by
Karl Haro von Mogel on 3 September 2009
Note: This one is a little old, it took Anastasia’s recent post on food selling laws to remind me to post it.
In the discussion about the food safety bill, HR 875, there are many urban myths going around. From our friend Stephen Lendman’s characterization of it as a “GMO proliferation bill,” to the claim that it will ban backyard gardens, many of the myths seem to follow a similar pattern. And almost no one who promotes these myths has even bothered to read the bills.
Point of fact – if you read the text of the bill, there is absolutely nothing in it about genetic engineering, so where do they get this idea?
Nevertheless, myths such as these have traversed the intertubes and the lack of fact-checking combined with the sensationalism (and perceived plausibility?) of such a bill have put it on youtube, blogs, and some news sites.
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by
Karl Haro von Mogel on 2 September 2009
Nature News has just published a long article by Emily Waltz about the sometimes harsh scientific debates and battles that are waged over genetic engineering in agiculture: GM Crops: Battlefield. Papers suggesting that biotech crops might harm the environment attract a hail of abuse from other scientists. Emily Waltz asks if the critics fight fair.
The article is pretty good, and it discusses a 2007 paper about Bt corn negatively affecting caddissfly larva when compared to non-Bt corn. “Toxins in transgenic crop byproducts may affect headwater stream ecosystems”, by Rosi-Marhsall et al. You can access the paper here, and also read Anastasia’s commentary about the paper with Even Scientists make Mistakes at Genetic Maize.
Waltz’s article doesn’t focus so much on the paper itself so much as the responses to the paper, with implications for the culture of scientific debate following controversial results. If someone comes along with a preliminary result that is based on a study with some problems, and there is a danger that it could be used politically to everyone’s detriment, what is the proper response? Shoot it down with all your guns blazing, snipe the problems at a distance, or politely suggest a more rigorous examination? Will the latter response prevent it from being used to make policy decisions?
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Cotton like Candy
Or Cottonseed you can Eat thanks to Genetic Engineering.
A few years ago, I read about a research group that had used genetic engineering to remove a poisonous compound from cotton seed. Now, it seems, they are one step closer to making a positive impact on the availability of food for people in developing countries and beyond. Time Magazine reports that Dr. Keerti Rathore and his team, who made the development years ago have now moved on to field trials, a necessary step to test the resilience and effectiveness of the trait in real-world conditions.
RNA that Interferes
Let me tell you how this works. They used a technique called RNA interference, or RNAi. When plants (and other organisms we are finding) are infected with a virus that uses RNA as its genetic material, they defend themselves by chopping up the offending molecule. Cells use the double-stranded DNA as genetic material, and use the very similar single-stranded RNA to carry information from the genes to the rest of the cell for making proteins. But the RNA that these viruses use is double-stranded, like DNA. Since plants don’t use RNA as a double-strand, this gives them something different to detect and destroy, and that’s what they do.
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