Keith wrote:
> You can sleep tight. If it's any consolation, you have probably
> eaten a great deal of GM food already with no ill effects. When
> digested, modified genes break down into a standard set of amino
> acids just like normal genes.
Jeez, Keith, you musty have fires that off in a snit of some kind.
Agreed that engineered genes are made of the same stuff as natural
ones but they're *not* made of amino acids.
Proteins are made of amino acids and yes, the proteins engendered by
engineered genes are going to be made of the same amino acids.
All irrelevant.
Engineered genes *in the engineered organism* are the keys, the
templates, for engineered proteins. Those proteins may be *active*,
active membrane proteins, enzymes etc. What active proteins do,
especially classic enzymes, is control all the other chemistry of the
organism's cells, of the organism in toto.
And we are gradually coming to realize that subtle, sometimes
miniscule, variations in biochemistry at one place, in one organism or
substance, can have stupendously amplified effects, or effects that
propagate silently for some time before being expressed, or.... etc.
> The only 'danger' of growing GM food is if it escapes farmers'
> supervision...
The only danger of growing GM food is is that I'm pretty sure that the
people doing it, from Monsanto's CEO through Dr. Whoever, Phd
(Biotech) to Joe Farmer don't have a shpxvat clue what the long-term
systemic consequences will be. And if a few *do* have a clue, they
don't care because their careers or profits or share values trump
misery, chaos or even megadeaths.
The whole show -- everything that matters to us -- is biology. And we
don't really understand it yet. If you dick around with biology
globally without understanding the global consequences, you're playing
something worse than Russian roulette, playing it on behalf of everybody.
- Mike
--
Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~.
/V\
[email protected] /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^
_______________________________________________
Futurework mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
