GM Fish. How to. 6
sykesm sent us this tale about
genetically engineered fish. All I can say is, as soon as the first three-eyed fish comes out genetic engineering is going to have a crisis on its hands.
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GM Fish. How to.
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Not really surprising ... (Score:1)
But the thing is, commercial fish already have been bred for faster growth. It stands to reason that the fish which already produce more growth hormone would be selected for. It would eventually get to the point where what is limiting growth is not the presence/abscence of growth hormone, but some other factor.
Thus no improvement when you pump the fish with more growth hormone.
The deformities are also to be expected. Genetic engineering is rather a "shotgun" rather than a "sniper rifle" technique at this point. (Indeed, some GM techniques actually use a modified shotgun.) Some of the transformants are going to have problems with how the new genetic material incorporates into the genome. These can be easily selected against (just don't let them breed), and all this would be done before releasing commercial stocks. (In genetic engineering, you create hundreds of independant transformants, and from that pool only pick the top few to commercialize, the ones who perform consistantly well on all tests.) The offspring of the non-deformed fish should not have any problems, due to the concept of "like begets like".
The regular breeding techniques also produce deformed fish. (In fact, in wild-type breeding there are always some deformed offspring.) But these deformities happen over many years, and are consistantly selected against. "Three eyed fish" happen spontaneously in wildtype fry - they just get eaten by preditors before they grow up big enough for us to see them. (Admidt it: how often have you seen a baby fish in the wild?)
So it's not really a case of "Genetic Engineering doesn't work as well as Conventional Breeding". They do the same thing, and achieve practically the same results, it's just that the time frame is different. This is just more confirmation that Genetic Engineering is not fundamentally different than conventional breeding practices.
The problem is not with yield of a crop (Score:1)
Even though the companies producing GM species would like you to think so, the problems with producing more food are not because of lack of arable land. The main problem is distribution, which is related to wrong market signals!
The economical signals guiding food production and distribution are telling wrong: In developing countries they are telling that it is more worthy to raise money crops for export or other, more valuable - in the monetary sense - crops such as wheat, when traditional crops would feed more. One does what is most beneficial for self, not for mankind, and as the value of one dollar in developing countries is so much higher than in industrial countries, the arable land that could have been used for growing food ends used for tobacco or coffee.
Elsewhere the signals are telling that one should use the soil to feed the animals and eat the meat, though it is much more wasteful - during it's life, the animal spends much of the energy that could have been gotten by just eating the grown vegetables.
The Western countries have huge surplus in agricultural production, with GM crops they will have even more. And this is with average American eating ten times more calories than average African (and you can see the results). The main problem is how to divert the extra food production from going to waste in industrial countries to the needy of developing countries!
The GM isn't too much of a solution. The GM seeds are usually sold by GM companies such as Monsanto as "terminated" versions: Once planted, you can't use the seeds from the offspring to grow new ones but you will have to buy new seeds from the company. In this sense it is like software renting, if you want. Once a farmer in developing countries discards the older seeds in favor of the GM crop, he's stuck with the company, paying yearly fees on new seeds. Hardly desirable!
So, in this light the idea to fix the situation by creating a rice that grows twice as fast seems very naive. I won't propose a solution, but I think there needs to be changes in global economy to make it more level: After all, if I make the same amount of money in an hour that a Nigerian makes in a year, we are not even talking about the same money! I could easily spend $20 without thinking about it, so the signals I send to markets about my wants are listened to much more carefully than a Nigerian's. With this kind of differences in money, I strongly oppose unrestricted globalization and international trade (which is one thing usually proposed as a solution to starvation in poor countries).
Well, I'm drifting off-topic, but I hope you think about the subject more and try to find information about it from both pro and critical sources. :)
Why I bothered to write this long is that I once thought the very same way...
Chips with that? (Score:1)
You don't like 3 eyed fishies? (Score:1)
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
I have no problem with GM foods. (Score:2)
Ant GM foods activists will often use emotional arguments, and talk about the environment and genetic pollution a lot, and corporations and their evils (despite the fact that the GM companies are often very small. Monsanto, that hated company, is relatively tiny. A pygmie, about 1/20 the size of Walmart, say).
The problem is that the people who argue with these people tend to be scientists, and are not given to emotional argument, preferring to stick to the facts (this mirrors the Creationists V the Evolutionists). Is it any wonder the public has been scared from GM foods?
I would suggest that we must fight fire with fire on this issue. We must point out that the anti GM foods protestors are for blindness in the third world, they are for starvation due to lack of arable land. All of these problems can be greatly relieved by the use of GM crops.
I think it is time to pull no punches, and be angry and emotional about this issue.
--
Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
three-eyed fish (Score:3)
Hrrm. In fact, ALL bony fish are "three-eyed fish", and that includes all tetrapods (four-legged vertebrates).
The third eye is probably better known under its name "pineal organ" but it is well known that it has several light receptors of the same fashion as the lateral eyes.
Some fifteen years ago I did a small study on the pineal organ in the "blind" Mexican cave fish (Astyanax mexicanus [previously known as "Anoptichthys jordani]). That fish which has degenerate eyes (whereby "eye-less would be better than "blind"), but still intact optic nerves which retain the light sensory mechanism, and, as my study showed a fully light receptive pineal organ. The reason these cave retain light receptors is that they need to _avoid_ light; predators lurk out there.
The odd lizard "tuatara" has even developed a primitive lens located between and behind the regular eyes.
So, in the light of this there is nothing new under the sun.
Cheers