From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Thu Jul 15 1999 - 13:59:00 MDT
Greg Burch wrote:
> Based on the extent of the "anti-GM" hysteria I'm seeing increasing signs
> of in the UK, elsewhere in the EU and to a lesser extent in Australia,
> I think we may be facing a fundamental showdown on a key element of the
> transhumanist agenda much sooner than many of us expected.
Its fundamental economics. A lot of agriculture in Europe gets
government subsidies (I suppose it does in the U.S. as well).
The EU governments see the U.S. going to GM crops so they know in order
to be competitive they have to as well. So they promote GM crops.
The farmers see that GM crops will be more productive so fewer
fields will be required to grow them. They see a reduction
in subsidies and price supports and so they try to put pressure
on the government to stop GM crops. When that doesn't work they
respond by resorting to spreading FUD (fear, uncertainty & doubt).
If they happen to get the ear of a sympathetic legislator (who
isn't in one of the Science ministries promoting the GM trend),
you then get labeling legislation that then feeds back to the
public. Since the public knows nothing about science, if "labeling"
is required, then there must really be something to fear about GM crops.
The GM trend is unstopable. I was stunned to find out in *1995*
that the local university was testing GM crops in fields in *Trinidad*.
The Chinese are also doing a lot of field testing that we hear very
little about. Because GM of plants doesn't have huge capital startup
costs or require "new knowledge" (i.e. barriers to entry are low) almost any
country can set up a lab to do it. Send a few dozen students to a
good Ag-school in America and they return home with all the knowledge
they need in a few years.
While the farmers in Europe have an incentive to stop GM crops,
the reverse is true in third world countries. When you are
struggling to survive, anything you can do to increase your
productivity is going to help.
Can you stop imports of GM crops by testing for added genes?
Yes, that works for known genes (like Bt), but the number of
possible modifications is huge. To test for them you are going
to have to know what they are. A farmer wanting to sell his crop,
or a government wanting to boost exports isn't likely to be up
front about what those modifications are.
The only solution is to educate the public. There is a great
story about some Ag-firm that had managed to breed a completely
"natural" strain of one vegetable (cabbage I think) that turned
out to be highly insect resistant. It was insect resistant because
it had significantly amplified its production of its natural
pesticides. [Many "natural" plant pesticides when tested
with the standard tests qualify as carcinogenic]. This makes
sense when you consider that the plants have been at war
with the insects for ~300 million years.
Until you get the public to understand that "natural" foods
consist of toxic & non-toxic chemicals and what matters is
the quantities of both, the FUD will have an effect.
>
> Prince Charles declaring that ''Genetic modification takes mankind into
> realms that belong to God and God alone,''
That's going to have a big effect in Russia, China, Japan, India
much of Africa where the prevailing religions have a much different
perspective of that of Europeans/Americans. It also isn't going to have
much of an effect in countries with extreme population pressures
that need any agricultural advantage they can get.
The first plant genome (Arabidopsis) appears to be about 66% complete
(86 Mbases out of ~130 Mbases). I think the estimated completion date
is sometime this year or next year. Since this is public data
it will open the flood gates on doing real work on plants.
We may reasonably assume there are more than a few politicians
from the American mid-west states applying pressure on the
Dept. of Agriculture to get on with sequencing various plant
and farm animal genomes. I would presume that this isn't
going to receive much resistance from the religious right
because these are animals & plants, not humans, we are talking
about and farmers do care about their bottom line.
As soon as the human genome is complete (2001-2003), the
resources dedicated to that will move onto the other genomes
(mouse & rat, then other genomes, presumably in some relation
to the order of economic significance).
Now, if someone would just do the Komodo Lizard, so I could
build my dragon, which was why I got into biotech in the first
place. Hmmmphhh.
Robert
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