Fwd: Re: [leps-talk] The Bt debate--take a cautious view

[Chris J. Durden]

>Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2002 18:24:38 -0600
>To: MexicoDoug at aol.com
>From: "Chris J. Durden" <drdn at mail.utexas.edu>
>Subject: Re: [leps-talk] The Bt debate--take a cautious view
>
>Doug,
>    I think perhaps you sidestep. The rats, as I recall, developed gastric 
> irregularity from eating the snowdrop-potatoes. This would perhaps be 
> innocuous except the snowdrop-potatoes were(are) being developed as food 
> for another vertebrate, namely us. I do not recall that the 
> snowdrop-potatoes were being developed as a vertebrate poison.
>    I have not used cyanide for many years because I do not recognize its 
> smell. The labelling issue is pertinent though because the cyanide is 
> required by law to be labelled. What gets my and a few other people's 
> dander up is that GE foods are not required to be labelled!  Fresh 
> corn/maize I think I can recognize because the BT element seems to have a 
> distinctive odor.
>
>..............Chris Durden
>
>At 02:52 PM 2/13/2002 -0500, you wrote:
>>En un mensaje con fecha 02/13/2002 11:48:10 AM Central Standard Time,
>>drdn at mail.utexas.edu escribe:
>>
>><< Remember those
>>  Scottish rats that ate the Snowdrop-potatoes. >>
>>
>>Yes, I remember the rats you are apparently speaking about.  I think they
>>were actually Aberdeenese rats.  On purpose a gene producing the toxin was
>>spliced into the potatoes, and it actually worked as intended, killing the
>>rats.  An easier example might be "Remember the Bt corn that was fed to Corn
>>borers?  It killed them."  The rats, also, (wow, man, a miracle) they died
>>from eating poison.
>>
>>Remember when you used cyanide?  Did anything die when you used it?  Were 
>>you
>>surprised at the news that it died?  Or was the skull and crossbones not
>>evident on the label?
>>
>>(Sorry for the sarcasm, but in all fairness I think it is the appropriate
>>response to that issue regurgitated again - that was one media story out of
>>control which was caused by unleashed emotion and nothing more, unless you
>>consider the sour grapes of the researcher who lost his job over bad 
>>science.
>>  If you check the archives of Leps-L you I think you could find my 
>> summary of
>>that situation.)
>>
>>Playing with fire in Monterrey,
>>Doug Dawn
>>
>>



 
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