Thread: Genetically Modified Food is Really, Really Bad for Rats - and Maybe YOU!!!

Originally Posted by juroara

lol, what are you trying to say?

lol you don't know anything about food.

All of the things I listed were created by man via artificial selection. Wheat, milk for human consumption, pigs, cows; none of these things existed, let alone were eaten, before the agricultural revolution some 15,000 years ago. Wheat for instance was brought into existence by genes from various different grasses mixing in a single plant. This would have been useless and the plant would have quickly disappeared had man not intervened.

The mixing of genes which you think you're so opposed to is actually responsible for civilisation itself, and you eat its products every day. I guess that makes you a willing slave to corporations. Or something.

Originally Posted by Xei

lol you don't know anything about food.

All of the things I listed were created by man via artificial selection. Wheat, milk for human consumption, pigs, cows; none of these things existed, let alone were eaten, before the agricultural revolution some 15,000 years ago. Wheat for instance was brought into existence by genes from various different grasses mixing in a single plant. This would have been useless and the plant would have quickly disappeared had man not intervened.

The mixing of genes which you think you're so opposed to is actually responsible for civilisation itself, and you eat its products every day. I guess that makes you a willing slave to corporations. Or something.

You're going way off here. I never said that breeding was bad, youre just making that assumption. But for the record, I think we should just let the animals have sex the old fashioned way.

What I said about gm has to do with mixing plants with non-plant dna. This has never happened before. This is brand new in the realm of science. Can you imagine what they can create in 100 years time?

Originally Posted by juroara

What I said about gm has to do with mixing plants with non-plant dna. This has never happened before. This is brand new in the realm of science. Can you imagine what they can create in 100 years time?

There's no difference between plant and non-plant DNA. They have exactly the same structure and do exactly the the same thing, which is make proteins. If the protein coded by the gene isn't harmful in the original organism, there's no reason to think it will be harmful in the organism it is transferred to. Do you have a single piece of evidence to the contrary? And your claim that it has never happened before is once again plain wrong, it's called 'horizontal gene transfer', and has occurred in nature from, for instance, bacteria to plants.

Originally Posted by Xei

There's no difference between plant and non-plant DNA. They have exactly the same structure and do exactly the the same thing, which is make proteins. If the protein coded by the gene isn't harmful in the original organism, there's no reason to think it will be harmful in the organism it is transferred to. Do you have a single piece of evidence to the contrary? And your claim that it has never happened before is once again plain wrong, it's called 'horizontal gene transfer', and has occurred in nature from, for instance, bacteria to plants.

I disagree, it's not unreasonable to be wary of unintended side effects of gene modification. We don't understand the full complexity of DNA so changing it could bring about unwanted changes. Even if the gene functions as predicted, the proteins that are produced could be different, seeing how they're in a different environment.

Originally Posted by khh

I disagree, it's not unreasonable to be wary of unintended side effects of gene modification. We don't understand the full complexity of DNA so changing it could bring about unwanted changes. Even if the gene functions as predicted, the proteins that are produced could be different, seeing how they're in a different environment.

What you'd get is a bunch of proteins which failed to fold properly. Is there any evidence that they would be dangerous with anything but a vanishing probability? Is there any reason to think that misfoldings due to GM wouldn't be completely dwarfed by the background levels of misfolding in nature?

And in any case, isn't it easy for the GM scientists to tell whether the protein is folding correctly or not in the host organism?

Originally Posted by Xei

What you'd get is a bunch of proteins which failed to fold properly. Is there any evidence that they would be dangerous with anything but a vanishing probability? Is there any reason to think that misfoldings due to GM wouldn't be completely dwarfed by the background levels of misfolding in nature?

And in any case, isn't it easy for the GM scientists to tell whether the protein is folding correctly or not in the host organism?

Don't Prions come from misfolding of genes? Lets hope the scientists get it right.