Rice with spliced human genes

[Supracentral]

Why do I get the feeling this is a really bad idea....

The first GM food crop containing human genes is set to be approved for commercial production.

The laboratory-created rice produces some of the human proteins found in breast milk and saliva.

Its U.S. developers say they could be used to treat children with diarrhoea, a major killer in the Third World.

The rice is a major step in so-called Frankenstein Foods, the first mingling of human-origin genes and those from plants. But the U.S. Department of Agriculture has already signalled it plans to allow commercial cultivation.

The rice's producers, California-based Ventria Bioscience, have been given preliminary approval to grow it on more than 3,000 acres in Kansas. The company plans to harvest the proteins and use them in drinks, desserts, yoghurts and muesli bars.

The news provoked horror among GM critics and consumer groups on both sides of the Atlantic.

GeneWatch UK, which monitors new GM foods, described it as "very disturbing". Researcher Becky Price warned: "There are huge, huge health risks and people should rightly be concerned about this."

Friends of the Earth campaigner Clare Oxborrow said: "Using food crops and fields as glorified drug factories is a very worrying development.

"If these pharmaceutical crops end up on consumers' plates, the consequences for our health could be devastating.

"The biotech industry has already failed to prevent experimental GM rice contaminating the food chain.

Here's the full article:

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/221993

What do you think?

 

[SupraMario]

I think they need to fix the damn bee problem first.

 

[RazoE]

is this where ricers come from..?

BAH DUM DUM CCHHHHHHH..Thank you folks, thank you, I'll be here all night..

 

[Poodles]

The last line is what worries me. It's smart to do things like this, it's only a protein (hell, we have spider goats...), but it needs to stay seperate from the real food.

 

[te72]

I think Orwell was onto something after all... it *starts* with rice, and ends up a certain colored Soylent.

is this where ricers come from..?

BAH DUM DUM CCHHHHHHH..Thank you folks, thank you, I'll be here all night..

I was gonna go there, but it seems someone beat me to it.

Poodles, I checked out that spider goat thing, totally turned out to be something different than what I was thinking, fortunately. Pretty cool stuff, wonder when we'll start seeing normal applications of the stuff in the automotive world?

 

[Cz.]

So what are the "huge, huge health risks" involved with these spliced foods?

I think they're still way far off in regards to the spider silk coming from goats, would be interesting to see it actually being applied and used.

 

[Supracentral]

So what are the "huge, huge health risks" involved with these spliced foods?

First, commerical agriculture doesn't exactly have a good track record of keeping things contained. Crops spread, it's what millions of years of evolution have taught them to do. Bees also don't pay attention to signs. You're going to get cross pollination and contamination, it's going to happen. That puts (at least some of) your food supply at risk of being "infected" with your modified foods.

The cross species spread of disease is another huge concern, probably the biggest one. While researchers do build in safety mechanisms (think Jurrasic Park and the Lysine Contingency) there is always margin for error, especially in a new industry like this. Also, as in the aforementioned Jurrasic Park, life finds a way. If viable bacteria containing recombinant DNA did escape into the environment, you could wind up with a runaway infection spreading across the human race. Virii are another concern. You could theoretically wipe out an entire species of food crop, or even worse our entire species with a "mistake" in this area. Odds are small, but the risk is tremendous.

This doesn't even get into the moral an ethical issues it raises. How much DNA does something have to have before it gets human rights? Now to be very clear, I'm not implying that piece of rice should have any rights whatsoever. (Except perhaps the right to wind up steaming on my plate...) But it does raise some questions along those lines.

There's a lot of risk here - the question is - do the potential benefits outweigh them? Are there other less dangerous alternatives?

 

[te72]

There's a lot of risk here - the question is - do the potential benefits outweigh them? Are there other less dangerous alternatives?

Unfortunately Mike, everybody thinks of consequences in light of the excitement of the potential an idea has. I mean, hell, I'd love to see dinosaurs if there was even a remote chance of making that happen, but as cool as the idea is, what if they somehow managed to get out of control and survive? God help us if they figured out how to breed...

I guess I kinda just ripped off what you were just saying about plants and applied it to animals. Sorry about that.

 

[RazoE]

Dinosaurs aren't shit, it's not like they're the size of godzilla, a blue whale is bigger than any dinosaur, a couple well aimed shots, and you could take down even the largest one..

 

[Supracentral]

It's not the dinosaurs that scare me, it's the virii. Those little fuckers are hard to hit.

 

[suprarx7nut]

is this where ricers come from..?

BAH DUM DUM CCHHHHHHH..Thank you folks, thank you, I'll be here all night..

This is why I wish at times we had a rep system. +10000 to you Enrique. Well done.

 

[Poodles]

We've been splicing plants for thousands of years, the difference now is that they're adding human genes instead of a different plant.

 

[Bleakvoid]

I think the real danger would be dependent on how the genetics work, but even then the only good scenario is that the modified plant is sterile, or only produces viable offspring when crossed to the same strain of GM rice.

But making it necessary to clone it to reproduce it would get everyone's cloning panties in a bunch, too.