Organic Matter - GMOs

Biotech Vacuum Trees (at Sustainablog)

Mon, 11 Jul 2005 23:18:36 -0700

Well, my contribution has been posted at Sustainablog's Blogging 'Round the Clock. It's the type of thing that I usually would have posted here, but I hope everyone heads over to Sustainablog to check it out (and devote some time to the rest of the day's many, many posts as well!).

On the Significance of Corn

Fri, 27 May 2005 19:53:38 -0700

Time to stop eating corn:

Earlier this week Monsanto Co., the leading U.S. developer of biotech soybeans and corn, came under attack in European press reports over internal company research that found possibly detrimental health changes in rats fed Monsanto's biotech corn.

Monsanto said the results of the study, which found that rats fed the biotech corn had smaller kidneys and blood composition different from rats not fed the biotech corn, could be explained by statistical variations and was not evidence of any negative health impacts associated with its corn.

Statistics alert! If you’ve ever studied statistics you shouldn’t feel better hearing a debate about whether or not something is explained by statistical variation. The decision threshold in statistics for whether an observed phenomenon is caused by random variation or a by real causal relationship is black and white; it’s either “statistically significant” or not. The real world rarely offers us such certitude (which is why we’ve make up things like statistics to draw conclusions with some lesser degree of confidence).

Here’s the point: if a negative health effect was observed in test subjects eating GMO corn, and it was close enough to the decision threshold that we’re bickering over whether or not it is statistically significant, then it’s too close to the threshold to be feeding to humans. Unfortunately not only is GMO corn already being grown on farms and sold in supermarkets, it’s impossible to stop growing it. Most people aren’t opposed to GMO crops because we knew they’re harmful – we dodn’t. People are opposed because once you release an allele into the gene pool you cannot recall it.

The most recent numbers I could find are from 2002, but they suggest that over one third of the corn grown in the United States is GMO, not to mention three-fourths of all soybeans (USDA Agricultural Acreage Report, 2002 - PDF). These numbers are almost sure to have increased in the last three years, even without additional planting.

For additional reference check out Sprol’s piece on corn subsidies as well.

The Smell of Uncertainty

Mon, 07 Mar 2005 19:34:02 -0800

The Hungry Hyaena provides a tipoff as well as some interesting analysis of news from Rockefeller University that scientists have located the gene responsible for the olfactory sense of several pest insects.

The researchers studied four very different insect species: a benign insect favored by researchers, the fruit fly, which is attracted to rotting fruit, and three pest insects: the medfly, which is a citrus pest; the corn earworm moth, which damages corn, cotton and tomato crops; and the malaria mosquito, which targets humans. They found that one gene, shown to be responsible for the sense of smell in fruit flies, has the same function in these pest insects, which are separated by over 250 million years of evolution.

"While all these insects have sensitive olfactory systems, they all have very different smell preferences," says Vosshall, head of the Laboratory of Neurogenetics and Behavior. "Yet this odorant receptor is highly conserved across all of these different species."

GM Forests

Thu, 10 Mar 2005 16:31:37 -0800

Recently the genome of the black cottonwood was "unraveled" by geneticists, making it the first arboreal species to have its genetic makeup laid bare. This of course opens up the possibility of altering certain specific aspects of the tree's genome to develop faster growing, trees which will produce wood that can be used more efficiently. It also virtually guarantees that a lot of environmentalists will completely freak out.

The Economist has a really nice article which covers some basic arboreal physiology (I'm sure pete will let us know if there's anything questionable in that section) and explains exactly how trees might be improved for human use.