>The following critique of the current Ag/Bio GM technology and its
>implementation was forwarded to me on an "anti-GM" mailing list:
>
> http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~dcandmkw/ge/gebrown.htm
>
>I'd be very curious to see what sort of reaction it sparks from folks here
>who are more knowledgable about molecular biology.
>
> Greg Burch <GBurch1@aol.com>----<gburch@lockeliddell.com>
> Attorney ::: Vice President, Extropy Institute ::: Wilderness Guide
> http://users.aol.com/gburch1 -or- http://members.aol.com/gburch1
> ICQ # 61112550
> "We never stop investigating. We are never satisfied that we know
> enough to get by. Every question we answer leads on to another
> question. This has become the greatest survival trick of our species."
> -- Desmond Morris
The article is correct in all its scientific details, as far as I can
tell. I minored in Biochemistry in college and learned some
gene-splicing technologies which are now out of date. Programming
DNA is very much like programming a computer. There are often
unexpected side-effects. I believe that the big companies have
lobbied the FDA to ignore scientific questions that remain, and have
gotten permission to skip drug trials that would be required of new
food additives. The descriptions of the the processes in the article
are correct. Nature swaps around major pieces of DNA, and does not
insert random genes in random sequence. We are doing much more
precise tampering than is possible in nature. Such gene splicing
techniques take years to develop, because early attempts often have
catastrophic unexpected failures. Usually these are in the form of
complete death or obvious defomation of the crops.
I am personally in favor of programming our own food, our own bodies,
and our own brains. But, I am very afraid of our current inability
to produce perfectly flawless designs. Until our computers stop
crashing, our toys stop breaking, and our entertainment industry
stops producing flops, I fear that our ability to design and predict
the results of our tampering is not robust enough to bet my life on.
-- Harvey Newstrom <http://HarveyNewstrom.com> Certified Senior Security Consultant and Legal Hacker. Engineer, Research Scientist, Public Speaker and Author. Extropy Institute Benefactor since the last millennium.
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