Good heavens. Gives me the shudders to think what could go wrong.

Newt

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When weeding, the best way to make sure you are removing a weed and not a valuable plant is to pull on it. If it comes out of the ground easily, it is a valuable plant.

Wow, what an interesting article......pretty frightening too......poor frogs. I find the glow in the dark flower to be pretty fascinating.....never even heard of that being considered before.....how strange would that be to look down at night and see everything glowing.

I agree and that is why it is important to make people aware this is going on. And also get involved. I am writing the brands of food that use GMO's and tell them that I will not be purchasing their food as long as they use them. A certain Mac and Cheese company uses them, and only here in US. In the European products they don't. We are guinea pigs here in the US.

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The Buglady
Suzanne Wainwright-Evans, www.bugladyconsulting.com
Educating the world... one bug at a time

your welcome...

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The Buglady
Suzanne Wainwright-Evans, www.bugladyconsulting.com
Educating the world... one bug at a time

Well, can I list them?
well FYI
The following companies are going GMO free in other parts of the world but not in the US.. makes you wonder why??????

Pepsi Cola
Coca Cola
Heinz
Mars
Danone
Kelloggs
Campbell Foods
Cadbury Schweppes
Kraft/ Jacobs/ Suchard[1].

Also don't forget Monsanto.. The granddaddy of them all ... and they make roundup....

Looks as if some babyfood has them too now..

Also as I looked I found this good list of things without GMO's .. this seemed the easier way to find the foods because so many products have them now....
The True Food Shopping List, no GMO's

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The Buglady
Suzanne Wainwright-Evans, www.bugladyconsulting.com
Educating the world... one bug at a time

G.M.O. - blessing of curse? Both.

Certainly the original article referenced in this thread seems to have been written from the "curse" perspective while throwing some cookie crumbs to the "blessing" side.

Where do we draw the line? Where and how do we determine what is in the best interest of humanity? What do we do with all the genetically altered plants that we have in our gardens already - many of which we dearly enjoy? How do we "protect" nature?

Genetic manipulation of plant life has been going on for the past 400 years in the quote unquote "scientific community". More than likely, it has gone on for eons before that. Biology and the study of cells has used those studies, experiments (success and failure) as one of its cornerstones for the past couple hundred years.

We owe a number of advances in medical science (both treatment and prevention of disease) to these type of studies. We also owe a number of advances in agricultural production to these. The development of disease resistant crops, the development of faster and stronger growing grains and potatoes and the like - all hearken back to genetic experimentation. Admittedly - these developments were not hailed as "genetic enhancements" but that is what they were.

How many varieties of roses are there today? How many varieties of apples? Both species are very numerous and widely enjoyed. Yet - if we turn the hands of time back a couple hundred years - we do not find as many varieties. We look at the "pioneering" work of Luther Burbank and are glad of his efforts - what were they? GMO though not called that.

Now -- on the other hand - -

I do not know why we would need to "play" around and mix animal and plant genetics. I quite agree that such may be stepping far over the line. Is it planned to see if such work will lead to treatment of things like cancer? AIDS? or such? What need is there to plant a plant to determine if there is a landmine? Wouldn't the danger be in actually planting the plant? Or can we simply sow the seed without working the ground first?

I also agree that releasing such genetically altered plants into the environment can wreak havoc. We have enough examples of that already. And that is with plants (and animals too) that have been taken from ecosystem and introduced into a "foreign" ecosystem only to find that there were no natural barriers/predators to keep them in check.

As to the use of GMO in our food products - it is not so much a matter of "guinea pigs" as it is the American reticence to spending money on food. Compare and contrast the average American prices for food products with those overseas. We generally pay a heck of a lot less. We sqwak about rising prices (and hey - I'm right there sqwaking too). Who is to bare the price of production? The farmer? 100 years ago - we had a lot more family farms producing for the nation - today - because of price competition and the like - the family farms are nearly all gone. They are, instead, mega-corporations who have bought out the family farms. They have learned and make use of methods of getting more production out of less land.

I fully agree that GMO is fraught with dangers. It is fraught with questions of morality and ethics. It really needs some sort of oversight - but how do we determine the boundaries, and who makes the determinations?

I don't know. I do know that we definitely don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water though.

Just an opinion.

Jon

how do you feel about human genes in plants?

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (May 25) - Blue roses could generate a lot of green. Two researchers at Vanderbilt University took a gene from a human liver and placed it into bacteria to better understand how the body metabolizes drugs as part of their research on cancer and Alzheimer's disease.
"The bacteria turned blue," said Peter Guengerich, a professor of biochemistry and director of the Center in Molecular Toxicology at Vanderbilt. "We knew people have been interested in making a blue rose for years so we thought if we could move these human genes into flowers, we might come up with one."
Guengerich and his colleague Elizabeth Gillam, a senior lecturer in pharmacology at the University of Queensland in Australia, have filed for a patent for their process.
If the process is successful, the researchers could be - ahem - sitting on a bed of roses.
Carol Spiers, assistant to the executive director of the American Rose Society, said a blue rose would be a first.
"There aren't any true blues," Spiers said. "The most popular so-called blue - Blue Girl - is mauve."
But the researchers have met some thorns along the way.
"In our initial attempts, the gene didn't know whether to turn the stem, the thorns or the flower blue," Guengerich said. "We've seen some of each."
The biochemists next must figure out how to target the flower with their "blue gene."
Guengerich said it could be a year or more before an actual blue bloom materializes.
If the process is perfected, it may be possible to grow blue cotton for use in, what else, blue jeans.
This would save manufacturers the cost of dying the white cotton used to make the blue, black or red denim.
Betty Smith of Betty Smith Nursery at the Nashville Farmers Market said a blue rose would almost certainly be a good seller.
"If somebody comes up with a blue rose, they'll sell well," she said. "People like blues and purples. I could sell a lot of them."
05/25/04 21:09 EDT
Associated Press

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The Buglady
Suzanne Wainwright-Evans, www.bugladyconsulting.com
Educating the world... one bug at a time