I don't care whether the motivation of the scientists is greed, altruism or the will to play god.

As a researcher in biotechnology, I find it insulting that our moral values are always questioned. People think that you have to be a greedy bastard to be in biotech...

[denoir 0]

Tomatoes spoil easily, because tomatoes have a gene, which codes for an enzyme which hastens the spoiling of the tomato. Obviously the tomato needs this gene in order to compete better against other plants or it wouldn't have it. We humans surely don't want rapidly spoiling tomatoes, so we have engineered a tomato called "FlavrSavr" in which that one gene has been deleted. So this species is better for us, but weaker in competition against other plants. No risk of übertomatoes developing here, right?

Really Oligo? Wow you almost have me convinced there, almost. The problem is that that one little gene that regulates the enzyme that spoils the tomato could be responsible for 100,000 other functions that you have not got the slightest idea about. That one little gene could very well be regulating another enzyme that controls the production of some carcinogenic substance.

Or it could be controlling the composition of the DNA validation wetware and making it easier to mutate. Plus why not that it regulates the reproduction cycle of the tomato.

Yeah so no we have something that reproduces very fast and mutates very fast. And within some time your little non-spoiling tomato has hairy legs and eats small animals.

No but seriously, suddenly your tomato becomes a factor in the eco system. And what you didn't know was that the XYZ bug's favourite plant was ran over by your übertomato. So it has no food and starts dying. And the YZX bird that eats the XYZ bug dies. And once that starts happening the whole eco system comes crashing down on you.

[theavonlady 2]

And within some time your little non-spoiling tomato has hairy legs and eats small animals.

/avon passes up on fresh salad for lunch