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Comment by sethbannon | Hacker News Reader

Basically what this guidance says is that if you're CRISPR'ing food that could have been created through traditional cross breeding, then it's auto-approved and falls under the USDA regulatory sphere. If you're creating food that could not be created through traditional cross breeding, it needs approval and falls under the FDA's regulatory sphere. Pretty reasonable if you ask me.

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While reasonable, a filename typo couldn't result in inserting genes from the chickenpox genome into a potato with traditional cross breeding, whereas it could with CRISPR (at least at some point with digitally specified synthesis like in the Venter artificial cell).

By having an approval/verification step they could avoid accidents (not that chickenpox potato is a realistic scenario or threat).

Resequencing of the modified genome is SOP, how else would you check that the right gene has been inserted/deleted in the right locus in the right way?

Simple: let it grow. If it turns into purple zombies and eats the town (or otherwise shows unexpected gene expression), you failed.

A variation on this is to also have it do an easy to check change, like various forms of fluorescence, then check for the easy to check ones and assume that if that one happened, the important one happened too.

Not all genes are expressed in the phenotype.

Well, true, but when you're changing genes, you're really looking to change the phenotype.

Things are a little more complicated than that...for one thing, pretty much all genetics work done today requires customized primers for the process of creating lots of identical DNA strands. If you accidentally sent off for chickenpox primers and used them with DNA from your gene donor vegetable/fruit/flower/jellyfish/etc, you would not get chickenpox DNA. Further, I believe that the way DNA strands are identified and recovered is by estimating their size in base pairs and comparing that to the expected result. And samples from the results are sequenced to verify their accuracy, anyways.

I believe that there are also similar targeting steps with the CAS-9 proteins, but I don't know very much about this subject.

I do think that I know enough to say that accidentally clicking the wrong file will not put chickenpox into a potato anytime soon, though.

I don't think it is, because the acceleration of the process radically changes the viable range of intentionally targeted outcomes.

People focus on the positive of these modifications but seem to forget that the purpose of companies in gene modification is not to create healthier food, but to increase their profit margins. This conflict is a regular one, but it's made even worse by the fact that, for whatever reason, some of the most historically unethical companies, such as Monsanto, Bayer, and DuPont are the primary players in genetically engineering foodstuffs.

So for instance our bodies have not caught up to our technological and socioeconomic developments that have practically eliminated food scarcity. So we enjoy things that make no sense to enjoy, presumably as a product of evolution, like high calorie foodstuffs that at one time would have been key to survival, yet today are a great way to shorten your life expectancy.

Imagine now you eat two pineapples. One tastes incredibly sweet and like nothing you've had before. And you find yourself craving more and more of it. The other tastes well... like a pineapple. The former is going to increase sales at the cost of healthfulness. And of course for fruits and vegetables, nutritional labels are completely optional. And of course the FDA has come down hard against labeling of genetically engineered foods. The customer would have nothing to go on but their horribly flawed and exploitable intuition and responses to the foods.

And this is also just at a base level. Somehow we also develop addictions to things that make no sense, evolutionary or otherwise, to get addicted to. Would it be hypothetically possible to begin to translate this response to traditional foodstuffs? It'd be incredibly profitable if so. And we might never even see anything overt happen. Instead we'd just see everybody's waistlines continue to increase seemingly to no end without immediately apparent explanation, as a country feverishly ate itself to death.

At this point, aren't people realizing that just trusting companies to behave ethically is not a good idea? Even moreso when that behavior and the most profitable behavior often come directly into conflict.

How would this be different from a purpose of any other company on the face of the Earth? They all exist to make money. And killing off your customers (or poisoning them) is not necessarily a winning long-term strategy.

Cigarette companies would disagree. The goal, as always, is the maximum extraction of short to medium term extraction of revenue. So long as you're not immediately killing your customers off, profits often greatly exceed costs.

And actually that part about not even immediately killing them off is not entirely true. Check out the 'pinto memo.' [1] When Ford was manufacturing the Pinto they discovered a critical flaw with the vehicle that could cause the gas tank to explode in rear end impacts, resulting in grievous injury or death. It would have cost about $10/car to fix the problem, but in an analysis - the 'pinto memo' - they discovered that it would cost less just to settle the cases of injury and death. They chose to not spend that $10/car and hundreds of people did end up burning to death because of it.

Fords' latest revenue numbers were $157 billion. Phillip Morris' latest revenue figures were $78 billion. It's for these reasons that I think things like consumer choice and information are critical. Genetically engineered foodstuffs are not inherently good or bad. Any given invention can be good or bad. This decision by the FDA, paired with their adamant stance against any sort of labeling, means they're forcing customers to simply take it on faith that companies like Monsanto have the customers' best interests in mind, even when doing otherwise could potentially be more beneficial for Monsanto.

And now finally to top all of this we also have regulatory capture. Obama created a special position new head role at the FDA, which he half jokingly referred to as the 'Czar of Foods'. He then appointed one Michael R. Taylor [2] to it. Taylor is former vice president lawyer and lobbyist for Monsanto whose legal career was pinned by a case in which he argued that companies ought be allowed to add at least a small amount of carcinogenic chemicals to processed foods. This capture goes well beyond corruption. You, indirectly, had Monsanto regulating Monsanto.

[1] - https://www.motherjones.com/politics/1977/09/pinto-madness/

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_R._Taylor

As I recall, eventually cigarette companies had to pay out quite a bit of money, in the US at least, and now have significant limitations on their advertising activities. Last I checked, smoking rates are dropping pretty much everywhere.

And trying to hide problems, in the end, did not work out that well either for Ford, or for VW, or others. Depends on how "long" that long-term is, really.

I am all for complete information and disclosure, but it has to be somehow balanced with the general public being more clueless than it wants to think it is, and enormous amount of outright propaganda from the "GMOs are scary" and "Monsanto is teh devil" crowd.

Also, another point here is that I'm speaking of the consequences having no longterm effect. But even in some parallel world where they would have a longterm effect, the short to midterm benefits would often still outweight it.

CFCs are a good example. They were largely responsible for ozone depletion and the primary developer - DuPont (now another player in genetically engineering foodstuffs) - was well aware of this. They lobbied the government for about a decade to prevent regulating them until they had a new, patented, replacement and then turned 180 and acknowledged they were destroying the ozone. But even had they not managed to successfully corrupt the government there and we prohibited CFCs a decade earlier, as we should have, they would have made immense profit in the time leading up to that period such that the fear of their actions being stopped were not really a concern. The fact that modern democratic governments can be broken so easily by large enough corporations exasperates, rather than creates, the problem.

Out of curiosity, how would the prohibition of CFCs work before there were a replacement? Or would that be something like the anti-GMO crowd that feasts on their organic free-range heritage breed quinoa salad while telling people in developing world that there's not enough food for them, because GMO is evil, so drop dead?

Do you think that CFCs were the world's first refrigerant?

There was a reason we moved to CFC, wasn't there? Switching back and forth woulds be pretty expensive.

Yes, swapping would have obviously come with a cost. The point was that swapping would have been entirely possible. Instead DuPont, even knowing full well the potentially global and catastrophic level of damage they were causing, successfully lobbied to prevent any regulation against them for the better part of a decade after their effects became widely known. And it's highly likely that DuPont understood the dangers well before then.

Cigarette companies today are literally more profitable than ever. They've killed and continue to kill their customers and are making a killing doing it. Har har. The fines they paid (and continue to pay) amount to a completely negligible fraction of their profit (not even their revenue!). Companies can and do engage in malicious behavior for profit when the yields are great enough.

Your opinions of the public aside, you don't get to force people to use things because you think they should, except for the tiny handful of exceptions where not using something would cause an immediate public danger - such as vaccines. In some cases inferior products do win out, or good products die out. That's fine. If you cannot create a compelling case for your product in the public eye, then your product dies.

[1] - https://www.npr.org/2017/04/24/525441653/u-s-tobacco-profits...

And also, I doubt that you will find people these days who are not aware of tobacco dangers. That tobacco companies still make a good profit just shows that if you have a legal (although Mr. Escobar might argue that legality isn't required either) product that people want, you'll make money. You will lose significant money if you are hiding its dangers, though.

By the logic in the second paragraph, what's the difference between vaccines and GMO food? Is it that anti-vaxxer idiots endanger people here, while anti-GMO idiots starve people way over there?

Actually this is great! Let's look at some data together. The first genetically engineered product was released in 1994. It was called the Flavr Savr Tomato [1]. There are a couple of big points here. The reason this is important is because we can now look at a graph of food availability [2]. You might notice that well before genetic engineering of products was a thing, there was more than bountiful food that was increasing at a steady rate. Genetic engineering has had a negligible impact on this one way or the other.

The next point is worldwide share, which gets back to the original post. The primary goal of genetic engineering foodstuffs is profit, and the developed world is where that profit is at. That said the big GMO companies have increasingly started to target the developing world. But that change in direction happened as acreage growth in the developed world began to flatline, and in some cases decline. This [3] is a summary report of GMOs from ISAAA, which is a (pro) GMO advocacy group funded by Monsanto, Bayer, the USDA, and others.You'll note that GMOs are basically a US focused projected, though Brazil and Argentina also have substantial acreage.

The whole point here is that GMOs are a product of no necessity. Monsanto is 'feeding a growing population' in the same way that McDonalds is, but at least you know when you're buying a Big Mac.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flavr_Savr

[2] - https://ourworldindata.org/slides/hunger-and-food-provision/...

[3] - http://www.isaaa.org/resources/publications/briefs/52/execut...

Oh, sure, there was more than bountiful in the US and Europe. Saying that it was (or is) bountiful in, say, Africa seems to be a stretch.

One could think that GMOs appear to be a US-centered because many developing countries, whose export markets are mostly European (i.e. very anti-GMO) are afraid to plant GMO crops for fear of losing those markets.

I would presume, in absence of some proof of shenanigans, that 108 Nobel winners [0] had a good idea of safety and necessity of GMOs when they wrote this letter.

[0] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/nobel-laureates-greenpe...

You're contradicting yourself here. Earlier you implied that without genetically engineered foodstuffs people in developing nations would starve. That belief is common, but obviously entirely wrong. You're now shifting it to developing nations aren't using these products because their exports (which implies a surplus of foods) might be hurt. The site referenced shows where all their data is from, if you find things difficult to believe. You should of course scrutinize all information. Something we all know, but sometimes forget when information confirms our own personal biases. In 1996 Africa's production was already capable of providing in excess of 2300 calories per person per day. It was a matter of distribution. Africa's problems are primarily social. You have to remember that they have something like 1/6th of the world's population but about 60% of the world's arable land.

As for your letter, let's consider appeals to authority. In the early 20th century academia and intellectuals in the US were were full-on in favor of state enforced eugenics - and this was a topic they were actively involved in and studying. Hitler actually sited the American 'progress' on this issue as an inspiration. Were they right, because lots of smart people said they were? Or go back to leaded fuel. DuPont and other companies involved that catastrophe had long lists of scientists, experts, and professionals constantly testifying to its safety and necessity. In the past cigarette companies would regularly run ads showing doctors smoking and testifying to the safety of them. Suffice to say, when a company is trying to create an appeal to authority to convey a message - I think we should be particularly critical as it's the weakest form of argument that exists, even if it even qualifies as an argument.

But anyhow, back to your letter - Huffington Post as usual was quite confused. The quote "GMOs are extensively tested and subjected to a higher degree of regulatory review than any other crops" is not in the letter that was signed. Here's the actual letter [1]. But the more interesting part is that that statement is of course completely false. People are constantly surprised (see: this thread for examples) that genetically engineered foodstuffs have had no meaningful oversight in the US, though some in this thread think this is a new thing. There is no premarket testing required, special safety inspections, or anything of the sort. Basically if you have the licenses to sell a tomato, you can genetically engineer a tomato and sell it without any additional requirements. People probably just assume that in the nation of a gazillion regulations, it's a given that genetic engineering would be tightly controlled, regulated, and tested. Welcome to regulatory capture.

Beyond that there are several other misleading statements in the letter, in its current state, as well but this is already getting a bit too long. This is just a topic I find incredibly interesting from a sort of social perspective. The interaction between government and corporate influences, how media influences people, and all of these other incredibly interesting issues are all emphasized so well in this one topic - with a wide array of different nations/governments to consider. Just really great stuff.

[1] - http://supportprecisionagriculture.org/nobel-laureate-gmo-le...

People in the developing world do starve, actually. And if in some instances (i.e. Zimbabwe) reasons are mostly political, in many places arable land isn't exactly abundant, and climate isn't ideal for growing crops. Improving irrigation etc. would improve yields even without GMOs, but given the economic realities of those countries it is a less feasible option.

Also, there is no contradiction between selling some crops on export markets and not having enough food for internal ones. These could be different crops for one, and for another, farmers need to make some money, too.

It is not surprising that HuffPo would get confused about anything that smells of science, I would think that an opinion of a large number of Nobel laureates is as good as appeals to authority go. While they might be wrong (although conflating them with paid-for doctors advertising cigarettes seems rather disingenuous). At the very least I would expect some well-designed studies showing some negative effects of GMOs, not arguments ad hitlerium or that Monsanto might make a profit. By itself I do not see how it is a bad thing, unless it can be shown that they are trying to hide known dangers.

There are neither inherent negative effects nor positive effectives of genetically engineered foodstuffs. GMOs themselves are just a class of invention, which is why their conflation as a thing in and of themselves is so inappropriate. And so one must consider each and every GMO on a case by case basis, which is exactly the opposite of what we're doing.

And this leads to the next problem. Genetically engineered products are patented inventions that come with a litany of terms and conditions on their usage. Among the terms Monsanto includes is that their seeds cannot be used for public research without specific permission from the company. [1] There was also an editorial on this here [2]. In other words most of every study you've seen on Monsanto products has been rubber stamped by Monsanto. There couldn't be a conflict of interest there, could there? As an aside Monsanto in turn then uses this bias to create appeals to authority. When new work is done that does cast their product in a negative light they then immediately appeal to the quantity of their 'approved' work to try to discredit the new work by authority alone. It's like arguing that the Sun must indeed revolve around the Earth because we have 200 years of science showing it does! Again, anytime you see an appeal to authority - I think it should make you rather curious about why somebody would go this route.

And there's also the issue of retaliation. The examples on the individual level are extensive, but let's consider how this goes all the way to the top in large part thanks to Monsanto's extreme success in we'll say 'influencing' the US government. Here's a quote: "Country team Paris recommends that we calibrate a target retaliation list that causes some pain across the EU since this is a collective responsibility, but that also focuses in part on the worst culprits. The list should be measured rather than vicious and must be sustainable over the long term, since we should not expect an early victory." What is that from? That was a response, proposed in a confidential US cable, to a retaliation against a grievous act from France. What was France's decision? The heinous and unspeakable act of ceasing cultivation of Monsanto Corn!!!

The exact tactics vary, but in general themes this is very similar to how leaded fuel persisted as long as it did. Similarly with CFCs. And again there are also plentiful other issues and themes in play here, but I'm trying to avoid writing a novel!

[1] - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-seed-companies...

[2] - http://articles.latimes.com/2011/feb/13/opinion/la-oe-gurian...

[3] - https://search.wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/07PARIS4723_a.html

Well, that's exactly the thing -- GMO by itself means pretty much nothing in regard to dangers or benefits. But the anti-GMO crowd isn't interested in them, they don't want GMOs to begin with.

Aren't there any newer articles about GMO-research coverups than these? For all its worth, I did see one study, and it was the kind I would have gotten an "F" for back when I was in high school with advance biology classes. And it is interesting to note that while in the US it was hard to find leaded gas even in 1990, it was the only kind sold in USSR where concerns of TEL manufacturers or patent holders would be of no consequence. And it was phased out much later, too.

IP and patent discussion is probably off-topic here, but if GMOs do what they are said to do, what it the problem with Monsanto having their own licensing terms on it? And so far there are good indications that they do have benefits and no well-designed studies showing dangers. And appeal to authority as a logical fallacy or not, I find the idea that all 100+ signatories (including some who, judging by the year when they got their Nobels could not care less by now about Monsanto's alleged threats) are either scared of or paid by the Big Agriculture to be an even greater conspirological fallacy.

That's quite amazing. I find 1, 2, 3, 4 straw men in so few words. That's usually an indicator that somebody's not really interested in rational discussion, but we've already gone beyond the grain of normal chat here so I'm a bit confused. So let me ask you a simple question, do you think everything you just said fairly represents what I have stated and/or implied in our discussion? If I point out misrepresentations you're making, would this be meaningfully likely to change your views?

I am just trying to figure out your angle on this, because I do not think Monsanto being the devil incarnate, or some scientists believing in eugenics 100 years ago has much bearing on whether we should use GMOs now to let people in areas where conventional crops do not grow well feed themselves. Argument that "there are too many people in the world" aside, I do not see how it could be a bad thing.

And more straw men.

Again, let me ask you the same question. Do you think what you just said in way reasonable represents what I've stated throughout our discussion? And again, if I point out the [rather absurd] misrepresentation you're making, would it be likely to change your view one way or the other?

Well, I think that you are throwing strawmen by a barnful here, Monsanto, eugenics, whatnot, but other than a few inaccurate statements about food being bountiful and people not starving you are trying to avoid talking about what the real issue is -- would less hysteria about GMOs and increased use help with feeding people who are starving now, or not? It'a pretty simple, really.

And this is another straw man. I don't think many people particularly care if Monsanto wants to get setup shop in e.g. Zimbabwe. In fact, I don't even mind if they setup in the US. All I would like to see is appropriate labeling of products enabling people to make their own choice.

On the other issue though, you are now also lying or in complete denial of reality. I provided clearly sourced and strong evidence indicating that lack of food is not a problem, though distribution of food is. Your example of Zimbabwe was poorly chosen, but also a hornet's nest - which is why I chose not to get into it. But I'll go ahead and poke that nest now. They are arguably the poster boy for bad social decisions leading to hunger.

Back in ~2000 Zimbabwe decided to seize the land of white farmers and give it to black individuals in a purely racial attack. The problem is that it turns out that the locals have, even after years, been unable to develop the skills necessary to actually cultivate 'their' land, and the country has been in a food crisis ever since. You can find an enormous number of sources on this but here is one at random [1]. They actually tried to invite the former farmers back, but that ship has sailed.

Their drought is probably not even the straw that broke the camel's back. That back has been broken for years. Oh yes, and about the same time as Mugabe decided to seize all the lands of the white farmers, he also decided to return Zimbabwe to a socialist command system which has a rich history of starvation. There was a great article on that here [2]: "Last week we could not afford bread. This week we cannot get bread." The Atlantic also has a typically verbose writeup here [3], which I cannot say I have read - but the facts here are not exactly ambiguous.

We can even make some predictions here. Within a decade (and probably much sooner) you're also likely to see mass starvation in South Africa which is now following exactly in Zimbabwe's footsteps. And no, some seed is not going to suddenly solve these problems, especially if we want to get into exactly what is meant by 'increased yield' as it relates to engineered seed. It's not what you think, but again that's another topic!

[1] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/zimbabwe-seized-...

[2] - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/16/zimbabwe.andre...

[3] - https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/12/how-to-...

As a matter of fact, you are now expanding on exactly the point I was making (or part of it anyway) -- in some places, of which Zimbabwe is an example, agricultural problems are caused by political issues. Normally it is a good place to grow stuff. The same just is not the case in, say, Sahel, and attempts to grow enough food using old methods and old crops just lead to deforestation, drought and generally more problems.

And while you personally may not mind GMO use, there are a lot of people, some of whom can negatively affect those countries, who, out of sheer ignorance as far as we can say at this time, very much do object to GMO use regardless of labeling.

Also, been a fun chat. But I think these things could be so much more civil if folks (on any side of any issue) would lay off the straw men. There's no need for that nonsense. It may make debate easier, but we should really be able to defend either side of any issue, within reason. Failing to be able to do so probably means you're not really considering the other person's point of view. And if you don't do this how would you ever expect to convince anybody of anything?

Right, and there are also people who who support GMOs out of pure ignorance. Lots of different people, lots of different views on most any topic of course! But I guess we're about wrapping up?

Even that realization of who to trust and who not is hacked allready. Russia showed us how to do it- throw some fog grenades, and the blind can lead the blind again.. Subvert all the things.

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