GM & Capitalism.

Cash for Chaos.  http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0612-03.htm
Under capitalism the gulf between rich and poor grows wider and wider. The whole point of the system is that it works against equality, against co-operation. It stunts, insults and criminalizes the poor; glorifies, cossets and pardons the rich. All human life is corrupted in the process. So even if you could discipline all the offenders, lock up all financial advisers to the US president, ban from public life all former Tory vice-chairmen, even if company directors spent a year in jail for every bonus they steal, there would still be no hiding place from capitalism. The rotten apples are the barrel.
Reading last week's sermon from Paulson, I was reminded of a brace of challenging headlines in the Guardian on December 10 1993. These headlines highlighted the difference between a group of 26 million people who shared $2.2bn and another group of only 161 people who shared $2.6bn. The first group was the entire population of Tanzania, the second the partners of Goldman Sachs, the company Paulson heads. And however much he lectures his capitalist colleagues about their individual misdemeanors, he cannot and will not correct the intrinsic flaw in the economic system he represents, so starkly symbolized by the greed of the people who run his bank.
Is capitalism sick? Yes, disgustingly so. Its sickness is terminal, and it urgently needs replacing.
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GMOs: Here today, everywhere tomorrow
2002-06-14 13:24:08.0
 http://www.agriculture.com/default.sph/agNotebook.class?FNC=ArticleList__Aarticle_html___8136___800

Every once in a while someone asks me if GMOs, or genetically-modified organisms, are here to stay. There are about 50 genetically modified (GM) crops approved for sale now -- herbicide-resistant grains, beetle-resistant potatoes, and long-blooming carnations, for example -- but there have been some problems.

Think StarLink. Think Europe. Think Japan. Protesters, import bans, vandalized GMO grain fields, food recalls -- what a mess. So, with all these headaches, are there going to be more GMOs? Oh ho ho ho. Surprise!

Great Money Opportunity

Dorky scientist that I am, I have always believed GMOs would win in the end.

Cynic that I am, I know I'm right. GMOs are jam-packed with opportunities to get patents: patents on methods for making them, patents for methods of pest resistance, patents for each combination of gene and plant. It's endless. And patents are power. You can buy them, sell them, and defend them. A good patent can make -- or break -- a company. (Of course, whether GMOs are useful or help farmers make any money remains to be seen. But, don't be silly. GMOs aren't about farmers. They're about Money.)

So what's really happening? Are there more GMOs a-coming? That one stumped me. A lot of this work is top-secret.

Coming soon to a table near you?

It's not just corn and beans in US field trials. Here are some of the other 62 GM crop species approved for field trials last year:

• Grape
• Pea
• Strawberry
• Peanut
• Cucumber
• Watermelon
• Apple
• Peppermint
• Carrot
• Walnut
• Sweet potato
• Pear
• Gladiolus
• Petunia
• Onion
• Grapefruit


It finally occurred to me: Field trials.

Before a GMO can get approved for sale like the 50 now on the market, it has to be tested in the field, and that requires approval from USDA. And that, my friends, is public information.

Now a quiz: How many GMO crops were given the green light to have field trials in the US last year?
Answer: 1,121.

And how many so far this year?
Answer: 828, with six months to go.

Yes, I think it's safe to say there will be a few more GMOs in our future.

Get More Overseas

And that's not all. Remember all those scenes from the news of protesters in Europe wearing carrot costumes? I guess they aren't having too much effect.
In Europe there have been 1,769 field trials approved to date, nearly a third of them (510) in France.
And they are testing some fun GMOs we haven't seen here yet: African violets (Netherlands), broccoli (Finland), eggplant, raspberry and kiwi (Italy), eucalyptus (Great Britain and Spain), and orange (Spain).

In Brazil, our supposed arch-nemesis, I haven't tallied the numbers. But there are ten species with "OGMs" -- that's Portuguese for GMO -- approved for field trials, including "fumo" (tobacco), "feijao" (cowpea), and "mamao" (papaya) as well as dozens of varieties of corn and soybeans ("milho e soja").

Oh, let's not forget the rest of the world. Egypt: 39 field trials, including "Qantalope" and wheat. India: 22 field trials, including bell peppers and chili. Russia, 12 field trials; Bolivia, 3; Bulgaria, 3; Thailand, 2, and the Ukraine, 7.

So ask me again: Do I think GMOs are here to stay? No kidding.
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Busy, busy!

Field trials of GMOs in the US keep coming.

Number of institutions with field tests approved in 2001: 78
In 2002 (so far): 64
Number of field tests approved for Monsanto in 2001: 584
In 2002 (so far): 597
Most recent petition filed to request final market approval: Monsanto, May 2, 2002, for Roundup-Ready creeping bentgrass (for putting greens on golf courses).
Species of crop with most field test permits in 2001: Corn (612 permits)
Number of species (e.g., "corn") with GMOs approved for field trials in 2001: 64
In 2002 (so far): 29
Total to date: 111
Total number of phenotypes (e.g., "Roundup Ready") approved for field testing in 2001: 141
In 2002 (so far): 103
Total to date: 388

Copyright 2002 Katie Thompson
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 http://www.i-sis.org.uk/isisnews/i-sisnews11-12.php

 http://www.i-sis.org.uk

GM AIDS Virus More Deadly
Researchers have been creating one deadly virus after another in the laboratory, and the latest is 'SHIV', a hybrid between the human and monkey AIDS virus containing human interleukin genes that suppress immune response against viruses. At the same time, GM crops engineered with interleukin genes are being grown in open field trials. Prof. Joe Cummins and Dr. Mae-Wan Ho ask whether the relevant biosafety Committees have taking these dangerous scenarios on board when they separately approve the laboratory experiments and the field trials.
There have been numerous breaches of safety regulations in university laboratories researching dangerous pathogens in Britain, such as dengue fever virus, AIDS virus, TB bacteria, and lethal encephalitis virus.
A company in Texas, ProdiGene, is now putting gp120 into GM maize as a 'cheap, edible oral vaccine' against HIV. This will surely lead to widespread contamination of our food crops with disastrous consequences, as Vejkovic and I have written in a correspondence now published in the journal. Not only is this extremely hazardous for human beings. It will affect all organisms in the food chain and multiply the opportunities for this gene to recombine with bacteria and viruses in the environment, of which 99% cannot be cultured and are hence completely unknown.
A tobacco genetically modified with the gene for the human cytokine, interleukin-10, is being field tested near London, Ontario. Interleukin-10 is known to be a powerful immune-suppressive, it is similar to the Interleukin-4 incorporated into the mousepox virus that turned the virus into a killer. In other words, a virus with interleukin-10 could also be deadly, as it disarms our immune system during an infection.
As field trials and production sites for GM crops producing pharma-ceuticals are not made public, the first recognition of their presence near a community may be devastating viral diseases spreading through human, domestic and wild animal populations.
It is clear that the agricultural and biomedical applications cannot be neatly separated, and neither can the hazards involved. The same kinds of tools are used, the same materials and constructs. The cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV) promoter, widely assumed to be specific to plants, is active in species across the entire living world, including human beings, as we discovered in literature dating back to 1989.
Increasingly, genetic materials from animal and plant pathogens are recombined, and evidence is growing that 'plant' viruses can cross into animals and vice versa, and plant bacteria can infect human cells.
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National Post (f/k/a The Financial Post) June 7, 2002

Genetic threats blowin' in the wind: Scientists warn modified crops are 'escaping and going rogues'

National Post BY Margaret Munro
 http://www.nerage.org/stories.php?story=02/06/13/2093595

"Most seriously, gene flow could result in GM material unintended for human
consumption ending up in the human food chain," says the editorial, which
raises the possibility of "biopharmaceutical" GM crops, designed to produce
drugs, contaminating food.
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William McNeill, historian from the University of Chicago opined, "that each catastrophic epidemic event in human history was the ironic result of humanity's step forward."

He is quoted by Ms. Grant, It is worth keeping in mind that the more we win, the more we drive infections to the margins of human experience , the more we clear a path for possible catastrophic infection. We'll never escape the limits of the ecosystem...".
Ms. Grant believes that ill-planned development schemes, misguided medicine, errant public health, and shortsighted political action/inaction are some of the ways humans are actually aiding and abetting disease and that humanity must change its perspective on its place in the Earth's ecology if the species hopes to stave off or survive the next plague,
otherwise the future looms darkly.

 http://gecko.desires.com/1.2/words/docs/plague.html