Genetic Engineering does indeed have problems

Matthew Smith MatSmith1 at compuserve.com
Wed Feb 23 17:37:54 EST 2000


Message text written by INTERNET:drdn at mail.utexas.edu
>Thanks for the information on the law. I was aware that clonally
manufactured strains were patentable, but was not aware that this
protection had been extended to reproduction by seed - seems wrong and very
difficult to enforce.
<

I am not sure if PBRs can be applied to seeds, it would imagine this would
be very difficult to enforce due to the natural variation you would get
when seeds are produced.  If you grow, for example, seed of a "named"
variety of plant (eg Lavender 'Munstead') you are not actually getting the
true Lavender 'Munstead' but something that looks a lot like it but is not
quite 'true'.  Presumably patented seeds are very genetically restricted.  
 PBRs are applicable to vegatatively produced plants, they are used mostly
(entirely?) in the horticultural/gardening industry.  Because a lot of new
plant varieties appear as sports on existing plants or as a (single)
seedling plant then a lot of time is needed to bulk up the stock, sometimes
it takes several years before there is a large enough quantity for
commercial sales.  This is where PBRs come in, they give the original
propagater the chance to make a return on his/her investment.  I would
assume that only specific GM seeds could be patentable, those where there
was some easily identifyable transgenic addition to the genome.

While I'm typing this I may as well add my 2c to the debate.  I have
noticed that most of the messages appear to recognise only two ways of
'improving' a plant, either via 'natural' means or via 'genetic
engineering'.  Equally, most of the postings appear to fall into two camps,
for and against, with those 'for' equating 'traditional' seed selection
methods with genetic engineering.  Can I suggest the situation is not a
clear cut as has been stated and that there is a gradient between the two.

No. 1)  'Traditional' methods of seed improvement (or cows, or sheep, or
whatever) rely on the farmer selecting for the desired charecter, eg he
saves the biggest seeds each year and his plant these next season.  Safe,
traditional and approved of by generations, early safety tests probably
resulted in the death of a few unlucky huntner gatherers a long time ago
but nobody remembers the people, only that you don't eat potato seeds or
daffodil bulbs etc.  I dont think anybody had a problem with this method.

No.2)  GM Method 1.  Scientists find the gene for seed 'bigness', extract
it from the 'big and yucky' variety and stuff it back into a variety of the
same plant species called 'small and tasty' so you end up with 'big and
tasty'.  Hooray,  GM at is best.  Rather than wait for several generation
of plant run through the game of genetic roulette, we can get the winner
straight away.  This is fine, I have no problem with this, the genes were
there in place in the plant already, we've just given the dice an extra
shake or two.

No. 3)  GM Method 2.  Transgenic plants.  Adding the genes from a totally
different organism gives me cause for concern.  Adding genes for hebicide
resistance, BT toxin production or whatever to plants that are still
indulging in their own game of genetic roulette needs to be examined very
carefully least some of these 'new' genes get caught in the spin of the
wheel and make their own way into the environment into areas where they
will cause problems for us or any other species.  These are the things that
do need safety testing/non target species testing etc.

Polarising the debate down to the 'GM = what we've always done only
quicker' looses sight of some of the subtleties, if you go this way you can
only ever be 'for' or 'against', there is no middle ground which keeps the
good bits and does away with the potential problems.

A final thought.  Has anyone noticed that many of the arguments 'for' GM
sound very like those employed by the same agro-chem companies during the
'green revolution' during the late 60's and early 70's when fertilzers were
the thing that was going to feed the world.  Dig out your old Readers
Digests for this era and see what you can find.

Matt 


More information about the Leps-l mailing list