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Re: Glickman and Biotech



In article <E11IC5.KrA@plamondon.COM> on  Mon, 18 Nov 1996 00:21:41 GMT 
robert@plamondon.COM (Robert Plamondon) wrote:

> You mean, like in THE FLY?  You get a creature that's half scientist,
> half insect?  Genetic engineering is FAR more mundane than that.

No, No and No. a) I mean like RR Soy b) RR Soy is part soy, part 
bacterium, c) and the pigs with human genes to act as sources for 
transplants?

> You go looking for a string match in
> the genes of some organism or other.  It doesn't matter which.
> You paste the right string in the right part of the code.

My understanding of the process of "genetic engineering" is that it is 
a process more akin to "genetic corruption".

This is clear if you read up on how this "pasting of strings" is 
performed - in many cases it is a case of bombarding one DNA form with 
another and not particularly caring where it ends up. (Personally I do 
not know much about the science of that - surely there are some folks 
here who do...)

> If the
> organism "runs" properly after being compiled, you know you got it
> right.

But you don't until you have defined "runs" in a way that all 
interested parties can agree to. With respect to the food that I eat 
you must agree that I do have an interest in both the definition of 
"runs ok" and the results? I also have a legitimate interest in the 
World's gene pool and want to feel confident that it will not become 
corrupted.

> A certain amount of testing is in order, but it's not as if
> you have to retest the entire operating system every time you write
> a device driver.  You run regressions on the parts that interact
> with the area you changed.

If any of the molecular biologists or genetic engineers here on the 
list can tell us the present state of science's understanding of the 
complete range of interactions between one gene and the whole organism 
expressed by the DNA that would be instructive - wouldn't it?

Just as one example of the almost complete ignorance of science's 
understanding of genetic expression there is the problem of why some 
genes express in some cells and not others. For instance the same DNA 
that you have in your liver cells only expresses some genes whereas in 
the kidney it expresses others. Similarly, over time the same DNA 
expresses in different ways. This is the problem of differentiation and 
as I understand it nobody really knows the answers. Do you really 
believe that same ignorance is capable of predicting the full range of 
effects of transgenic creations?

I do not understand modern thinking on DNA to be saying that some parts 
or indeed any parts can be treated as black boxes that have no 
interactions with other parts. Once again - the real scientists here 
can put us straight on that.

Personally, I think of genetic engineering (as propounded by the "lets 
make new food plants" people) as equivalent to a bunch of children who 
have discovered the alphabet, some words and a very unreliable word 
processor and now think they both understand the world of literature 
and believe they can make it dance to their own tunes.

I have no problem with that while it is confined to the lab but to let 
them loose on the world's food supply is asking for a catastrophe.

Thanks for your post - there are more interesting points raised by it 
which I will address later.

William |WRC Solutions: Computer Consultants|Tel (+44)(0)1695  50470
   Hite |MS-Office, Visual Basic, FTR, Text |Fax (+44)(0)1695 720889
        |wrhite@cix.compulink.co.uk, http://www.u-net.com/~wrcs/home


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