@ojala
> opposition to GM in New Zealand is a weird thing
No weirder than opposition to other ecocidal technologies like nuclear, DDT etc.
> in NZ we have a de facto ban.
> At least in trees, it has been very difficult to do anything
False on both counts. See the rest of the thread and the linked GE-Free NZ press release. If you're going to shill for BioTech corporations, at least get your facts right.
@strypey I work breeding organisms and I've had first hand contact with some of these issues. As a start, the use of "ecocidal" to deal with GM is just appallingly unfair.
"If you're going to shill for BioTech corporations, at least get your facts right."
This is both disrespectful and closes any potential discussion.
Apologies for the aggressive language, but I'm not wrong that you're coming at this from a partisan position. So am I. I was a GE free campaigner in the late 90s, and reported on the issue as a media activist with Indymedia in the noughties.
> the use of "ecocidal" to deal with GM is just appallingly unfair
... and calling opposition to them "weird" isn't?
We're on opposite sides of the fence here. Let's debate the facts.
@ojala
> in NZ we have a de facto ban [on GE research]
We have regulations that put no meaningful limits on lab work, and have allowed at least 15 field trials of GMOs in our environment, with no serious containment (all of which have utterly failed to produce anything useful). How is that a "de facto" ban? It's a far more laissez-faire regulatory regime than we wanted. But it seems that anything short of wild west unregulated release of novels organisms is too restrictive.
If and when GE science comes up with anything worth the risk of putting into production, and a robust process for assessing and mitigating all potential risks of irreversibly releasing it into the environment. Then, maybe, it might be worth talking about production. RoundUp Ready Soy and StarLink Corn - and the litany of multi-million dollar failures - do not fill me with confidence that this will ever happen.
If and when GE science comes up with anything worth the risk of putting into production, and a robust process for assessing and mitigating all potential risks of irreversibly releasing it into the environment. Then, maybe, it might be worth talking about production. RoundUp Ready Soy and StarLink Corn - and the litany of multi-million dollar failures mentioned above - do not fill me with confidence that this will happen.
@strypey It's weird, as there is no opposition to classical breeding, which involves much more massive and different gene combinations every time there is sex involved.
I'm unclear that I'm coming from a "partisan" position. I'm asking to be able to use one more tool (besides classical breeding, use of molecular markers, high-throughput phenotyping, etc) in the development of better performing individuals.
@ojala
> there is no opposition to classical breeding
Because this has millions of years of field testing. We can reliably predict its outcomes and their potential risks. Not the case with GE experiments, in which we've already seen all sorts of catastrophic results, which were thankfully confined to the lab.
@strypey "We can reliably predict its outcomes and their potential risks" Can we? We do have unexpected crop failures, interaction between genotype & environment, etc that are quite hard to predict.
Modern, theory-based breeding programs don't have millions of years of testing; the oldest ones have probably around a century. We have been dealing with GE for almost a third of that time.
@strypey Gene editing is just another technology just as nuclear technology and the internet. Humanity is going to need all if we are to get out of the mess we find ourselves in.
Genetics and nuclear can and should benefit all, not just a few greedy corporations. I dont think its smart to demonize technolgy or science. At least it should be open for public discussion. LIke in anythig there are reasons for and reasons against. I think it is important to be balanced and nuanced.
@Smrki
> Gene editing is just another technology just as nuclear technology
I'm glad we agree on this. Neither of these technologies are "science". Science is used to develop them. But also to explore and document the many harms they've already caused to human and environmental health, and their potential to cause much greater harm.
@Smrki
> need all [tech] if we are to get out of the mess
Using tech without environmental wisdom is how we got into the mess. Particularly letting corporations control its development and deployment. Nuclear and GE are classic examples, as is algorithmic social media.
"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
@strypey Technology. I hate the word tech, as it implies it is something different than technology. It is "tech". Nope. technology through and through. What environmental wisdom? That is a bit squishy term. What is environmental wisdom, living in caves? Small villages? I don't think so. In fact it might be quite the opposite. HI tech urban megacities, and leave nature to nature. On a second note I do not worship nature, despite enjoying it and having high respect for it.
@Smrki I'm not sure there's much value for me in a conversation where you a) project positions onto me that have nothing to do with anything I've said, and b) ramble materialist ideological nonsense that has nothing to do with the matter at hand.
@Smrki I've studied environmental sciences at university level. Pulling out the old mock the tree-hugger routine in response to scientifically motivated concerns about environmental harm is what climate "skeptics" do. I'm not sure there's much value for me in a conversation where you a) slaughter strawmen, and b) ramble materialist ideological nonsense that has nothing to do with the matter at hand.
@strypey I am not mocking you and environmental science is important. And I am certainly not a climate skeptic. But hey, good talking to you. Live long and prosper.
@strypey Which harms? What potential? That is similar to saying hey, programming will get us rubbish like facebook, which can cause social division and perhaps even civil wars. So let's not learn computer science because it can cause trauma and violence on large scale. Let's avoid the harm. But what about great things which computers and CS got us? Navigation, online banking, web search, ebooks, trade me whatever else, mastodon etc.
@Smrki
> What potential? That is similar to saying hey, programming will get us rubbish like facebook, which can cause social division and perhaps even civil wars
GMOs are the biology equivalent of proprietary software. Industrial agriculture is the food production equivalent of FB.
@strypey Can you imagine genetics as coding of biology? Industrial agriculture is what keeps us fed. There are many problems with it, but it is what puts food on the table. Simplifications like organic vs industrial, small vs large are a bit false in my mind. There can or could be large scale organic farms, or small industrially/intensively cultivated plots or farms. Did you ever read Kropotkin?He kind of riffs on that. I think the “hippy left” went far away into not practical with permaculture.
@Smrki
> Can you imagine genetics as coding of biology?
Kind of. Seed saving of open pollinating varieties is the Open Source of food plants. Seed banks are its code forges. In both cases, these are community practices, that corporations sometimes freeload off.
GE, like proprietary software, is funded and controlled by corporations to produce "IP" (copyrights, patents) they can use to seek economic rent off other people's work. Their other main product is PR talking points and empty promises.
@Smrki
> Industrial agriculture is what keeps us fed
"[The Green Revolution] also created a reliance on subsidised fertilisers and chemicals that, though costly and environmentally disastrous, lasts to this day. Soil in fertile states such as Punjab, once known as the breadbasket of India, has been stripped of its rich minerals, with watercourses running dry, rivers polluted with chemical run-off and farmers in a perpetual state of deep crisis and anger."
@Smrki
> I think the “hippy left” went far away into not practical with permaculture
People who say things like this have usually never grown food in their lives. I know plenty of permies who are feeding entire communities, while building soil and regenerating the ecological health and habitat value of the land they steward. On smaller scales, people keep their families in vegetables from backyards. What's "not practical" about this? How "practical" is it to do gene-editing at home?
What's particularly sad, is former TOP leader Geoff Simmons dredging up BioTech corporate PR talking points from the 1990s.
" (GE) could be used for things like removing the genetic trigger for cystic fibrosis in a person, making manuka more resilient to myrtle rust or helping kauri trees fight dieback."
"... it has identical outcomes to selective breeding."
"[GE can help with] feeding 10 billion people by 2050 while also reducing our impact on the environment."
These hyperbolic PR claims from the BioTech industry were already dubious in the 90s. They've been thoroughly debunked in the decades since. A point made by GE Free NZ at the time.
"Since the Royal Commission on Genetic Engineering (2001) New Zealand has approved 10 GE field trials at the expense of taxpayers; after 20 years and $millions of taxpayer funds all have failed or had poor results and have not produced the outcomes promised to the public."
The 2019 public statement from GE Free NZ included references - as usual - to then-recent peer-reviewed research showing the technology poses serious risks to human and environmental health.
"... Tang (2018)... found that gene edited plants using CRISPR which were grown in cell cultures had around 200 mutations in the genome. These mutations were passed down to the next generation at a rate six times that for non GM lines."
Risks that GE cheerleaders - as usual - came across as blissfully ignorant of.
The preference for vague PR promises of magical, world-fixing outcomes, over the body of published scientific data, is one GE promoters share with nuclear boosters, and climate "skeptics". All 3 groups are so blinded by naive techno-utopianism, that for them any new technology = science, so any attempt to limit or regulate new technology must = "anti-science".
I expect this kind of PR parroting from the NatACTs. Their whole shtick is claiming that whatever is good for corporate profits is a 'tide that floats all boats'. But TOP are usually much better at examining the evidence and coming up with policies that at least engage with it.
I expected better from them than this kind of scientifically illiterate techno-hype.
As I may have said here before, I support dropping the 5% threshold for getting MPs in NZ MMP elections, or at least reducing it. I also agree with Lawrence Lessig that representative govt can't work - to the degree it works at all - if the wealthy can buy policy loyalty with limitless donations to political parties.
@strypey bookmarking to read more in depth later, but thanks for sharing. I didn't know most of this, but had sorta formulated vague opinions i hadn't gotten round to questioning.
@BrilleBhrealla
> I didn't know most of this, but had sorta formulated vague opinions i hadn't gotten round to questioning
I appreciate your candour. I think this is true of most people's opinions on GE/ GMO stuff, as you can see from some of the other replies I got ; ) I've been following this issue on and off since I was part of the 1990s GE Free movement. Since then I've studied some environmental sciences at uni level. So I hope I have something of value to share on the subject ;)
@strypey to me it's the ignorance of the Precautionary Principle that's most odious (in any political party). Once you release GE into the wild, you generally can't take it back. Secondary, tertiary, and quaternary effect could be planet altering. We're not smart enough to know. The bravado - entirely bourne out of ignorance and simplistic 'profit=good' thinking - of Nat'l and ACT should rule them out of any political influence. Sadly, many voters are no more sophisticated. @BrilleBhrealla
Here's a recent update from GE-Free NZ, with references on the consistent failures of BioTech experiments run in Aotearoa.
"GMO trials have been conducted in private partnerships with corporations like Monsanto and Genzyme and have cost New Zealand taxpayers millions of dollars."
TOP members ought to be wondering why their leadership is singing from the same songbook on this, as NatACTs, patent holders, and corporations with appalling environmental records.
@strypey that does not appear to accurately reflect the linked paper. They report off-target mutations in GE are much lower than conventional breeding. The number 200 refers to mutations associated with tissue culture, not gene editing itself, and most are non-coding. There is no claim in the paper that these mutations pose any health risk to humans. It is on the whole supportive of GE, so I'm not sure why it is cited as evidence of health risks associated with the technology.
@plantarum
> that does not appear to accurately reflect the linked paper
I passed a first year Biology of Plants paper, but didn't continue with my biology studies after that. So I'm happy to defer to your expertise in interpreting the paper's results. However...
"The cause of numerous discovered mutations is still controversial."
If scientists still can't agree on why gene-edited organisms have the mutations they do, then it seems obvious to me that releasing them poses risks to the environment - and thus to human health - that are impossible to quantify until we know more. I can't speak for GE-Free NZ, but I think this is what they're getting at by citing this paper.
@plantarum
> mutations associated with tissue culture, not gene editing itself, and most are non-coding
There's also controversy about how gene expression works in practice. Bruce Lipton's work, for example, suggests that epigenetic mechanisms determine when and how genes are coded into proteins. It seem like hubris to assume that we know enough about how genes work to confidently say that "non-coding" mutations can have no effect on any organism, let alone a novel one.
This raises a couple issues, at least. First, if mutations are indeed a serious health risk, then GEFree NZ might want to direct their energies towards tissue culture, as that's apparently a greater source of mutation than GE.
But both produce far fewer mutations than "mutation breeding", in which chemicals or radiation are used to induce random, genome -wide mutation in an effort to create useful traits. We've been doing this for decades, producing 1000s of commercial cultivars, without generating the negative outcomes GEFree NZ is suggesting are likely with a much more targeted and subtle approach.
The fact that they don't target tissue culture or mutation breeding may be because these techniques have a long history of safe use. But that history also suggests that more targeted approaches like GE are even less likely to have negative health outcomes.
@strypey that's a bit of a jump. They note that they don't know the cause of the mutations, they don't suggest the mutations present a risk. All of plant breeding is based on mutations in one form or another, so when a breeder makes a statement about mutation it shouldn't be interpreted as a human health risk without additional context.
If we were to assume mutations do present a risk, then the paper is actually evidence for the relative safety of gene editing, since it generates fewer mutations than other techniques.
The authors argue, based on their data, that GE should be regulated based on the product, not the process. Because the process of GE does not introduce an increased risk of mutation, harmful or not.
@plantarum
> they don't know the cause of the mutations, they don't suggest the mutations present a risk
Not knowing the cause presents an unquantifiable risk.
Let's say you've made a new chemical. It might cure cancer, or instantly kill you dead. Are you going to volunteer to test it? After all, there's no positive evidence of risk, right?
Situations like this, where outcomes are unknown, irreversible, and potentially lethal, are why the precautionary principle exists.
GE plants are not created de novo, it's not at all comparable to a new chemical with no understanding of what it does.
We're talking about a few hundred base pairs out of millions. ie, a minute tweaking of a plant we already know a lot about. And we know that changes of much larger magnitude don't have the outcomes you're speculating about.
Regarding field experience: a better analogy would be we've had hundreds of years of experience with blindly leaping into the unknown, and now we're able to take a cautious step with one eye open.
You're right, we can't know all the potential risks with absolute certainty. But we do know that the risks are lower with this approach than things we've been doing successfully for decades.
Re: motivated reasoning: if there's so much evidence for the grave risks of GE, why did GEfree NZ choose to highlight one paper in their press release, and choose a paper that actually supports GE? Why not show us a paper that actually supports their position, without resorting to misrepresentation?
@plantarum
> If we were to assume mutations do present a risk, then the paper is actually evidence for the relative safety of gene editing, since it generates fewer mutations than other techniques
This is a classic case of motivated reasoning. It's logical, and wrong. We've had millions of years of field trials of natural breeding. We know the range of outcomes pretty well. This simply isn't the case with GE techniques. Absence of evidence - of harm in this case - is not evidence of absence.
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