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Biotech / Medical : Monsanto Co. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Anthony Wong who wrote (1394)	2/26/1999 1:36:00 AM
From: Dan Spillane	Respond to of 2539

(cross-post from Yahoo) Whoa! I won't swallow THOSE beans by: DanSpillane 6812 of 6812 WHAT are you talking about? It was GREENPEACE et al. who pushed these three buttons simultaneously by sending out "bad science" messages, in campaign-like fashion. And the kicker is why Greenpeace did it...it has little to do with safety, but rather one of the very three buttons you mention. And I quote from the GREENPEACE WEB PAGE: "Genetically engineered food must be banned. The future is true, organic food and that is what the British people clearly want." This ultimate irony lies in the "fear of big business" part of that letter, considering Greenpeace is BACKED by big business in the US....oh, this time it's not Monsanto, but the multi-billion dollar US organic industry instead! The joke is on England: afraid of one set of big business who is telling them the truth, the Brits have been cornered by the 'bad science' lies of yet other big business. Like lambs to the slaughter, quicker than the Royal Society could react, the entire country bought into Greenpeace's scheme to bolster its backers. (you quoted a letter which said) "Monsanto should have been aware of this when it pressed three large panic buttons simultaneously: fear of big business, fear of ecological damage and fear of toxic food."

To: Anthony Wong who wrote (1394)	2/26/1999 12:50:00 PM
From: Dan Spillane	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 2539

Here's another misleading item in that story. It looks like the same kind of "bad science" the Royal Society is talking about...at face value, a lot like the "potato fraud" story: (the story says) A comparison of the fertilisation rate of plants that were mutated to make them resistant to chlorsulphuron herbicide, and plants that were genetically altered for the same trait, showed the genetically altered plants fertilised other plants at a rate 20 times greater than that of the mutants. (my reponse) What do they mean by "mutated to make them resistant"; I am aware that radiation and chemical damage have been applied to mutate plants. That being the case, the other characteristic of such mutation is gross genetic damage to many areas of the plants characteristics, including the ability to pollinate. So it would be no surprise that an undamaged (gene altered)plant would be able to pollinate 20 times better than a horribly damaged mutant. A proper scientific study would also include the control of a standard plant, to measure its pollination rate; the gene modified plant should have the same capacity for pollination as the control. And then there are the variables introduced by chlorsulphuron itself, and how these relate to pollination. Also, there is the question of how this study relates to actual herbicide traits which are deployed in the field, since I am not aware of a commercial system which involves the trait they mention. A bad science study is easy to come up with and report, apparently. At face value, the statement about "20 times" seems to be the goal of this study, as long as it is thrown in with the words "genetically altered" and "herbicide". Anyone want to guess why such a story might surface? Message 8040326