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[Nikov]

I see no problem with farm-raised fish being made far more marketable. This will make the salmon less expensive and reduce pressure on wild populations. People who otherwise wouldn't eat salmon frequently might be inticed by a low price and eat healthier. Also I don't see a need to label it as GM. I mean, pick up a can of soda. The high fructose corn syrup? Made from GM corn. Big deal.

Eagleon, you point out something interesting. Its called the precautionary principle. Its a fun little one-way arguement used by enviroloonies to insist we shouldn't touch anything with any degree of risk. Like asprin.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

A little "Genetically Modified" stamp on food items won't be too hard to do, and it'll make a lot of people feel better, even if it is unneeded. Why should we try to make them feel better? So public paranoia over this doesn't grow, leading to an Anti-GM bill being forced passed Congress in a fearful retaliation.

[Virex]

I see no problem with farm-raised fish being made far more marketable. This will make the salmon less expensive and reduce pressure on wild populations. People who otherwise wouldn't eat salmon frequently might be inticed by a low price and eat healthier. Also I don't see a need to label it as GM. I mean, pick up a can of soda. The high fructose corn syrup? Made from GM corn. Big deal.

Eagleon, you point out something interesting. Its called the precautionary principle. Its a fun little one-way arguement used by enviroloonies to insist we shouldn't touch anything with any degree of risk. Like asprin.

Asperine's side effects are actually quite severe compared to it's effects. Some have argued it would be a prescribed drug if it was discovered now. Besides, isn't the corn syrup in can's of soda labeled as made of GM corn in the ingredients normally?

[Auto Slaughter]

I would welcome fresh salmon being cheaper but I think that there definitely needs to be labeling.

Thumbs down to patenting living organisms.  Perhaps a completely synthetic genome could be patented but if nature is doing 99.999% of the work, tough luck.

I am not quite so blasé about the potential problems, though.  Genes encode proteins and there are proteins like prions (e.g. the cause of mad cow disease) that cause horrendous lethal diseases as well as less disastrous problems.  It seems entirely possible to me that we might accidentally create a protein not otherwise found in nature or not normally found in food.  At the very least saying "nothing could possibly go wrong" seems to me like saying "this ship cannot sink."  And we can definitely be sure that agribusiness will take any risks that possibly can be taken to ensure profit - trying to make them pay after the fact is not prophylactic, it's just an attempt to clean up messes after they're made with the hope that the guilty party can afford to.

[Phmcw]

Anyway, trust the food and drugs administration, it's not as if they fucked up badly in the past.
And anyway, what's the worst that could happen?
I mean, those animal byproduct can be fed to the cow, it's obvious.
Oh wait.... it's gmo, this is completely different, THIS time, I'm sure we can trust them, honest.

[RedKing]

I see no problem with farm-raised fish being made far more marketable. This will make the salmon less expensive and reduce pressure on wild populations. People who otherwise wouldn't eat salmon frequently might be inticed by a low price and eat healthier. Also I don't see a need to label it as GM. I mean, pick up a can of soda. The high fructose corn syrup? Made from GM corn. Big deal.

By the same principle, why label something as containing protein from pork vs. soy? Big deal! (unless you're Jewish or Muslim or vegetarian)

The FDA ruled in 1991 that the source of hydrolyzed animal protein was important consumer information and had to be labeled as such, because of religious and cultural preferences. I see no problem with treating GM-sourced food the same way.


One issue that I do see is a potential slippery slope. This is relatively minor genetic tweak and for most purposes, doesn't change the composition of the flesh. But where's the threshold on what constitutes a "significant" change? What about a salmon that has artificially high levels of omega-3 fatty acids? What about a salmon that produces its own vitamin enrichment by way of an enhanced endocrine system? What about a "novelty" salmon that glows in the dark?

[Sergius]

Patenting stuff is a different problem altogether. It is basically a government-granted monopoly, that supposedly gives incentive to companies to do stuff (because them stealers will ruin their business forever if allowed to compete against them). Patents are used to stifle innovation by forbidding others to do something even remotely similar to you, whether they use your actual "blueprints" or not. It becomes a matter of who gets to the patent office first.

This obviously doesn't benefit the "making of living beings" industry at all, either, and bullies like Monsanto actually WANT their tampered seeds to contaminate third parties fields so that they can claim a violation of their patent.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I think there should be a constitutional amendment banning the copyrighting of genes, and have for a long time. Just saying.

In any case, prions shouldn't be a large concern. Technically, your body could create a prion disease at any time, should a protein formation go wrong. It isn't very likely.

[Phmcw]

What I'm not comfortable with is wide intra specie gene swapping, like allowing corn to produce a molecule only synthesized by obscure bacteria in small amount. The potential damage to the environment is just too overwhelming.

[Virex]

Patenting stuff is a different problem altogether. It is basically a government-granted monopoly, that supposedly gives incentive to companies to do stuff (because them stealers will ruin their business forever if allowed to compete against them). Patents are used to stifle innovation by forbidding others to do something even remotely similar to you, whether they use your actual "blueprints" or not. It becomes a matter of who gets to the patent office first.

This obviously doesn't benefit the "making of living beings" industry at all, either, and bullies like Monsanto actually WANT their tampered seeds to contaminate third parties fields so that they can claim a violation of their patent.

That's just the American patent office who's bullying everyone around. When talking about patents don't look at the US, they're a bunch of fruitcakes who should be fired right now. as far as I know, there are some options to patent genetic inventions in the European Union, but it has to be much more then the isolation of a gene, meaning that fundamental research remains unpatented and only applications are really patented as it should be.

[Muz]

Just stamp a GM sticker on it and let the consumers decide to be stupid (whichever way they think is stupid).

I'm not in full support for Playing God, because humans have messed up a lot when they play with biology. But I'm even more opposed to anything that reduces the food supply in an increasingly overpopulated world where people starve. If it gives people cancer or AIDS or mutate into salmonmen, then it's their fault for eating GM food, but putting a sticker on them solves all possible problems and doesn't introduce any new problems.

[Eagleon]

I am not quite so blasé about the potential problems, though.  Genes encode proteins and there are proteins like prions (e.g. the cause of mad cow disease) that cause horrendous lethal diseases as well as less disastrous problems.  It seems entirely possible to me that we might accidentally create a protein not otherwise found in nature or not normally found in food.  At the very least saying "nothing could possibly go wrong" seems to me like saying "this ship cannot sink."  And we can definitely be sure that agribusiness will take any risks that possibly can be taken to ensure profit - trying to make them pay after the fact is not prophylactic, it's just an attempt to clean up messes after they're made with the hope that the guilty party can afford to.

No one is saying this. Things -can- go wrong, and they do, in any industry. Do you want glass production to shut down because there could be a coke spill along a shipment lane? It's been established, though, that these salmon are A: unlikely to escape, and B: not going to create a breeding population if they -do- escape, due to evolutionary disadvantage.

Also, we're not making new proteins here. Even if we were it would be extremely unlikely that we make something, accidentally, that acts as a prion. We'd be more likely to make a self-replicating nanoswarm in the smoke-stack of a coal powerplant in Venezuela. If you've looked at proteins, they're very complex beasts. We're only on the very edge of being able to make custom proteins, and they're usually pretty useless because it takes a tremendous amount of computational power to simulate them.

What I'm not comfortable with is wide intra specie gene swapping, like allowing corn to produce a molecule only synthesized by obscure bacteria in small amount. The potential damage to the environment is just too overwhelming.

I'm sorry, like what? What bacteria are you speaking of specifically here? Which molecule? Why would this molecule cause harm in corn, as opposed to bacteria, which are tremendously more abundant and ingested daily by billions of people simply breathing? This is the problem I have with most GMO opponents - they have a vague idea of the issues, they're terrified by the concept because they're told by others that it could cause mass disasters, and then they spread fear and ignorance without actually doing even a modicum of ground work to make sure they're not just beating sticks on the wall to make noise.

I'll be in the angry room if anyone needs me.

[Soadreqm]

Introducing genetically engineered animals into nature could have severe ecological effects, in the same way that introducing any animal to any habitat could. It's happened a couple of times. I wouldn't be worried about the salmon, since it appears they will be contained, and don't seem to have any evolutionary advantages that would let them displace native animals.

As for proteins not normally found in nature... Well, I'm not going to claim I have any formal education on this, but if they had any effect on anything, why wouldn't they be found in nature? There are animals out there that produce deadly neurotoxins as a backup plan in case they get eaten by another animal. Just how are humans going to top that?

[kuro_suna]

I see no problem with selling these for human consumption as long as they're marked as GM food. I do see a problem with these escaping into the wild and outcompeting the wild salmon, though. Could they build in some kind of a disadvantage that'd make them unsuccessful in the wild? Like blaring colours, dulled instincts, extra tastiness for sharks or something like that?

They are supposedly 98% sterile. So they wouldn't be likely to establish a breeding population in the wild.

Won't natural selection turn 2% fertility into 100% in just a few generations. Roundup ready canola has the same problem, anywhere near a farm theirs enough roundup in the environment to make any canola in the wild or replanted from saved seeds 100% transgenic.

[Auto Slaughter]

No one is saying this. Things -can- go wrong, and they do, in any industry. Do you want glass production to shut down because there could be a coke spill along a shipment lane? It's been established, though, that these salmon are A: unlikely to escape, and B: not going to create a breeding population if they -do- escape, due to evolutionary disadvantage.

I didn't say anything about the salmon escaping, so I'm unsure of what you're responding to here.

Also, we're not making new proteins here. Even if we were it would be extremely unlikely that we make something, accidentally, that acts as a prion. We'd be more likely to make a self-replicating nanoswarm in the smoke-stack of a coal powerplant in Venezuela. If you've looked at proteins, they're very complex beasts. We're only on the very edge of being able to make custom proteins, and they're usually pretty useless because it takes a tremendous amount of computational power to simulate them.

Yes, I have looked at proteins.

Okay, how exactly do you know all of this stuff about the probabilities of accidentally doing something that has never been done accidentally or intentionally before?  Are you a molecular biologist or something?  I don't even see how scientists could know what you're claiming to know; we didn't even know that prions existed until recently.  You appear to me to be pulling stuff out of your ass in a desperate attempt to assert your point by any means whatsoever, truthful or not.

A salient difference between creating a prion and creating a self-replicating nanoswarm is that creating a prion is something that has actually happened before.  And coincidentally the problem was spread by someone saying "What could possibly go wrong if we feed chopped up cows to other cows?"

Nothing could go wrong because proteins are, y'know, super-duper complex?  This is exactly the kind of reasoning I'm referring to by people saying that the ship cannot sink.

As for proteins not normally found in nature... Well, I'm not going to claim I have any formal education on this, but if they had any effect on anything, why wouldn't they be found in nature? There are animals out there that produce deadly neurotoxins as a backup plan in case they get eaten by another animal. Just how are humans going to top that?

We don't even know why left-handed amino acids don't exist.  There are all kinds of substances that humans create or that are accidentally created by human actions that are lethal but aren't found in nature.  Take strontium 90 for example or, hell, most of the products of chemical engineering.

You guys are using the most utterly sloppy reasoning to try to reassure yourselves that nothing can go wrong.