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."
Naive? (Score:5, Interesting)
I know that it would probably cost a lot more, but by growing it indoors you cut down on the possibility of cross contamination quite a bit. Also, if you're growing a crop to use it for pharmaceuticals wouldn't you want it to be grown in a bit more of a controlled environment?
Monsanto (Score:5, Interesting)
Answer: (Score:3, Interesting)
Grow them in buildings, in a clean enviornment.
Remember Percy Schmeiser? (Score:1, Interesting)
He was sued for GM Grain blowing into his field. So what's going to stop this rice from spreading? Because once it gets loose (and it will inevitably), it will mix with regular crops and before long there will be no way to separate it from regular rice.
Genetic rice is good for you. (Score:2, Interesting)
Although it seems like a novel idea... (Score:5, Interesting)
Although they're going for 'out of the lab production' with rice, the potential for problems is just too great. Unlike crops which are genetically modified to produce more of their own proteins or molecules that will be in their environment anyways (like Round-Up), the rice would be producing proteins/molecules/drugs which are completely foreign to the crop environment. What really irks me is that they are producing drugs which will possibly be leaked into the ground after degradation or harvesting. If there happen to be bacteria in the ground with some sort of drug resistance that can be transmitted to other bacteria by plasmids/recombination through contamination of the crops, there will be big problems.
The use of E. Coli in the production of pharmaceuticals is much more efficient and can be grown in larger quantities using huge vats in research labs.
On a much more practical note: how exactly are they going to extract the drugs from the rice? Would the rice be sold with the drugs inside and then cooked prior to ingestion? Or would they be steamed and the resulting water ingested?
Bottom line: using ANY crop for pharmaceutical production is inefficient and dangerous and impractical. E. Coli can do what crops do but with much higher efficiency and practicality.
Re:Drug resistance? (Score:2, Interesting)
With rice the life cycle is much shorter, however I'm not sure how GE'd rice would be able to directly take advantage of evolution... instead development will be directed and refined by the human growers. Maybe they can do a better job than nature.
Re:come on guys, lets not be that stupid! (Score:5, Interesting)
The "organic" canola plants used to produce food products are the result of serious human genetic intervention. The first rapeseed plants capable of producing edible oils (previously, it had just been an industrial lubricant) were introduced in Canada in 1968 [siu.edu], and dubbed canola, a contraction of "Canada Oil."
Hmmm, Deja Vu (Score:2, Interesting)
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If you're not using Slackware, then, uh, you suck, or something. Yeah!
Arrogance and stupidity (Score:2, Interesting)
Breast feeding is FREE and far superior to the patented alternatives. Yet another company doing PR to convince doctors, nurses and parents that their product is safe will mean fewer breast-fed kids. Dumb security.
Cross-pollination will destroy heirloom and open-pollinated varieties, which offer genetic diversity (resilience), and political freedom from large corporations that would control the food supply. The dream of many such companies? Making seeds that will not germinate unless you have their proprietary chemical (GRM- Genetic Rights Management!).
The farmers that save seeds are food hackers. If this were software, people here would be up in arms. Where's the outrage? Companies like Monsanto are worse than SCO. All of them would destroy the public good to profiteer, including those with such noble sounding motives as keeping children healthy.
Are we all so mesmerized by technology that we can't see the politics?
Re:come on guys, lets not be that stupid! (Score:3, Interesting)
What I don't support are:
1) Crops that allow for (and demand) the heavy use of pesticides, herbicides, and other poisons that contaminate my food supply.
2) Crops that grow drugs and other chemicals that don't need to be in the food supply and can contaminate neighbor's crops.
3) Suing innocent farmers who got their crops contaminated and ruined by your whiz-bang patented crapola.
We should be using GM to reduce the use of poisons and to increase the healthiness of food, and we should be doing it in such a way that doesn't impact other farmers. I'm perfectly comfortable with "pharming" so long as it can't cross-pollinate.
Re:Why food crops? (Score:3, Interesting)
How about we engineer into such plants a dependency on a particular substance that isn't common in the environment? Humans have lost the ability to make folic acid, bacteria haven't. Knock out a production pathway in the plants (destruction is easier than creation, no?) and you've created a dependency on a new 'vitamin'. Then if the GM stock spreads, it won't compete well against the natural variety.
Or, make the new strains more susceptible to a given herbicide. They already make Roundup-resistant canola, make plants with a "glass jaw" for Roundup instead.
Is there something I'm missing besides, "Oh, that might cut into our porift margin?"
Re:Dude, rice IS a drug (Score:1, Interesting)
We're definitely in Asia but there are elitists that would have a different opinion simply because we (the Philippines) don't have the deep culture and tradition that more prominent Asian countries have.
some links for the paraniod.. (Score:2, Interesting)
http://home.intekom.com/tm_info/index.html
htt
http://
Good Luck trying to avoid them!
Re:Pharmin Phool (Score:3, Interesting)
Im being as serious as a heart attack about this, I love riding on the old IH (the same one I grew up riding with my grandad) and man oh man what a peacefull feeling. As long as youre not drunk
Re:GM products (Score:2, Interesting)
First off, I was born and raised in rural Pennsylvania. I have actually worked on farms. My family was involved in farming. My uncle still is. My sister still is. My sister has farmed in PA, NC and WY. My whole family is very conservative, unlike me.
My sister majored in Agriculture at Penn State, she knows 100 times what I know about farming. She tells me that you are wrong, it's not just Greenpeace as you state, but many university studies have also concluded that mineral loss in foods due to soil depletion, and the biggie, acid rain, is very real.
The point is that myself, "the Greenpeace idiot" *and* these very conservative people, who, unlike you, are quite knowledgeable about farming *and* live the life, are concerned with genetically modified crops.
Even a quick Google search will turn up lots of studies that take my position, and, in fairness, a lot of studies that completely take your position. This is another reason why these things are better handled as discussions rather than calling someone an idiot.
Just like RTFA, you should RTFC. I am not against, for instance, taking one strain of corn and creating a hybrid with another strain of corn, I am against adding chemicals and drugs unnecessarily.
Some people have pointed out, if you don't like it, don't eat it. That's just the point. Last year here in Oregon, there was a measure proposed mandate the labeling of GM foods. Not a ban, or a restriction in anyway, mind you; people just wanted the food labeled so they would have a choice. This measure was crushed by a large advertising campaign from big corporations.
Please tell me, why can't I have a label to decide? There is a label that says organic. If you don't want to eat it, you don't have to. I just want a label that says GM so that I don't have to eat it.
You are right organic farming is expensive. I cannot afford all of my groceries to be organic. I have to pick and choose, I am not a zealot.
Thes large farming conglomerates and the chemical companies that prop them up want to modify the food and then obfuscate the fact so that you don't know, that's the biggest problem. They want to *hide* it. So that's where the slippery slope comes into play. Some stuff that is added may be benign, but what else won't we know about?
Unfortunately, there are no companies or organizations (with any authority) who, in are ethically suitable to overseeing such things.