If we honor Aldo Leopold's land ethic, which calls upon us to protect the
integrity of ecosytems and the species of which they are composed, we have to
recognize that damage to the genetic integrity of a species is a serious
violation of that ethic.

Genetic engineering is genetic damage, deliberately inflicted.

Tom Mathews
---------------------------------------------------------------
Subj:         More transgenic pollution found
Date:   01-08-16 18:11:39 EDT
From:   [log in to unmask] (Jim Diamond)
Sender: [log in to unmask] (Biotech Forum)
Reply-to:   [log in to unmask] (Biotech Forum)
To: [log in to unmask]

       Once more, we get to comment about the supposed "precision" of
transgenic crop gene splicing.  Last year, in addition to the genes which
Monsanto had intended to splice into its Roundup Ready soy, it was discovered
that there were also a couple of fragments of genes.  Yesterday another such
genetic error was revealed (or rather, published) -- there is a story by
Andrew Pollack in today's New York Times (the original publication is in the
journal European Food Research and Technology) about a stretch of "534
letters" of genetic code which doesn't match non-GE'd soy varieties, nor is
it part of the genetic construct which the scientists had purposely spliced
in.  I suppose the 534 letters represents 178 base pairs.
       Speaking for Monsanto, "Dr. Hjelle said the unknown sequence was only
534 letters long out of a soybean genome of about 1.5 billions letters and
was not meaningful."
       I've not met Dr. Hjelle and know nothing else about him, but I take
him to be one of those people who are forever asking you and I to be better
informed about the issues -- but who then throw sand in our eyes.   In human
medicine, a point mutation, just one letter, can have major consequences.  We
certainly don't know enough yet to say that any part of our human genome is
"not meaningful."  I don't think the plant scientists can be that far ahead.
             Jim Diamond

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