terminator seeds, Genetically Modified Organisms, etc
related to this:
http://antayla.livejournal.com/63289.html?view=128057#t128057
I'm a little behind (months?) on doing a long rant about why I liked 'teh corporation' so much...
if you feel like taking the time to watch it through, and giving negative commentary on the problems with it, perhaps the synthesis of our two views will be closer to the truth...
As far as monsanto seeds are concerned, I'm not sure if the movie did it justice or not. But from my understanding, the problem goes a little further. There is the problem of cross-polination (which has been occuring, and either suits COULD have or already HAVE been laid, about the farmers' use of seeds of their own crop, since they now contain 'patented' genetic material, even if unintentionally so) which can be a big problem. Imagine the gene for 'self-termination' spreading to regular crop... pristine, un-tainted seed become impossible to find... then all of these crops, not necessarily at the same time. Producing defective, mal-adapted and thus prone to specific calamities or other health woes, or self-terminating seeds, ending the entire crops and varieties of seed anywhere (mass-extinction) ... I mean, the scale of damage is very close to on par with biological warfare, but it could be completely accidental... now imagine someone has something to gain by doing this intentionally ... and can corner the market, and afford to pay off any lawsuits (under current coporate law, no 'criminal charges' ever get laid against 'corporations' like they do against militaries and people in general for the 'chosen' directives of those corporations (so getting charged for accidental catastrophes is not 'their worry', either))
that arise ... so people are wise to try and pre-empt this serious problems, which corporations are willing to blunder into if it makes a profit, while regular people who see what's going on just don't want a catastrophe and don't see why people need to mess with things so much...
the 'old fashioned' way of genetic manipulation, or 'eugenics', was to favour successful offspring and try to promote traits they wanted... inbreeding and losing genetic diversity has been a problem with this sometimes, but in effect, it can be a progressive way to accellerate evolution... the modern way involves injecting 'bits of dna' from other things, like frogs or fish, into plants, and see what happens... people are right to worry...
maybe experimentation is useful, but the regulation by corporation is utterly irresponsible, as the movie tries to show - corporations are legally required to do 'only what's in their (/shareholders) best interests and this is no basis for doing research... it's not even a good way to run the economy, imo
Once we understand the mechanisms of encoding, etc, of dna and life better, we will be more readily able to generate code that will specifically give us the result we want in the organism in question theoretically - without the need to inject another organism's 'well adapted' dna into an organism for which the 'context' and genetic 'seed' algorithm and birth process may be almost entirely different... the timing of the lifecycle, and processes therein, is very significant into how things develop... ie the differentiation of stem cells, the programmed death of various cells so that actual 'fingers' form, etc etc
i might have lost the point. yeah. cross pollination has many negative consequences, whether it is intentional or not, the corporations don't seem to be concerned about the possibly-catastrophic negative consequences.
Life seeks a goal, and often tries all possibilities until it succeeds in finding the routes that work... but with a greater amount of power, we come to the possibility of 'no-win' or 'total party kill' (forgive my rolaplaying jargon) scenarios, which don't allow parallel simultaneous progress and 1 good solution (ie therefore hedge your bets, your bound to win trying -one of the ways- if the problem has a solution), but require making either-or choices, where one path terminates entirely. So that is why I say we are approaching a time where society must start becoming 'conscious'...
hmm maybe I'll copy this on my site, since most of this that makes sense is probably self-evident to you, and would be better used ranting at others who are erm... the unconverted, etc lol
m_G
http://antayla.livejournal.com/63289.html?view=128057#t128057
I'm a little behind (months?) on doing a long rant about why I liked 'teh corporation' so much...
if you feel like taking the time to watch it through, and giving negative commentary on the problems with it, perhaps the synthesis of our two views will be closer to the truth...
As far as monsanto seeds are concerned, I'm not sure if the movie did it justice or not. But from my understanding, the problem goes a little further. There is the problem of cross-polination (which has been occuring, and either suits COULD have or already HAVE been laid, about the farmers' use of seeds of their own crop, since they now contain 'patented' genetic material, even if unintentionally so) which can be a big problem. Imagine the gene for 'self-termination' spreading to regular crop... pristine, un-tainted seed become impossible to find... then all of these crops, not necessarily at the same time. Producing defective, mal-adapted and thus prone to specific calamities or other health woes, or self-terminating seeds, ending the entire crops and varieties of seed anywhere (mass-extinction) ... I mean, the scale of damage is very close to on par with biological warfare, but it could be completely accidental... now imagine someone has something to gain by doing this intentionally ... and can corner the market, and afford to pay off any lawsuits (under current coporate law, no 'criminal charges' ever get laid against 'corporations' like they do against militaries and people in general for the 'chosen' directives of those corporations (so getting charged for accidental catastrophes is not 'their worry', either))
that arise ... so people are wise to try and pre-empt this serious problems, which corporations are willing to blunder into if it makes a profit, while regular people who see what's going on just don't want a catastrophe and don't see why people need to mess with things so much...
the 'old fashioned' way of genetic manipulation, or 'eugenics', was to favour successful offspring and try to promote traits they wanted... inbreeding and losing genetic diversity has been a problem with this sometimes, but in effect, it can be a progressive way to accellerate evolution... the modern way involves injecting 'bits of dna' from other things, like frogs or fish, into plants, and see what happens... people are right to worry...
maybe experimentation is useful, but the regulation by corporation is utterly irresponsible, as the movie tries to show - corporations are legally required to do 'only what's in their (/shareholders) best interests and this is no basis for doing research... it's not even a good way to run the economy, imo
Once we understand the mechanisms of encoding, etc, of dna and life better, we will be more readily able to generate code that will specifically give us the result we want in the organism in question theoretically - without the need to inject another organism's 'well adapted' dna into an organism for which the 'context' and genetic 'seed' algorithm and birth process may be almost entirely different... the timing of the lifecycle, and processes therein, is very significant into how things develop... ie the differentiation of stem cells, the programmed death of various cells so that actual 'fingers' form, etc etc
i might have lost the point. yeah. cross pollination has many negative consequences, whether it is intentional or not, the corporations don't seem to be concerned about the possibly-catastrophic negative consequences.
Life seeks a goal, and often tries all possibilities until it succeeds in finding the routes that work... but with a greater amount of power, we come to the possibility of 'no-win' or 'total party kill' (forgive my rolaplaying jargon) scenarios, which don't allow parallel simultaneous progress and 1 good solution (ie therefore hedge your bets, your bound to win trying -one of the ways- if the problem has a solution), but require making either-or choices, where one path terminates entirely. So that is why I say we are approaching a time where society must start becoming 'conscious'...
hmm maybe I'll copy this on my site, since most of this that makes sense is probably self-evident to you, and would be better used ranting at others who are erm... the unconverted, etc lol
m_G