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[Jeremy Portzer <jeremyp AT pobox.com>]

On Wed, 2004-06-23 at 10:20, Ian Meyer wrote:

> 
> because those thousands of genes were already in the plants, as opposed 
> to just inserting genes that may end up doing all kinds of unexpected 
> weird stuff

But the point is they DO NOT do "all kinds of unexpected weird stuff". 
Genes are codes to make proteins.  In the case of the RR gene, it makes
a protein that alters the mechanism by which Roundup normally works.  

Now, I agree that protein mechanisms are extremely complex, and it's
important to test things to be sure there aren't unexpected side
effects.  But you are just changing one SMALL aspect of the whole mix,
unlike hybridization which changes THOUSANDS of proteins unknown to the
hybridizer.  Why are thousands of unknown changed genes somehow better
than one well-studied carefully known gene?

> whats really weird to me is the people against the labeling of 
> (artifically) GM foods...

It's because theses labelling ideas usually latch on to this paranoia
that artificial genetic modification is somehow a horrible idea, when
science for the most part has shown it's just fine.  (Same goes for
certain processing techniques such as irraditation.)  I don't have
anything against the voluntary labeling of foods that are made without
artificial GM though.  And maybe some rules should be made to clarify
this, like the rules for 'organic' labelling.   

--Jeremy

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| Jeremy Portzer        jeremyp AT pobox.com      trilug.org/~jeremy     |
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