Re: [DIYbio] Re: Biosecurity

On 6/13/19, David Murphy <murphy.david@gmail.com> wrote:
>>This traditional farmer breeds his mutated plant in
>>small scale plots and manual breeding takes multiple plant
>>generations. ... yadda yadda
>
> organic farming is a 97 billion dollar industry.


Again you are ignoring time and scale. That traditional farmer story
you are using is a historic analogy from before rapid deployment
existed. The organic farm industry with much faster time and scale
is also less than 20 years old, also far shorter than the valid time
frame to reflect medical results. According to your own argument,
both should be stopped. Because your argument ignores time and scale,
the analogy gives no support to the idea that the science is safe.

A modern reflection of this at the time and scale is occuring right
now with the new fake meat products, which is chemical engineering of
food to create a meatlike-substance made up of plant protein isolates.
Within just two years (and very little testing in comparison to prior
generations), the products have been introduced into half of the major
fast food franchises on earth, and within 2 more years, fake meat will
be sold in all convenience restaurants and every major grocery chain,
globally. Humans have never eaten highly processed protein isolates
in such large amounts and ratios before. Last week there was a news
report that some people (estimated to be about 3% of the 10% of adults
with food allergies) experienced previously unknown allergic reactions
after eating the products, because of the ratio and makeup of pea
protein in the food. This also indicates lack of testing and
too-rapid deployment in terms of time and scale. Your previous
analogy shows that these products should also be stopped from entering
the marketplace along with GM food and organic food which has not
undergone 2+ human lifespans of medical study.

What is an appropriate time frame for testing before biologically
engineered products are allowed to enter the market in large scales?
It currently takes 50-60 years of medical tracking of a population to
reach medical conclusions regarding safety, and even those research
studies are said to remain inconclusive. Applying a generic standard
of engineering safety might suggest that this should be multiplied by
3. Thus all of these bioengineered products should be tested for
perhaps 180 years before global productization is allowed, according
to your historic analogy. This 100+ years timeframe is still much
faster than a new species of vegetable would have been globally
propagated in traditional agriculture, historically.

This is why that common biologist's analogy of the "traditional
farmer" is a deeply flawed defense.


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## Jonathan Cline
## jcline@ieee.org
## Mobile: +1-805-617-0223
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