Posted on 03/02/2007 5:55:35 AM PST by FLOutdoorsman
Thanks for the twenty minutes of no-so-useless info!
WRT D-Con on cornflakes:
I think you're unaware that many people on high blood pressure or thrombosis medication are doing just that. There is no functional difference between the anti-coagulant rat/mouse poison and many blood pressure medications -- some even use the exact same active ingredient, warfarin. You might know it under the human drug label Coumadin(r).
Matter of fact, warfarin isn't used in vermin poisons any more due to secondary kills. But it is still used in human medication.
That's ok, all our corn is now being used to make ethanol. /sarcasm>.
How do yeast like the stuff?
Is it filtered out during subsequent processing?
What are the combustion byproducts?
Cheers!
So that's where the phrase "bleeding-heart liberal" came from :-)
...and I betcha Dick Cheney wouldn't mind a serving of that right about now.
Cheers!
We all ingest all sorts of stuff, which if refined or administered in large enough doses, could be fatal. Water even meets this criteria, as we have seen recently from stupid radio station stunts. If you accumulated the nicotine from enough stop-smoking patches, you could drop a horse in its tracks with it, never mind a human.
So why do I bring up nicotine? Because nicotine, as deadly a poison as it is, is a terrific organic pesticide. No GMO necessary. Completely natural. Come to think of is, so is strychnine. Deadly? You betcha. Does it meet the qualifications (as written) for an organic pesticide?
Yup.
NB: There is no specific antidote for strych poisoning. LD50 of 1mg/kg of body weight in mammals. That's pretty toxic stuff. And again, it is completely naturally derived.
So in this context, do I see GMO plants as an unqualified bad thing? No. They're a management tool, like any other, in ag production. There's plenty of bad-assed chemicals out there that aren't created by various corporations and their junior Dr. Strangeloves in a lab. And I haven't even gone off on my rant about the really thin science that has gone into organic food standards for composting manure and preventing e. coli contamination in organic food. Point is, there is danger everywhere. Ain't no getting away from risk in this world.
In your question, the GM plants are being engineered to produce a drug to replace the same drug taken from animal sources.
Yes, aprotinin has been engineered into test plots of corn. My reading of the medical circular on Trasylol makes it look to me that it is a good deal more involved than a simple anti-coagulant. It isn't something you administer to someone for hypertension, it is used in cardiac procedures to reduce post-op inflammation and blood loss as well as thrombosis. But I'd defer to any MD who might want to comment on this. All I'm doing is reading the Trasylol product circular.
The reason why there is interest in producing aprotinin from GM corn is that Trasylol is currently derived from bovine lung tissue. There is concern that the drug, therefore, is a possible carrier of prion-based diseases (eg, vCJD or BSE). I can see why pharma companies would want to find another way to obtain this drug. The drug company is seeking to reduce risk to the patients. You see this as increasing the risk to you or your kid(s).
From what I see, (and I could be wrong, but the math I doodled out seems to indicate such) the danger from aprotinin in GM corn to consumers of said corn or corn products won't be from the medicinal action of the drug itself, since it will be found in very, very, very low rates in as much corn as you could care to eat in a week -- the possible problems come from anaphylactic or anaphylactoid reactions in someone consuming said corn products -- much like the allergic reactions that some hyper-sensitive people have to foods like peanuts, shellfish, etc. -- ie, one bite, three minutes and they can't breath sort of allergic reaction.
That's pretty much the same problem many of these hypersensitive people already have today from processed foods. eg, a kid is hypersensitive to peanuts. So you keep your kid away from peanuts, peanut butter, etc. You ask/inspect all foods for evidence of peanut content. And one day, your kid has a really bad reaction... and it is because there was peanut oil used in the food prep. Or the packaging. No GMO necessary, same result as above.
Why corn as the target? Good question. I'm guessing that economics plays a big role in the choice -- ie, they have a lot invested in grafting into corn, so they're going to get a ROI on that investment.
The various GM companies have obviously thought of the problems with escapes, and they even engineered a way to deal with it. Remember the flap over the "Terminator gene", whereby the seeds that are produced by the GM corn would be sterile?
Man, did you ever hear a hue and cry over that. Oh, the calamity, oh, the yelling.
So they didn't put it in.
So you get what we have here -- the proposed legislation, which seems like more of an inducement for the GM companies to create terminal genes in their GM products as a way of reducing their liability. What they need is a way to program the gene to terminate if it escapes.
Now, the organic movement should be very careful in what they wish for, because I can see the following happening as a result:
Conventional farmer is next to an organic farmer. Organic farmers do a pretty poor job at weed control without tillage. Tillage causes soil erosion, especially due to blowing soil. There has been a concentrated effort at no-till farming for the last 20 to 30 years in the US. So now the organic types go back to tillage, their fields blow, resulting in damage to neighboring conventional cropping. Tit for tat, it is now time to sue. The legislation made it precedent to sue for losses as a result of cropping practices, right? Well, what is good for the goose is good for the gander, and now the litigation comes full circle.
Or take this alternative scenario: organic crop suffers from a e. coli outbreak. Let's say it is some table vegetable. Choose your favorite.
As a result of a widespread recall, people stop buying said product for months -- even the conventionally produced, non-infested, products. I think the conventional producers should be able to sue the organic companies for the loss of revenue and market as a result.
So organic producers might want to think real hard about what they want in this legislation. But that's not likely to happen, because the "organic movement" is more about feelings and less about science.
As to imadicloprid and bees: I'm not buying it as the cause of colony collapses. The residue trials show there isn't enough AI left in the plant tissues to cause the effects claimed. The speed with which this problem is flashing over between bee colonies and between states where imadicloprid isn't used heavily indicates to me that it appears to be a contagious biological problem, not one introduced through a chemical vector.
We used to have some colonies of feral leafcutter bees here in this valley, holdovers from when there was some alfalfa seed production attempted. They're kind of a pain in the neck, actually -- they clip off leaf matter from alfalfa and hay stands, and then tuck these bits of plant matter into every nook and cranny on the side of a building. They're very gentle and inoffensive bees, but they're messy. They've been part of the area of decades.
In the last year, I noticed that the leafcutter bees simply disappeared. There is no imadicloprid used in this area at all, as seed treatment or applied over crops, because we simply don't grow any of the crops for which imadicloprid is labeled. If the bees have disappeared (and I don't know this for a fact other than by personal observation -- ie, since the colonies are feral, I don't know whether they've disappeared or simply moved), it is because of something other than imadicloprid, because we're surrounded by a hundred mile radius of BLM controlled land where almost no insecticides are used.
The only "science" that is used to back up this "cause" of imadicloprid's effect on bees comes out of France, and after tests showing that their initial science was inconclusive, the French want to apply their luddite "precautionary principle" and simply ban it. Well, this shows nothing but the idiocy of this whole green movement. First, the greenies want to get rid of well known, well studied broad-spectrum insecticides in the organophosphate and carbamate families. OK, fine, let's agree that they're nasty products and poisonous to mammals and pretty much everything with a nervous system. So that happens by regulatory fiat.
Still, producers need new products, and the EPA (and other regulatory agencies) stipulate to the chemical companies that the replacements cannot be as broad spectrum, cannot have the toxicity to mammals, birds and fish the way the old products did, so the industry comes up with what is required: less toxic pesticides, of which imadicloprid is one.
Now the public wants to run in circles, screaming and shouting that the new, less toxic, products should not be sold or labeled for use. And as usual, they don't want to do any science or math homework, they'd prefer to simply scream and shout.
Ultimately, I'm betting on some foreign fungus or virus being the cause of bee die-off in the US. I remember how nice it was to farm before West Nile Virus -- I didn't have to get out of equipment and shoot&bury crows, ravens and magpies that fell out of the sky in front of me and lay there twitching and almost dead. Thanks to "free trade" and inviting the whole of the third world into the US, we now have all these new and wonderful non-native pathologies to contend with.
Is this long enough?"Xytect Infusible is a new formulation of imidacloprid for root flare infusion. Use the M3 Infuser for fast uptake in situations that require quick results."
| foliar spray | soil application | tree infusion | |
| formulation | Xytect 2F Xytect 75WSP |
Xytect 2F Xytect 75WSP |
Xytect Infusible |
| insects start dying | same day | In 30 to 60 days | 7-14 days |
| residual performance |
several weeks may require multiple applications |
season long control fall applications can provide season long control the following year |
season long control |
Good point, but wouldn't there be dead bee bodies laying around the hive?
Effects of sub-lethal imidacloprid doses on the
homing rate and foraging activity of honey beesTreated honey bees also showed anomalous flying behaviour: they often fell in the grass and their flight direction was not towards the hive. Treated bees seemed to be disoriented, and that could be the cause of their disappearance.
[Ultimately, I'm betting on some foreign fungus or virus being the cause of bee die-off in the US. ]
You could very well be right. I just hope that, whatever it is, some colonies have resistance and the bee population recovers.
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