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Originally Posted by raveneye
Well no matter how much research we conduct on the consequences of genetic manipulation, we still will not know the results of our actions with 100% certainty. In fact this is true for all scientific manipulation, it's not restricted to genetic manipulation.
There seems to be an assumption here that genetic engineering is a more dangerous (to humans) kind of biological manipulation that requires more care than other kinds of biological manipulation. I don't know where this assumption comes from. There is no evidence within biology that would prompt one to come to that conclusion that I'm aware of.
The truth that genetic engineering overcomes natural barriers to exchanging genes does not in any way imply that genetic engineering is more risky or dangerous to humans than simply making a cross that has never been done before. In fact it is easy to argue the reverse: namely the cross is more dangerous because it creates a new mixture of 10s of thousands of genes, whereas the engineering just creates one new gene in a background of 10s of thousands.
I seriously don't understand where this fear comes from. If the assumption is basically "new combinations of genes can be very dangerous" then this implies that natural crosses between inbred lines or between outbred individuals are far more dangerous (by a factor of millions) than a simple gene transfer.
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I'm not hinging my opposition on a perceived danger to human beings
Evolution is a self-checking mechanism. If we circumvent it, then we run the risk of creating damage to the organism
itself. Researchers have created organisms that will have severe consequences if they are released from the lab and/or are not maintained under careful control.
I don't have any "fear" about consuming genetically altered foods, but that doesn't mean that I declare something "safe" without evidence that such products have been produced and disseminated in an environmentally conscious manner or that they don't have adverse effects on the organisms that consume them.
Personally, I don't eat mass produced foods anyway. I support local producers and I prefer to consume (and this extends beyond eating) things that have had the least amount of processing to them.
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Originally Posted by boatin
thx for your response, Smooth. I clearly don't know many specifics about this, but my gut still tells me that it's not night and day. On the one hand, we tweak the jeebus out of plants "naturally", and are ok with it. On the other, many say a flat NO to labratory tweaking.
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I think the key that I have understood, and the arguments I read in some scientific journals, one can only tweak the jeebus out of organisms that share enough compatibility with one anther to be able to share each others genetic code. In the lab, we can artificially bypass that restriction that has been in place for millions of years.
What I'm kinda confused about is the notion that inbred species of organisms are good examples of the appropriateness of genetic manipulation. All of the pedigree lines I know of tend to exhibit particular defects and degradation over time. My understanding is that the gene pools of inbred plants and animals needs to be revitalized periodically.