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Oz Oz is offline
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Default Genetic modification (was: Coming Soon to a Paddy Near You: Frankenrice !)

John Beardmore > writes
>In message >, Oz
> writes
>
>>Oh, its quite clear. Inserting a single known gene with a precise action
>>means you know what the effect will be (pretty much),

>
>Does that not depend where it's inserted ? How much control over that
>do you have these days ?


AFAIK the insertion point basically determines if the result produces a
viable organism with the inserted gene expressed.

>> whilst inserting a
>>whole bunch of genes, most of which do unknown things, clearly meas you
>>don;t know what the result will be.

>
>But at least you know they are native to the species, so you'll probably
>have encountered their effects in a similar context before.


As has been pointed out the toxins of plants are mostly unknown and the
level of expression is variable. So whilst that is usually true, its not
always true. Of course pest resistance tends to be strongly correlated
with toxins and their levels and this is actually the main thrust of
plant selection and breeding. Obviously this is also strongly correlated
with high yielding blemish-free produce.

>> In animal trials you can't usually feed high levels of a
>>single food for a lifetime without your stock dying or showing bad
>>effects. This sort of thing is well known in farming, but appears
>>unknown elsewhere.

>
>Think most nutritionists would take issue with you there !


They might, but they won't have actual trial results let alone know the
major toxins and have analytical procedures to evaluate them. Compared
to animal nutritionists, human ones are at the stick and bone level.
Nearly all their claims are more or less invented by comparison.

--
Oz
This post is worth absolutely nothing and is probably fallacious.

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