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MisterMyco
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Re: 14 worst Corporations [Re: seeker]
#5295802 - 02/13/06 04:57 PM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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Quote:
seeker said: Why don't you go down to your local farmers market and put a little money into local agriculture instead of spending it at the supermarket which buys from distributors which are owned by the corporations that perpetuates an economic state that encourages the farmer to export the bulk of his crop rather than selling it locally which leads to food shortages and high prices, and, of course, starving Indians? Huh?
I grow my own food, and guess what, I'm not starving to death. People in India are. If my neighbor and his family were producing so much food that they had to sell most of it off, and I was starving to death, I wouldn't be yelling at him for his technique
-------------------- "I have never, in all my life, not for one moment, been tempted toward religion of any kind. The fact is that I feel no spiritual void. I have my philosophy of life, which does not include any aspect of the supernatural." Isaac Asimov
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wilshire
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Re: 14 worst Corporations [Re: seeker]
#5296264 - 02/13/06 06:37 PM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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Fact: The Coca Cola company uses the syrup from its famous product to degrease the engines of it truck fleet. Do enjoy.
i think you'd have more than a little difficulty in using corn syrup as a degreaser.
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Phluck
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Re: 14 worst Corporations [Re: Alex213]
#5297146 - 02/13/06 09:28 PM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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Nothing irrational about it. Irrational is eating something that has had absolutely no long-term testing and is now being fed to children.
Did we do long term testing on all naturally occurring plants? No. Is there anything more dangerous about genetically engineered foods than natural foods? No, there isn't.
People have this ingrained belief that they're somehow far above nature. That the things we do go way beyond anything nature does.
But that's not the way things work. In nature, plants are mutating all the time, changing their genetics in weird new ways. This is no less likely to have dangerous results than genetic changes we make in a lab, yet all kinds of people are deathly afraid of genetic engineering, and assume anything out of nature must be perfectly safe.
I think it's more a case of being wary of multinational corporations trying to make enormous profits by contaminating the environment with GM crops when no-one has the faintest idea of their long-term effect on the environment or the people who eat them.
Sounds like a case of assuming "if a corporation does it, then it has to be harmful and evil", which isn't the case at all.
GMO foods are just plants whose genetic changes have been controlled by humans, as opposed to just randomly happening.
How many plants have crazy dangerous effect that we don't know about, and require vigorous testing to discover? How many plants take over and destroy entire ecosystems?
These things happen, but they aren't that common. When we discover a new species in nature that seems good to eat, nobody goes wild demanding extensive long term testing to ensure that they're safe to eat. Yet they pose an equal, or even greater (because we have no familiarity with them at all, as opposed to a good understanding of the genetic changes we're making, and the source plants) risk.
It's just that people assume that since something is made in a lab, it must be evil and dangerous, even though it's no more evil and dangerous than the plants in nature.
-------------------- "I have no valid complaint against hustlers. No rational bitch. But the act of selling is repulsive to me. I harbor a secret urge to whack a salesman in the face, crack his teeth and put red bumps around his eyes." -Hunter S Thompson http://phluck.is-after.us
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wilshire
free radical


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Re: 14 worst Corporations [Re: Phluck]
#5297289 - 02/13/06 10:07 PM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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i am a student who is pretty far along on the way to a degree in horticulture. genetic engineering is a hot topic in my classes, and i've heard different angles on it from a number of people with Ph.D's in fields like plant breeding, plant physiology, and ecology. the general opinion of the faculty is that it is a valuable technology which can be put to a lot of good use (especially amongst those who know the most about it). i'm inclined to agree.
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Silversoul
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Re: 14 worst Corporations [Re: wilshire]
#5297452 - 02/13/06 11:02 PM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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Quote:
wilshire said: i am a student who is pretty far along on the way to a degree in horticulture. genetic engineering is a hot topic in my classes, and i've heard different angles on it from a number of people with Ph.D's in fields like plant breeding, plant physiology, and ecology. the general opinion of the faculty is that it is a valuable technology which can be put to a lot of good use (especially amongst those who know the most about it). i'm inclined to agree.
I agree as well, though I'm also inclined to agree with DoctorJ's post that, like any tool, it's value depends on the intentions of the person using it.
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Alex213
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Re: 14 worst Corporations [Re: Phluck]
#5297571 - 02/13/06 11:50 PM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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Did we do long term testing on all naturally occurring plants? No
Well they've existed in nature for millions of years and humans have eaten certain ones for hundreds of thousands of years so they have quite a bit more roadtesting than something Monsanto developed last year.
Is there anything more dangerous about genetically engineered foods than natural foods? No, there isn't.
No-one knows this yet. That's why we needed the testing.
Sounds like a case of assuming "if a corporation does it, then it has to be harmful and evil", which isn't the case at all.
It's more a case of assuming that before you let loose genetic engineering in the environment you have the first clue of what long-term effect it is going to have on a) the environment, b) wildlife and humans that eat it.
If we knew that then the fact that corporations developed it would be irrelevant.
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SirFrancisBacon
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Re: 14 worst Corporations [Re: Silversoul]
#5297638 - 02/14/06 12:03 AM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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Here's my problem with the article:
1) waaay to pessimistic, antagonistic is perhaps a better word
2) Uses evidence dishonestly. i.e. conjectures as solid evidence (Coke assassinates) which discredits the article in any marketable sense.
3) Is part of a school of thought that uses the fact that bad things happen as leverage for the endorsement of government programs - a Global New Deal, if you will.
4) It starts off running using predictable rhetoric. If you've ever taken a global studies course on economics, this should sound familiar i.e. "Corporations carry out some of the most horrific human rights abuses of modern times, but it is increasingly difficult to hold them to account. Economic globalization and the rise of transnational corporate power have created a favorable climate for corporate human rights abusers, which are governed principally by the codes of supply and demand and show genuine loyalty only to their stockholders."
5) Could be used as a valuable tool to raise public awareness, but instead it reads like its being spoken through a megaphone outside of some economic summit
6) Is part of a school of thought that ignores the effectiveness of economics in the physical world and instead couches itself in college classrooms where ideas are tossed around while recieving thoughtful nods but never materialize
7) is easily forgotten once you stop hanging around people who rant about it. which is sad, because the information is valuable.
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Phluck
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Re: 14 worst Corporations [Re: Alex213]
#5297698 - 02/14/06 12:19 AM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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Well they've existed in nature for millions of years and humans have eaten certain ones for hundreds of thousands of years so they have quite a bit more roadtesting than something Monsanto developed last year.
Not all of them have existed that long, mutations occur all the time and continue to occur today, and humans haven't eaten all of them for that long. We continue to discover new things that are good to eat in nature to this day, and I don't see anyone throwing a fit.
No-one knows this yet. That's why we needed the testing.
When you manipulate the genetics in a plant, it's not doing anything magical that couldn't or doesn't already occur in nature. It's just doing it in a way that we have control of. There isn't anything magically different about plants that have been modified by humans than plants that have been modified randomly through all the factors that cause mutations. Sure, we've combined genes that wouldn't have been combined in nature, but these plants aren't producing crazy compounds that are foreign to nature, or that behave in bizarre, or weird ways.
If you put a gene into celery so that it produces Vitamin A, there's no reason to think that it's going to cause all kinds of other problems. It would be no different than if celery had naturally produced Vitamin A on its own.
Some people seem to think that genetically modifying something is going to make plants magically weird or unnatural, but they're the same as natural things. Because the process is complicated, and people don't understand it, they think that there's something happening there that taints the plants in an unholy manner.
But think of it this way: If you take seeds from a plant, and plant them somewhere that the seeds couldn't have fallen to on their own, but has similar soil and light sources to the original location of the plant, they'll be pretty much the same thing, only growing in a new and possibly more convenient place that before. But someone might say "Hey! Moving those seeds is unnatural, how do you know those plants aren't dangerous?" Well, there's absolutely no evidence that they're dangerous, or any reason I can think of that they'd be dangerous. "But extensive testing hasn't been done yet, so how can we know for sure?"
Since we understand what's happening there, the paranoid guy seems like he's being really silly. But with genetically modified foods, most people don't really understand what's being done, so they feel justified in getting all paranoid, but in most cases, they really aren't.
If the new food has a lot of strange and unknown compounds in it, then there would be reason for concern. Perhaps there are some foods where this is an issue, but as far as I know, in most cases it isn't.
-------------------- "I have no valid complaint against hustlers. No rational bitch. But the act of selling is repulsive to me. I harbor a secret urge to whack a salesman in the face, crack his teeth and put red bumps around his eyes." -Hunter S Thompson http://phluck.is-after.us
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Alex213
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Re: 14 worst Corporations [Re: Phluck]
#5298714 - 02/14/06 10:48 AM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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When you manipulate the genetics in a plant, it's not doing anything magical that couldn't or doesn't already occur in nature
Well, it's doing something nature hasn't done, otherwise Monsanto wouldn't need to do it. Nature isn't going to mate an arctic fish with a strawberry plant.
Some people seem to think that genetically modifying something is going to make plants magically weird or unnatural, but they're the same as natural things.
They're unnatural in the sense that they arn't created by nature.
So Monsanto develop a "supercrop" and toss it out into the countryside, the genes spread and you get superweeds that normal pesticides can't kill. So anyone wanting to grow natural, organic food on a nearby farm now has to use enormous quantities of industrial strength pesticides to kill superweeds - that has a massive knock on effect on insect life, animal life, fish life etc. The superweeds overwhelm other plants, insects who depend on these plants then start dying out, birds and mammals that eat the insects die out etc up through the chain.
Nature has developed these sensitive ecosystems over millions of years. You can't just toss in a massive change at the bottom and think that's the end of the matter. And I don't get the impression GM firms give a flying fuck about the effect their products have on the ecosystem as long as they make a profit.
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wilshire
free radical


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Re: 14 worst Corporations [Re: Alex213]
#5299069 - 02/14/06 12:26 PM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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Well, it's doing something nature hasn't done
as is all plant breeding. pretty much everything you see at the grocery store was completely different before plant breeders started working on it.
Nature isn't going to mate an arctic fish with a strawberry plant.
neither does genetic engineering. certain genes are taken from some organisms and introduced into others. the process is much more precise and selective than mating one organism with another, which involves a huge amount of chance and uncertainty. i'm pretty sure what you're referring to was done with tomatoes, not strawberries, and like many of the really crazy combo's the anti-GMO activists like to use to smear the technology, this one was never used in any commercial product.
the genes spread and you get superweeds that normal pesticides can't kill.
pesticide resistance is a major problem with or without genetic engineering.
So anyone wanting to grow natural, organic food on a nearby farm now has to use enormous quantities of industrial strength pesticides to kill superweeds
since organic farms cannot use synthetic pesticides, pesticide resistance isn't an issue for them. there's the BT issue, but again, that's a resistance issue whether we're using conventional technologies or genetic modification.
genetically engineered food crops are subjected to the most rigorous testing process of any food supply in human history. it is also quite possible to produce poisonous lines through conventional breeding. this happens very easily with many of the solenaceous crops (nightshades). i worked on a tomato breeding project (conventional cross breeding) where many of our lines were poisonous. almonds are another example.
it's all genetic modification. one uses modern technology to move stuff around, one uses natural mechanisms. they do the same thing. genetic engineering just does it in a more precise, calculated manner.
what we will see over the nexy century, with biotechnology and nanotechnology, is a unification of the "organic" and the "mechanical". cells are machines too after all.
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Phluck
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Re: 14 worst Corporations [Re: Alex213]
#5299397 - 02/14/06 02:18 PM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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Well, it's doing something nature hasn't done, otherwise Monsanto wouldn't need to do it. Nature isn't going to mate an arctic fish with a strawberry plant.
Like the other guy pointed out, inserting a couple genes from one organism into another is NOTHING like mating the two, I don't see how anyone with a basic understanding of what's being done would mix up the two.
No, nature hasn't made the exact combinations of genes that genetic engineering has, but it's constantly altering genes in a much less thoughtful manner than the genetic engineers are. To think that nature's method of genetic change is somehow safer or less likely to cause trouble makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. It's based on the irrational belief that what humans do is naturally prone to evil, and is completely different from nature.
Nature has developed these sensitive ecosystems over millions of years.
Yet nature often throws all kinds of crazy curveballs at itself, that's the way these things work. It's silly to think that nature has carefully developed itself to work perfectly, that simply isn't the case, nature is the way it is because of chaotic interference, not despite it.
-------------------- "I have no valid complaint against hustlers. No rational bitch. But the act of selling is repulsive to me. I harbor a secret urge to whack a salesman in the face, crack his teeth and put red bumps around his eyes." -Hunter S Thompson http://phluck.is-after.us
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Alex213
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Re: 14 worst Corporations [Re: wilshire]
#5299617 - 02/14/06 03:30 PM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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pretty much everything you see at the grocery store was completely different before plant breeders started working on it.
These differences were brought in gradually over many thousands of years over many different generations, slowly breeding out undesirable traits using plants very close in genetic structure. This is a vastly different process to splicing genes from a foreign species within a single generation.
i'm pretty sure what you're referring to was done with tomatoes, not strawberries
No, it was done with strawberries. They may have tried it with tomatoes as well.
pesticide resistance is a major problem with or without genetic engineering.
But may become a vastly greater problem when trying to kill super resistant weeds.
and like many of the really crazy combo's the anti-GMO activists like to use to smear the technology, this one was never used in any commercial product.
Ingard is in the marketplace. That's cotton crossed with soil bacteria.
since organic farms cannot use synthetic pesticides, pesticide resistance isn't an issue for them
It's an issue if they are unable to grow crops because super resistant weeds are destroying them. They either use pesticides or go out of business.
it's all genetic modification. one uses modern technology to move stuff around, one uses natural mechanisms. they do the same thing. genetic engineering just does it in a more precise, calculated manner.
It's a fallacy to compare sexual reproduction with gene-splicing. They arn't the same thing at all. In sexual reproduction the genes introduced are similar to the genes in the cell they join. They're conveyed in complete groups in sequence with the genes of the partner cell. Gene-splicing involves haphazardly introducing foreign genes which disrupt natural sequences. Such genes need artifical boosting with viral promoters which cause them to act in very different ways to the organisms own genes.
what we will see over the nexy century, with biotechnology and nanotechnology, is a unification of the "organic" and the "mechanical".
What do you mean by this?
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Alex213
Stranger
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Re: 14 worst Corporations [Re: Phluck]
#5299620 - 02/14/06 03:31 PM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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Like the other guy pointed out, inserting a couple genes from one organism into another is NOTHING like mating the two,
That's my point.
To think that nature's method of genetic change is somehow safer or less likely to cause trouble makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. It's based on the irrational belief that what humans do is naturally prone to evil, and is completely different from nature.
No, it's based on the belief that similar species mating over many thousands of years results in a plant capable of existing in harmony with the ecosystem. If it doesn't, it dies out. That's nothing like GM crops where if the ecosystem doesn't fit with the GM crop - the ecosystem dies out.
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Phluck
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Re: 14 worst Corporations [Re: Alex213]
#5300085 - 02/14/06 05:18 PM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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No, it's based on the belief that similar species mating over many thousands of years results in a plant capable of existing in harmony with the ecosystem. If it doesn't, it dies out. That's nothing like GM crops where if the ecosystem doesn't fit with the GM crop - the ecosystem dies out.
Same if a natural plant takes over an ecosystem, which happens fairly often. A species makes its way further than it normally exists, takes over, and causes an enormous disturbance. Over time, nature recovers. It's happened many times in nature.
GM crops ARE tested in isolated greenhouses alongside other species to see how well they interact, so it's difficult to imagine an extremely aggressive and harmful species getting out into the wild. I haven't heard of any examples of it happening.
-------------------- "I have no valid complaint against hustlers. No rational bitch. But the act of selling is repulsive to me. I harbor a secret urge to whack a salesman in the face, crack his teeth and put red bumps around his eyes." -Hunter S Thompson http://phluck.is-after.us
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kotik
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Re: 14 worst Corporations [Re: Phluck]
#5300176 - 02/14/06 05:47 PM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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lol.. monsanto = GE.
good luck living in a modern society and not giving at least some money to GE.
-------------------- No statements made in any post or message by myself should be construed to mean that I am now, or have ever been, participating in or considering participation in any activities in violation of any local, state, or federal laws. All posts are works of fiction.
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Alex213
Stranger
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Re: 14 worst Corporations [Re: Phluck]
#5301549 - 02/14/06 11:52 PM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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Same if a natural plant takes over an ecosystem, which happens fairly often
A natural plant isn't going to take over an ecosystem in anything like the time frame GM crops will. A weed that has protection from frost within a single generation isn't the same thing as a plant naturally adapting and being successful over many hundreds of thousands of years. For a start, the rest of the ecosystem has time to adapt with it. It also doesn't happen very often as nature has developed ways to balance such occurences.
GM crops ARE tested in isolated greenhouses alongside other species to see how well they interact, so it's difficult to imagine an extremely aggressive and harmful species getting out into the wild. I haven't heard of any examples of it happening.
There's been endless debates about this in the UK. The GM firms assured us if we had a buffer zone of a certain size GM seeds wouldn't contaminate the environment. The GM seeds contaminated the environment. The GM firms assured us native plants wouldn't be contaminated by GM. Native plants were contaminated by GM. The testing done on GM crops and their assoicated problems is laughable.
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wilshire
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Re: 14 worst Corporations [Re: Alex213]
#5302385 - 02/15/06 08:36 AM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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These differences were brought in gradually over many thousands of years over many different generations, slowly breeding out undesirable traits using plants very close in genetic structure. This is a vastly different process to splicing genes from a foreign species within a single generation.
what about the process necessarily makes the result of genetic modification worse than conventional breeding?
Ingard is in the marketplace. That's cotton crossed with soil bacteria.
yeah, that's BT cotton. there's also BT corn and soy. what they've done is take a gene from a bacteria that produces a compound that is toxic to some insect pests but completely harmless to humans, and splice it into agricultural crops.
the substance produced by this bacteria is used by organic farmers as an insecticide.
It's an issue if they are unable to grow crops because super resistant weeds are destroying them. They either use pesticides or go out of business.
i don't think you really understand this part... it doesn't matter if weeds become resistant to say... roundup, because organic growers don't use roundup (however, it does matter to them if insect populations develop resistance to BT toxin).
there are good agricultural practices and there are bad agricultural practices. the uses of genetic modification technology include both good and bad agricultural practices, as well as non-agricultural use (like modifying bacteria to produce insulin, saving millions of diabetes sufferers [and pigs] from unnecessary suffering).
a problem i do have with genetic modification is when it's used in support of poor agricultural practices. the two major uses of GM in agriculture are the 'roundup ready' system i described earlier and also BT. neither of these is a good agricultural practice. it is a very poor practice to use the same method to attack the same pest again and again and again, because resistance will result. these technologies promote resistance, and because they are genetically coded, they can spread.
however, this is a problem whether herbicide resistance is selected for through conventional breeding or GM technology. note also that most herbicides (roundup is an exception) are selective - they tend to attack broadleaf plants or grasses only. continually dumping the same broadleaf herbicide on the same plot of corn would be a bad practice for the same reason that roundup-ready is, and it would involve no breeding or GM program whatsoever (a notable difference is that the factor that makes corn 'resistant' to broadleaf herbicides works for a broad range of herbicides, not just one).
i guess what i'm saying is that while genetic modification has been used in support of some unwise agricultural practices, it has many beneficial uses, both in and outside of agriculture. it is not "frankenfood" and there is nothing inherently wrong with the process. a lot of the resistance to it seems to come from simple fear of the new and unknown. vaccines and antibiotics were ones new and unknown, and they are definitely "un-natural", but they're proven to be very useful technologies (which again can be used wisely or unwisely).
What do you mean by this?
nanotech and biotech will merge in many areas and we will begin incorporating 'organic' systems into a number of 'non-organic' systems, and vice versa.
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wilshire
free radical


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Re: 14 worst Corporations [Re: Alex213]
#5302414 - 02/15/06 08:56 AM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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what is wrong with modifying rice to provide vitamin A? what are the harms of that? do they outweigh its potential to save thousands of impoverished children around the world from blindness or death? in almost 30 years of using genetically modified bacteria to produce insulin for people with diabetes, what have the harms been from that?
it has good uses and bad ones, just like any technology.
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kotik
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Re: 14 worst Corporations [Re: wilshire]
#5302542 - 02/15/06 09:56 AM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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I would have to argue that genetically modified plants and bacteria, etc have too many benefits to put off as a black art, or anything like that. Mistakes can and will be made, but under the right regulations it can be more beneficial than harmful.
The patenting and corporate ownership of those modified crops and organisms on the other hand, I am 100% against, and can not see anything good coming from it, and I would go so far as to say that is exactly the evil associated with corporations and big business. They claim it is to help, but then they sue farmers if a seed happens to find its way into a farmers field (as seeds often do, its how plants have been surviving since they were around).
edit: in addition, genetics, as unnatural as many see it, is a natural step in the evolution of humans. It could even be seen as the real science of eugenics... without the emphasis on which genes are truly "good" or "bad."
-------------------- No statements made in any post or message by myself should be construed to mean that I am now, or have ever been, participating in or considering participation in any activities in violation of any local, state, or federal laws. All posts are works of fiction.
Edited by kotik (02/15/06 09:59 AM)
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Alex213
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Re: 14 worst Corporations [Re: wilshire]
#5302680 - 02/15/06 10:54 AM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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what about the process necessarily makes the result of genetic modification worse than conventional breeding?
I don't think it's a question of which process is "worse". They're just utterly different and it's a nonsense to compare what happens in nature with gene-splicing.
a lot of the resistance to it seems to come from simple fear of the new and unknown.
I disagree. I think the resistance comes from people sensibly opposing large corporations who'se only motive is profit forcing plants into the ecosystem and food chain that have had next to no testing.
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