RE: [pronut-hiv] Fw: Another GE Free county in California (USA) (3)

["George M. Carter" <fiar@verizon.net>]

[At 12:25 PM 6/12/2006, you wrote:

>Actually, genetic engineering started ~6000 years ago when humans began
>to domesticate plants for food production.  Would you have us all go
>back to hunting and gathering?  Sorry to be so flippant, but it's just
>to make the point that many technologies over the millennia have had the
>potential for both benefit or harm.  Recombinant DNA technologies, which
>I assume you are referring to, are no different.]

Tim. that's just insanely not true.

Every time two humans "do it" and produce issue, you could call that 
"genetic engineering." Grafting and what not could fall under such a 
general rubric.

But to say such technologies are equivalent to recombinant DNA techniques 
would be akin to saying that AZT is just the same as food. Gosh, they both 
have nucleotides in them.

http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/45/54/1943773.pdf is an interesting review in 
which they note "Recombinant DNA techniques represent a development of 
conventional procedures. They permit precise alteration, construction, 
recombination, deletion and translocation of genes that may give the 
recipient cells a desirable phenotype. Moreover, rDNA techniques allow 
genetic material to be transferred into, and to express in, another 
organism which may be quite unrelated to the source of the transferred DNA" 
(p. 13).

That is NOT the same as turning yeast in beer. It represents potentially 
significant risks that the authors of this paper recognize, even as it 
reflects a gung ho attitude overall. Even NIH has guidelines about rDNA 
techniques:
http://www4.od.nih.gov/oba/IBC/IBCnihguidelines.htm
http://www4.od.nih.gov/oba/rac/guidelines/guidelines.html

Does that mean rDNA technologies should never be used? No.

Does that mean we as consumers should TRUST some company that glibly says 
it is safe? At the moment, absolutely and unequivocally not. The track 
record of industry has been rather abysmal of late and with the 
no-holds-barred wackiness of the Bush administration and their nefarious 
influence over the FDA (no Plan B, e.g.,), NIH (NCI director wears 2 hats) 
and CDC (pandering to the religious right), I think we must be scrupulously concerned about what goes on in agriculture.

The issue may indeed not necessarily be the initial introduction of, say, a pesticide expressing tomato, but rather whether the cassette can swap and recombine further and produce toxins or pathogens that may be harmful not just to humans but grazing animals or otherwise present a potential threat to a local ecosystem. We can't afford to kill more bees, for example.

There are LOTS of techniques and methods of farming that work NOW to help 
the poor and starving. It has a lot more to do with political will and the 
institution of distribution methods than it does to some fancy 
technological "non-fix."

And one of the bigger issues is of course US protectionism and tariffs that keep big corporate farming happy while helping maintain a ghastly status quo for many African nations' economies.

George M. Carter