Hilarious--but sad...

[Doug Yanega]

>        I was listening this morning to 'Science Friday' on NPR, which
>was focussed on genetically-modified crops, when a woman called in to say
>that there was a lot of corn being grown in her area--and she had just
>noticed a terrible effect that the bt-laced pollen was having on Monarch
>butterflies: they now had only four legs (!!). Clearly this was a
>bt-induced mutation...     :-)
>
>        No one on the panel knew the facts about Nymphalidae, and I was
>in my truck without access to a phone. I now have a vision of people across
>the country looking at their local nymphalids and concluding that the corn
>pollen is being blown hundreds (or thousands) of miles and causing
>'mutations' everywhere. If anyone on leps-l hears about this, you now
>know where it started...

We all heard the same thing here, and were standing around with our
collective jaws on the floor. We, too, envisioned the panicky public
running aorund and checking their monarchs, and freaking out when they find
they all have four legs. ARGH.

Ah, blissful ignorance...


Doug Yanega        Dept. of Entomology         Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California - Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521
phone: (909) 787-4315 (standard disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
                http://insects.ucr.edu/staff/yanega.html
  "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
        is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82