Hidden Viral Gene Discovered In GMO Crops 391
Jeremiah Cornelius writes "Researchers with the European Food Safety Authority discovered variants of the Cauliflower mosaic virus 35S in the most widely harvested varieties of genetically-modified crops, including Monsanto's RoundupReady Soy and Maze. According to the researchers, Podevin and du Jardin, the particular 'Gene VI' is responsible for a number of possible consequences that could affect human health, including inhibition of RNA silencing and production of proteins with known toxicity. The EFSA is endorsing 'retrospective risk assessment' of CaMV promoter and its Gene VI sequences — in an attempt to give it a clean bill of health. It is unknown if the presence of the hidden viral genes were the result of laboratory contamination or a possible recombinant product of the resultant organism. There are serious implications for the production of GMO for foodstuffs, given either possibility."
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why was that viral gene inside in the first pla (Score:3, Funny)
There are many questions one should ask:
* 1. Why is that viral gene in there?
* 2. Was it put there by accident or by purpose?
* 2(a). If by accident, how, when, what happened?
* 2(b). If by purpose, why, and by whom?
* 3. How come the American scientists never detected this viral gene?
* 3(a). Was it because of incompetence, or was it because the American scientists were not allowed to publish their finding, if they had found it before the Europeans?
Here's another question you can add:
* 4. Why the fuck don't we test GMO crops for 20+ years before we start feeding them to people, and esp. children?
The answer to this and all your other questions is "we're morons, but profit is king". I'm all for science, and I realize genetcially modifying foods is what humans have always done, but never at this speed until recently. Personally I don't take drugs that haven't been on the market for at least two decades... I'd like to be able to take the same stance on GMO foods, but the lobbyists don't like the idea of giving me the information I require to make decisions regarding foodstuffs by requiring "This Contains Genetically Engineered Food" on labels.
I stay up to date on bioengineering and other life sciences, but it seems that most people don't understand that we really are fucking idiots when it comes to this stuff. It's like blindly copy & pasting huge swaths of code and changing a few numbers in a complex genetics program because it seems to have some of the results we want, but we really don't know if it has only the results we want, we don't really know what the fuck we're doing. We're like those fools who know just enough about computers to be dangerous, only instead of frying their systems we risk harming millions or billions of humans. ::sigh:: It's "patience" that's the virtue, not "patients"... If I ever tackle a problem that's beyond my power / knowledge, where I don't know exactly what I'm doing then I step back and say so, do more research, I don't just plow ahead heedlessly thinking: "What can possibly go wrong?!" then push the uncertain code into production...
I wouldn't want to eat food that's made this way!
Ugh, Humans, what a crap species: Brains just the right size to end all sentient life on the planet, and with just enough motivation to do so accidentally. There's the answer to your Fermi paradox, folks.
Re:Why was that viral gene inside in the first pla (Score:4, Funny)
This is Slashdot. We hate technology and science.