More on GE

[Guest guest]

It's not nice to mess with Mother Nature.

 

Doc

 

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0429/p13s02-sten.html

 

One shy moth, a flashy gene, and a crossroads

 

By Gregory M. Lamb | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor You might call Pectinophora gossypiella - pink bollworm moths - publicity shy. You're unlikely ever to meet one: They fly around at night and hide underground during the day. And they live only in commercial cotton fields. But someday they may be a lot better known. An arm of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has filed an application to release a batch of them carrying a fluorescent marker gene inserted by scientists, making it the first approval sought for releasing a genetically altered insect in the wild. If approved, it would pave the way for approval of other lab-produced insects - from super productive honeybees to drugmaking silkworms - that could benefit mankind.

But the program faces several hurdles - not to mention opposition from a swarm of environmentalists worried about the release of genetically altered traits into the environment. Releasing insects into the wild raises special concerns because unlike, say, a genetically modified (GM) cow, altered insects are extremely hard to track.

The biggest worry: that new genes could be passed on to other insects, resulting in unintentional consequences, says Michael Rodemeyer, executive director of the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology in Washington.

Of course, the whole point of the bollworm project is that they won't reproduce and continue causing big losses to cotton farmers. If the GM moths produce viable offspring, "then we've done something wrong," says Thomas Miller, an entomologist at the University of California at Riverside, who led a team that developed the GM pink bollworms . . .

Ian "Doc" Shillington N.D.727-738-0554Doc

[Guest guest]

Oh good grief! Isn't this how we got killer bees? Suuuure they won't reproduce.

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