Would You Like Drugs in Your Rice? 310
Digitus1337 writes "Wired has the scoop on a new type of rice that was just approved for production by a narrow vote. 'Ventria believes growing drugs that produce proteins like lactoferrin and lysozyme in rice could be a cheaper way to develop drugs than building and maintaining expensive manufacturing plants... Opponents say growing the crops in open fields endangers organic and conventional crops, as well as human health...'" Update: 03/30 23:15 GMT by T : That should probably read "growing rice that produces proteins like lactoferrin and lysozyme."
the risk... (Score:5, Insightful)
GM products (Score:4, Insightful)
Drug resistance? (Score:2, Insightful)
So we're just going to feed antibiotics to the general population even though most of them don't need it?
Aren't we already encountering problems with drug resistance because doctors are over-prescribing antibiotics, and patients don't follow the dosing instructions?
Or are these not antibiotics? I'm confused.
Re:Hey dude... (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone who has bought bulk rice is familiar with the fact that harvested rice is contaminated with bits of debris and wild rice. Speaking in a practical sense, it is clearly inevitable that this GM rice will get mixed in with the food supply.
Even eating organic rice will not save you, since small amounts of rice seeds will surely drift on the winds and contaminate all crops. Do we really want to risk our young daughters eating abnormal quantities of lactoferrin and risking a higher rate of gigantomastia and breast cancer?
Re:Naive! (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a fair bit more to large-scale hot-house or hydroponic farming than you have had to deal with when you grew a little pot in your closet.
come on guys, lets not be that stupid! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Monsanto (Score:5, Insightful)
SCO "only" demand massive payments for something they don't own. Monsanto destroy what you already have, then demand massive payments.
Re:Naive? (Score:5, Insightful)
Then you say: I know that it would probably cost a lot more
Ding! That's it in one. After all, if one company is growing it the expensive way, and another one (in another country if necessary) is doing it the cheap one... guess who wins? Especially in the current environment of trying to get drug prices as low as possible... Yup, its the cheap one. Go figure. So as long as growing it the cheap way is possible, that's the way that commercial entities will do it.
Drug rice... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:the risk... (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, if genetically enhanced products are going to have a risk, we are going to have to find a way around it - the solution would not be to ban GE as a whole, right?
I'm not saying you suggested so - merely that we can never really entirely determine what plants and drugs can be used - you can never really foretell. And if you did try, you will end up saying no to a plethora of new advancements that might actually be beneficial.
Sure, you run the risk to. But hey, progress always comes at a risk.
The can of worms is open - nuclear energy, genetic engineering and the like is not going to go back, and legislations for stopping such things is not going to work. If not us, someone else is going to do it at some point or time or the other. And cross pollination _will_ happen at sometime or the other, no matter how hard you try.
It would be far more easier to accept it, embrace new technologies and let technology and nature sort it out. In the end, we will find a way out. Its inevitable, because we have reached that stage as a species.
Re:Drug resistance? (Score:1, Insightful)
The more reputable groups are using plants like tobacco which aren't food crops and don't interbreed with other species for this sort of thing.
Re:the risk... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the real danger - that we haven't, quite, reached that point. We're on the cusp, evolutionarily speaking, but right now we have a lot of the power with almost no safety. We're still in a very vulnerable time, where one large catastrophe could effectively wipe us out. We've been in that situation for a long time now, but only recently have we actually gained the ability to cause such a situation as a species.
That's the real value of space flight - controlled risk reduction. Once we're off the planet in sustainable numbers, we're much less vulnerable. Once we're out of the system - continued success is almost guaranteed.
For the species, that is. Each individual can still be royally fscked up, no matter what, until and unless we come up with backups of some sort. But that's another subject entirely.
Genetic material travels well (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Naive? (Score:3, Insightful)
The sun part would do okay in a greenhouse, but the water would be difficult. And, building a structure that is large enough, without any type of support that would impede mechanical planting/harvesting would make this hugely expensive.
Option 1- buy some land, plant rice. Harvest.
Option 2 - but some land, build a huge building that has a crud-load of fresh water in it, maintain the building, and harvest.
Option 1 of course is cheaper.
I drive over rice paddies all the time, and the way they handle it now is pretty simple. They divert a river to flood out a few gazillion acres. They plant the rice, and the only other things I see happen are the occasional crop dusters and the harvesting. This seems to be a fairly low-maintenance crop. And I think that is one of the great benefits of rice- other than the water, it is very cheap to grow.
An even better explanation of the costs of rice farming [ucdavis.edu] can be found. But when the 'typical' farm is 700 acres, that would be a lot to cover. The Pentagon only has 34 acres of floor space [greatbuildings.com]. The Mall of America [bloomingtonmn.org] is only 92 acres total (stores/entertainment, etc)
700 Acres per farm is a LOT. Constructing a building that large would not be very cost-effective.
Re:GM products (Score:5, Insightful)
The consequences of growing these types of crops and the impact on their surroundings may not be measureable or manifest themselves for years.
This is why genetically modified crops are such a gamble. Scientists just *don't* know what will really happen, they are hoping for the best based on a shallow dataset of information.
The thing is, there really is no reason to modify foods genetically in this manner. It's one thing to cross one tomato with another tomato strain to get a redder, juicier tomato, it's quite another to put drugs in them, or make them glow in the dark, or somesuch nonsense.
If one needs drugs, they should take a pill. Leave the drugs out of the food supply for those of us who don't want it them in our food.
I hate to bring up the "slippery slope" but given the current state of environmental policy in this country (and worldwide) I choose to *always* default to caution. Destroying, modifying, genetic diversity should be undertaken with *extreme* caution.
The problem is that it is large corporations with no regard for the environment, or even the best interests of other people, who are railroading this stuff through in the court of public opinion and in government hearings. Anyone who dissents is "against science" or a "luddite" according to them.
These corporations will tell you that they are doing it to feed poor people in starving nations. This is crap. There is *no* food shortage. There are food distribution problems caused by political or economical concerns.
If these companies were really concerned about creating nutritious and helpful foods they would learn soil conservation techniques. By and large the vegetables that you eat today are not nearly as good for you as the ones that your grandparents ate because soil depletion and crappy farming techniques have robbed them of their minerals and nutrients.
I am not a luddite, I am an environmentalist. There is lots of room for scientists to come up with clever plans to increase crop yields and preserve soil *without* putting manmade chemicals and drugs in them.
Using technology to simply coverup and put a bandaid over mismanaged farming policies is a bad use of said technology and a cheap grab for a buck by people that have no concern what happens to your children.
An equal risk... (Score:5, Insightful)
Monsanto has already done this [producer.com]. I'm sure that this will not be the last lawsuit of this type, and I'm also sure that the biotech companies are calculating this type of enforcement as an essential part of their income.
Re:Naive! (Score:3, Insightful)
can't imagine it being too expensive for growing rice for medical purposes while making profit.
Re:Genetic rice is good for you. (Score:3, Insightful)
I care because I don't like the idea of a coporation being able to say they now own that rice and be able to dictate what I can and cannot do with it. If the rice genes somehow manage to somehow alter the outcome of sperm or cell would that company then have legal rights over any child created from that sperm and cell.
This is more of a legal/ patent issue. But the fact is that formal science in the field of nutrition and muchless chemistry or even bioengineering the way you and I understand it has only been around for about 100 years. You can argue chemistry has been around since the middle ages, but thats a streach. Again once the origional code is gone. it is gone. To my knowledge no one has started an organization to "backup nature" so to speak.
Re:Hey dude... a couple basic questions (Score:5, Insightful)
Just a couple of questions of the kind that often get overlooked
Since when was rice eaten raw?
Since when did cooked (i.e., denatured) proteins retain the hormonal/enzyme activities of the native protein?
There's a whole lot of wild imagination going into the stories of these so-called risks.
-wb-
Re:the risk... (Score:3, Insightful)
Your argument boils down to "the can of worms has been opened
When your playing with the food supply, anything less than caution is reckless!
Why food crops? (Score:5, Insightful)
But these aren't genetically modified foods--they are food crops modified to produce drugs. Granted, they seem like fairly benign substances, but I don't understand why they need to use food crops. Surely there are plants that could be used for drug manufacture that are not normally cultivated for human consumption, obviating concerns that pharmaceutical crop seeds will get mistakenly mixed in with food crop seeds, or that pharmaceutical crops with cross-pollinate food crops.
Re:Drug resistance? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Hey dude... a couple basic questions (Score:4, Insightful)
I used to think that too, since most proteins do seem to be denatured by cooking (or even by digestion, which is why diabetics can't just take an insulin pill). But it seems some proteins are remarkably heat-stable. Like those nasty prion proteins. Cooking your cattle brains before eating them doesn't seem to protect against BSE.
The Future of Food (Score:2, Insightful)
The Future of Food [thefutureoffood.com] (site is sparse now, but once they are done working on the film, will have additional video clips and information).
And while I'm not impartial, I think it's a good film that covers the topics quite fairly. The sum of it is that we're not really in control of what's happening with our food supply. As a result of working on this film we now eat organic whenever possible.
GMO has potential, but the science seems to be used to only help the bottom lines of the seed/pesticide companies, and not worry about the consequences. And even in this case, where the rice is being grown with "helpful" drugs, there are risks that are ignored (cross pollination, etc). The quote from the film that got me the most is:
"This is one of the greatest experiments that humanity has ever entered into" -- Ignacio Chapella
But there is very little regulation, and everyone seems to be falling over themselves to get into the biz without any vision of the big picture. If this goes bad, it doesn't mean the drop of the stock market and fiber/datacenters going offline, it means the midwest will become a wasteland.
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Re:Why food crops? (Score:3, Insightful)
Secondly, just because humans don't eat a particular plant, doesn't mean that we should contaminate it at will. What about all the other species that might need it to survive.
Re:Drug resistance? (Score:5, Insightful)
There are cases where breast milk is not an option:
- Some mothers cannot produce milk at all or cannot produce sufficient milk to feed their baby.
- A mother who has to take certain drugs for her own health and well-being may not be able to breastfeed because of the risks those drugs present to the baby.
- Sometimes mom isn't available to breastfeed at all. Women still do occasionally die in childbirth, or more commonly, give their baby up for adoption at birth.
- Newborns can have several different disorders that make all milk products, including those from mom, anywhere from very uncomfortable to severely damaging to them. Phenylketonuria [medhelp.org], severe lactose intolerance, etc.
So, for several reasons, it's a good idea to improve infant formula as much as possible. We'll probably never be able to get it as good as breast milk (since mom's body can adapt the formulation to environmental factors, such as passing on antibodies to whatever cold is going around), but it's not necessarily a bad idea.
Interesting that these can also serve as food preservatives, though. You may very well be right about the "true" motivations for this product.
Re:Arrogance and stupidity (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually this is considered a safety measure to prevent intermixing of GM and non-GM vareties.
Cross-pollination will destroy heirloom and open-pollinated varieties
That is true of ANY hybridized or selected varieities, not just GM.
Are we all so mesmerized by technology that we can't see the politics?
It seems to me that you are so mesmerized by the politics you can't appreciate the real value of the technology.
A Potential Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the things that we've seen happening in Canada is that a huge corporation (ie: Monsanto) will sell its genetically modified seed to farmers and charge them an annual licensing fee. The problem arises when some of the seed blows onto neighbouring farmers' fields and starts to merge with their crops. In turn, Monsanto takes legal action against the farmers.
Here's a link to a good, comprehensive story. [www.cbc.ca]
Basically, the issue at hand is that even before considering the ethical implications of lacing crops with drugs, we should be thinking about the leverage such enhancements will give to corporate heavyweights like Monsanto in their ongoing struggle to preserve "their" intellectual property.
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True accounting... (Score:5, Insightful)
The first and obvious one, being that the production of crops which have been bioengineered to produce biologically active chemicals and drugs needs to be strickly managed. They must be kept away from other plants, and for that matter, need to be kept away from bateria which can take genetic material and communicate it to wild species (cross species genetic communication is not commonly considered and is a real issue when dealing with novel or unprecedented genetic application.)
Thalidamide looked like a great idea until deformed babies began to happen. Having a genetically altered crop, speading a gene into wild plant species that might have a significant impact on human health and reproduction, or simply further threaten the viability of endangered environments, is a potential disaster just waiting to happen. We need to place care, and responsiblity ahead of the bottom line, or we might just greedy ourselves to death.
The second, is an administration that has ramrodded through the various dept. of government, the agenda "Rubberstamp Anything Big Business Wants". Just today, the EPA was forced to push through new business practices which may cause a 700% increase in mercury in the fish we eat over the next 10 years. This is in an environment where the mercury levels are already high enough to warm pregnant women "That eating top tier ocean caught fish more than once a week poses a significant risk for birth defect".
I'm a firm believer in capitalism, I believe we need to support business, and create a strong and sustainable economy. However, that strength must not come at the cost of social disaster. Our government has become a machine designed to force all resistance including sanity, aside to promote the wishes of large multinational powers. Time and time again the track record is clear. The public is at risk, every single time our welfare come to a head against some D.C. connected industry's profit margin. It's vital that we not try to reduce this to a Republican/Democratic, Conservative/Liberal issue. These are issues involving the fact that our elected officials are too easily bought and sold for the price of funding future election campaigns. We need to change the system, and waiting for the people who benefit from that system, to change it, is clearly pointless. The people need to stand up and mandate a change from the ground up. The quality and longevity of our lives demands it.
Genda
Re:Hey dude... a couple basic questions (Score:4, Insightful)
Rice is eaten raw when it is used in the form of ground up rice flour and not cooked.
As for cooked proteins, does the word 'prion' ring a bell? It not a law of nature that proteins loose their shape or their function just because they are heated.
The problem with GM is not so much the danger of accidentally misusing the products, but the very real danger of genetic pollution, which can happen in many more ways than most people imagine. Just to mention a couple:
1. Bacteria and other microorganisms routinely swap genetic material or even incorporate genetic materials from cells of other species, plants included. This is why the multiresistent bugs are not just an isolated problem - it has been found that the resistance to antibiotics can wander between different species.
2. Many of our most important crop plants have near relatives in the wild. Imagine eg. that we have a genetically modified oat field, which produces some dangerous substance. Wild oat is a common weed in oat fields, so we will very soon have a wild plant which produces a dangerous substance. Wild oat spreads very easily - the seeds are light and blow around in the wind - so soon this trait gets into oat meant for human consumption. Even worse - we don't even need a scenario where a wild species acts as intermediary - many crops are wind pollinated, and their pollen can travel for huge distances, perhaps all around the globe.
Only a ruthless, boneheaded and ignorant idiot would let genetically modified crops loose on the world at present, when we don't know nearly enough about the consequences. Unfortunately this is the kind of people that are in power.
Re:Hey dude... a couple basic questions (Score:1, Insightful)
So you know all the factors right? Or the decision-makers do, right?
History has shown us again and AGAIN that we are NOT able to foresee and predictably understand the consequences of our actions. Therefore, precaution is highly recommended, if you care about our earth, your fellow human beings and your own health. I suspect you do not, or you wouldn't dismiss this out-of-hand. It's time to open up your heart and start..
By using GM crops in the wild, you are taking away my choice to eat organic and natural foods. Hey, these companies have even the nerve to sue farmers that had their own crops contaminated by GM crops! It's time we put our foot down and say: NO! Messing around with nature for profit to the few, while potentially having big long-time consequences for us all, is totally unacceptable.