Re: [DIYbio] Re: Biosecurity

It's argumentum ad ignorantiam.

Put another way. Lets imagine a non-GMO plant. (at least as far as regulators are concerned)

The farmer has a plantations of their crop growing... and they notice that the fruit from one of their plants is an unusual color.

When they taste it they notice that it's sweeter than normal.

The farmer does not know anything about genetics. He may not even know that genes are a thing that exist.

He doesn't know if the mutation that unregulated sugar production in the fruit and pigment production in the skin did something else.

For all he know's it could also have unregulated production of some carcinogenic compound in the flesh of the fruit.

Hell there could be some novel virus involved.

He has no idea. All he sees is a sweet fruit with an interesting color.

So he breeds from that plant or takes cuttings and grows more. And a few years later everyone is eating them. With no safety testing.

Thus is the "traditional", "organic" method.

There's something on the order of 40 "natural" pesticides in the flesh of an average carrot. Have they ever been through safety testing with higher concentrations? no.

That flashy new variety of carrot with extra sweet flesh that the local organic farmers are so keen on?

It's never been through safety testing. They don't know if the genetic change that caused the change in sweetness upregulated something else.

This isn't even a hypothetical. it's happened.

https://boingboing.net/2013/03/25/the-case-of-the-poison-potato.html

sometimes those all-natural organic crops, modified only by traditional breeding techniques yield something dangerous.

because on a fundamental level, on a real nuts and bolts level, the people creating those varieties have absolutely no idea why they're getting the results they're seeing. They have no idea what pathways have been modified. They're like cavemen modifying a car engine with a heavy rock.

There's even atomic gardening, take the crop you want to generate new "organic" varieties for, grow it in a field, put a big radiation source in the middle and zap the plants. Some will die and some will survive and some of the survivors will produce seeds with unusual traits.

But the farmer who sees a novel trait has no idea how it's working internally.For all he knows s it could be upregulating something that produces substances that cause brain damage in human children.

Meanwhile, with GMOs, the people making the change have spent years studying the exact genes they're changing, they've spent years studying the exact pathways involved and they're making exactly the precise change they intend to make.

So far "traditional", "organic" breeding techniques have yielded killer bees, grass that produces clouds of toxic cyanide in dry weather and potatos that can slowly kill you among other fuckups.

Meanwhile in 30+ years GMO's have yielded disasters such as.... and... and... hmmm.. nope, nothing.

So I don't buy the bullshit. GMO's are fundamentally safer because of how they're created.