From: "Robert J. Bradbury" <bradbury@www.aeiveos.com>
>This goes back to some degree to the "nutriceuticals"
>that I had to run through at the Extro4 conference.
I hated missing Extro-4
>People will find engineered crops *much* more acceptable
>if you tell them they are *better* for *them* instead
>of being *better* for the farmers (with insect resistance).
I couldn't agree more. I'm not interested in biotech crops whose purpose is to be able to successfully douse the fields with "Roundup", in fact I oppose such bioengineering. I have a hunch this will backfire anyway as plasmid transfer renders the weeds immune as well.
I'll take a Brandywine tomato over a "flavrsavr" anyday...
The heirloom gardening folks and new seed companies like "seeds of change" are the ones on the right track.
>I'll be interested to see what happens if they engineer
>say something like cabbage to take out the toxins
>that are "theoretically" carcinogenic. Then you
>market the engineered cabbage as *less* toxic than
>natural cabbage (with data from some scientific
>studies proving it to be the case). I'll lay odds
>that the "naturalists" will still be unimpressed.
>All of the crops I've seen so far have either been
>for the benefit of the farmer (Bt-enhanced crops),
>the consumer's pocketbook (i.e. the Calgene
>tomato & indirectly the Bt-enhanced crops) and
>perhaps the seed producer (by engineering
>in ways to make the crop sterile, so you have
>to by more seed from the seed producer).
Seeds of change won't sell a seed that won't naturally pollinate.
>It is interesting that if public labs get into
>the business of producing engineered enhancements
>in non-sterile seeds, then industry would be forced
>to follow suit. For many years industry didn't want
>to do genetically engineered crops because they
>couldn't figure out how to make them sterile.
>It interesting that this is a case where government
>"competition" could force technology development
>in industry.
Actually the micronutrient rice is only a halfway step in my opinion. We need to get over the Judeo-Christian belief that everything we need has been put here for us by a supreme being, and get people on good vitamin/mineral/antioxident protocols. You'd have to eat oranges all day to get the 6 grams of vitamin C I get in 6 tablets.....
I just had a complete physical and all my readings were textbook perfect.... cholesterol at 172 and I'm 290lbs.
Brian
Member, Extropy Institute, www.extropy.org
Life Extension Foundation, www.lef.org
National Rifle Association, www.nra.org, 1.800.672.3888
Ameritech Data Center Chicago, IL, Local 134 I.B.E.W