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Comment by sametmax | Hacker News Reader

Anthrax is not cultivated by the most invasive specy of the planet, given artificial characteristics to be optimized only for economic incentive, and would have never be allowed by natural selection to have such things as the terminator gene.

I'm not saying nature is good and benevolent, I'm saying there is a difference in having uranium in the ground or in a bomb.

I don't think asking for serious, regular, transparent, independant audit for decades is a bad thing. Or would you let any company deal with uranium without serious follow up ?

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> would have never be allowed by natural selection to have such things as the terminator gene

Many eusocial insect species (ants, bees, termites) have sterile worker and soldier castes. In some cases, the soldiers have such enlarged jaws that they are even unable to eat on their own, the workers need to feed them. A sterile soldier unable to eat, that's real natural selection for you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusociality#Paradox

There is a purpose in that for the colony, so it evolved that way. And of course it took time, and a lot of small adaptive trials, to get there.

There is not purpose in that for the plant, hence it would not have evolved that way. And of course we just made a big leap out of it.

My point with the terminator gene is not about the feature itself, but the concept: we make fast and important changes with very narrow objectives that have zero logic into the system context. It's just for a few people's short term gain.

This is a teleological position, assuming that the end purpose carries intrinsic bearing on the worth of the process that produces that end. It's the same sort of logic behind anti-vax.

Evolution doesn't magically become dangerous just because it's been done in a lab. It's dangerous when it has measurable deleterious effects on biological systems.

> I don't think asking for serious, regular, transparent, independant audit for decades is a bad thing.

You're right! It's a great thing, in fact. That's why there are over 3000 studies on GMO crops so far, with hundreds more happening each year.

Also, I'm a touch baffled by the mention of Terminator genes. 1) They've never existed. There's a patent on it, owned by a company who has pledged to never use it or allow any other company to do so. 2) It solves all the issues regarding drift, which is often a thing anti-GMO folks are concerned about. Never quite understood that.

- studies != audits

- most of those studies are used to demonstrate if something is doable. Few are targeting safety, even fewer are long enough or on a large scale enough to answer the previously raised concerned, and almost none are by independent entities.

- GMO have been planted and sold for consumption way before we had proof of short term and scale safety through independent studies. I have zero trust in the will to do the right thing of their manufacturers, either to fund objective studies for long term and large scale or to act humanly if those reveals something bad.

- the terminator gene is just an image I use, really, for the kind of modifications that we can think of, but that would not evolve out of a living system

> That's why there are over 3000 studies on GMO crops so far, with hundreds more happening each year.

How many are funded by the GMO industry?

How many chemistry studies are funded by chemical companies?

Studies are usually not answers to public concern questions, but a way people working in a domain figure things out about that domain.

How incredibly naive.

Industries funding favourable research is the oldest trick in the book. See climate change studies, tobacco, etc.

The "research sponsored by Big $Foo" is also getting a tired meme. By itself, taking in money does not mean research is biased - there needs to be conflict of interest involved. Sometimes it's easy to point it out (e.g. "roundup & cancer" studies with monetary ties to Monsanto), but that doesn't mean every study that was funded by industry is biased. People working there need to get at least some of these things right some of the time; they don't benefit from biasing a study they're using themselves to make sure their product works or meets safety regulations.

One of my post-grad friends was involved in environmental research. He was open (but disappointed) that if they didn't come up with the "right" conclusion there'd be no more funding from "Big $Foo". You may be tired of it, but that's not going to make such blatant conflict of interests go away.

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