Originally Posted by Malkavian

Well, that's the risk with all technology. There is always some risk of unforeseen consequences and side effects. That's why there are clinical trials and suchlike for drugs, for example. No different with biotech.

It is different w/ biotech..... It is a risk who is willing to take??? No one asked me. Did they ask you???? I am not going to get rich off of this. The choice of taking that risk is left up to the guy that is going to take it to the bank. Now who is watching the cheese factory here.???you have not jimmied a few genes here. You have not introduced a whole new plant or animal........ That is not the same............

I still fail to see why it is difficult to predict. A gene codes for a function. As a silly example you can insert bird genome into a rat. You get a flying rat. It's very predictable, and the details can be deduced by careful observation in controlled environments. You know what rats do, you know what birds do, you observe what your hybrid does... If it's something bad, you stop the project, or develop confinement plans.

Nice example.......... I am sure there are thousands of times Monsanto's experiments will work..... Is it going to work every time????? I don't think so..... If it don't & it is in the environment we will pick up the tab.......

Example that: You cross some animal & plant. In your controlled experiment it works fine..... Everything you can think of is done then you take it out for field tests & something goes wrong= attack of the killer tomatoes.lol DO you know how it is going to interact w/ the 5,000,000 things out there you did not test for???



I don't think it'll be Monsanto et al for much longer. you don't need much to sequence a gene, the prices have been dropping dramatically lately. Pretty soon you'll be able to do it in your garage lol. Template design is trickier, but with modeling software, i'm pretty sure it'll be changing soon.