GMOs and Gene Patents

[StonedApe]

Do you Think that genetically modified organism are safe? Are the alright to eat? Are they good for farmers? Are they good for Business? I recently watched a documentary on GMOs. It was called BULLSHIT. It followed the work of activist Vandana Shiva. The film was good and seemed fairly accurate, though at the same time somewhat biased. Nothing that was said wasn't true, but the presented the other side of the arguement as if it was completely ludicrous(which was similar to what my opinion was). I wanted to see what other people thought about this and if there was any kind of good arguement for it. It just seems unecissary and kind of fucked up. I'm also curious if people think that gene patenting should be allowed and why. It seems very illogical to me. Vandana Shiva

[Odd_Nonposter]

Genes shouldn't be able to be patented. Period. Since nearly all of Monsanto's and DuPont's seed contains patented genes, farmers are not allowed to keep their crop for seed for next year for fear of patent infringement. And since non-GMO crops yield not nearly as much as GMO crops, farmers can't compete with them. As a result, the farmer becomes a slave of his seed company, being forced to pay whatever price the seed company feels like. (Roundup Ready soybean seed often costs >$100 per 50 lb. bag.) That being said, GMO crops are generally benevolent. There's almost no difference between them and conventional crops. It could be argued that all of humanity's crops have been genetically modified by artificial selection. The wild precursor to wheat probably didn't have the genes for huge, difficult to scatter seeds in the wild until humanity came along and selected varieties that had that particular mutation. Once you realize that, there is almost no such thing as non-GMO food anymore. They pose several advantages to the farmer. On the same acre, GMO crops will yield more, giving farmers bigger profits for a similar input (the aforementioned seed price hike aside.) And also, no-till cropping in general would be nearly impossible without glyphosate resistant (Roundup Ready) GMO crops. In order to combat weeds, farmers either need to till the ground, reducing the organic carbon content, compacting it, and promoting erosion, or spray the field before it is planted and after the crop is up to kill all of the weeds. And already, the weeds are becoming resistant to Roundup. Our "non-GMO" crops would have developed this trait through artificial selection, but gene insertion is much faster. How do I know all of this? I'm a farm kid. If I didn't hear Dad's anti-Monsanto rants every day, I'd have to be deaf.

[Photolysis]

Almost all the organisms we consume have been genetically modified. The difference is only in the method used. Artificial selection and breeding verses genetic engineering. But we'll focus on the traditional meaning of genetically engineered organisms here. For the most part, I don't see why they wouldn't be safe, since in many cases genes are being copy-pasted from other safe organisms; the chances of that particular gene having an adverse effect on the safety of the food in question seems highly unlikely. I'm definitely opposed to gene patenting, as it basically exploits the people who can least afford it, and hinders research. Not to mention that people have used it to gain patents on other people's DNA and naturally occuring DNA segments to which I would say they have no claim to whatsoever. The general principal of genetic engineering has a lot of merit. However the current systems in place cause a lot of problems, probably more than they solve for GM crops. Though using GM to create organisms such as insulin-producing E. coli has been a success, and a good use of the technology.

[Xei]

GM is fine. What exactly is the rationale behind the fear? Is it just a scary word or something? I'm inclined to think so, considering the vast majority of the population don't even have the faintest concept of what a gene even is. As Photolysis says, we've been genetically modifying crops for 10,000 years via artificial selection. But gene patenting shouldn't be allowed. It's pretty bizarre to be honest. Why on Earth should you be able to grant yourself ownership over a part of nature? Why don't I suddenly claim that I own the moon?

[Photolysis]

What exactly is the rationale behind the fear? Is it just a scary word or something? I'm inclined to think so, considering the vast majority of the population don't even have the faintest concept of what a gene even is. It's generally what happens when laymen talk about things they don't understand, and when the mass media uses loaded language such as "Frankensteinian experiments" or "playing god". But then again, lots of people love to use the "it's unnatural card", no matter how absurd and fallacious that is. Why don't I suddenly claim that I own the moon? I hereby patent the DNA of every DV vistor. I demand compensation for violating my patent and additional royalties for the continued use of it! It's bizarre isn't it. People are essentially claiming ownership to a scientific discovery. It's like trying to patent a chemical reaction; how does anyone have the right to do such a thing?

[Taosaur]

While the genetic modifications themselves probably aren't a threat, the farming methods they support are. As Odd_Non pointed out, the most common modification is to make crops more amenable to growing in a sterile chemical substrate saturated with poison. The up side of these methods is more crops per acre and fewer man-hours per harvested ton. The downsides are far-reaching: most obviously, more poison in the food supply; runoff and outgassing from fields, two of our largest pollution sources; blander food with fewer trace nutrients; homogeneity of crop genomes, making them more vulnerable to unforeseen threats. The environmental and health impact is multiplied when we consider that much of this crop is below-food-grade, grown as feed for our out-sized meat industry, which increases the quantity and virulence of runoff and adds hormones and antibiotics into the mix. The diet supported by all of this industrialization is high in cholesterol and simple carbs, contributing with certainty to heart disease and diabetes, and possibly to asthma, allergies and other immunilogical disfunction. It's hard to say whether this system does more to nourish and sustain us or to sicken us and degrade our quality of life.

[grasshoppa]

I made a thread called "They will kill us all without firing a shot" which had a link to a documentary about Monsanto. Here's the link to the thread http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...ghlight=firing Here is a link to the documentary http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_OJcPKEYDE GMO's are fucked up.

[StonedApe]

I agree. I'm gonna watch that documentary over the weekend, I have a paper I'm should be writing, but it looks good. I was just talking with a friend of mine yesterday about how monsanto is basically trying to take over the world. If you control the food supply, you control people. This stuff seems likes it's out of some kind of science fiction movie.