“WITHIN 50 YEARS WE COULD HAVE MORE LIFE FORMS INVENTED IN A LAB THAN WE HAVE EVER IDENTIFIED IN NATURE.” – Fidelity Investments
“This year [Evolva] will release a product that has been created by genetically modified yeast that converts sugars to vanillin. IT WILL BE THE FIRST MAJOR SYNTHETIC-BIOLOGY FOOD ADDITIVE TO HIT SUPERMARKETS.” – Nature.com
This thread is dedicated to SSS, lover of all things Monsanto, and he should get a massive boner over this.
I graduated high school in 1970. Never could I have imagined THE SHIT that passes for food today … and I read a lot of SciFi stuff. I can’t imagine the shit-food my grand-kids will be eating when they’re my age.
Made-up franken-foods that never existed in nature …. this can’t possibly end well.
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New Form of GMO Sneaking Into Food Supply This Year
Old-Thinker News | March 17, 2014
By Daniel Taylor
A Switzerland based company called Evolva has developed a synthetic vanilla that is set to be released in 2014. The vanilla is created using a process of genetic engineering called synthetic biology.
Synthetic biology, according to a 2005 European Commission paper is “…the engineering of biology… the synthesis of complex, biologically based (or inspired) systems which display functions that do not exist in nature.” Unlike the older science of splicing genes from different species together, synthetic biology is seeking to create whole new organisms that do not exist on earth.
Evolva’s synthetic vanilla is created by inserting computer coded DNA into yeast. This new method of genetic engineering is called “natural” by Evolva.
Environmental organizations like Friends of the Earth have recognized the potential danger posed by synthetic biology. In its Synthetic Biology Vanillin fact sheet, FoE points out the distinct lack of oversight regarding the health impact of ingesting these engineered ingredients. The organization has launched a campaign called No Synbio Vanilla to tell ice cream makers Haagen Dazs, Dreyers, Baskin Robbins and others not to use synthetic biology vanilla.
Foods that have been genetically modified in the “traditional” method have been linked to sterility in hamsters. The dramatic rise in food allergies has also been speculated to be linked to GMO foods. What health impacts will emerge after eating foods with synthetic DNA that our environment and our bodies have never before encountered?
The Big Picture
Synthetic biology goes well beyond engineering our food. Geneticist Craig Venter is a pioneer in the field of synthetic biology. In 2010 the media hailed his team’s success in creating “the first self-replicating species we’ve had on the planet whose parent is a computer.”
Currently, companies cannot patent naturally occuring DNA. Synthetic biology will allow syn-bio companies a loophole through patent laws. “One could theoretically upload a DNA sequence onto a computer, “print out” an exact copy of that DNA sequence, and patent the synthetic DNA sequence as an invention,” Gene Watch reports.
Google founder Larry Page met with Craig Venter in California at the Edge billionaires meeting in 2010. Also present were representatives from the State department, Bill Gates, Anne Wojcicki, Bill Joy and dozens of other tech company CEO’s and scientists.
The Edge Billionaire meetings have discussed the future of genetic engineering, biocomputation and re-designing humanity in a transhumanist era. Physicist Freeman Dyson described the individuals leading this group as having god-like power to create entirely new species on earth in a “New Age of Wonder”. He describes them as:
“…a new generation of artists, writing genomes as fluently as Blake and Byron wrote verses, might create an abundance of new flowers and fruit and trees and birds to enrich the ecology of our planet.”
In the societal divide that will inevitably ensue over the development of these technologies, Fred Charles Ikle, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy under President Reagan, sees a possibility of “Annihilation from Within.” “The prospect is that in the decades ahead, biotechnology – together with other sciences – may fundamentally change the human species and thus pose an elemental threat to democracy, the world order, and indeed to all civilizations,” writes Ikle.
The technological elite are engaged in a mission to attain full spectrum dominance over life and its complex processes, and in the process re-write the genetic code of the planet.
http://www.oldthinkernews.com/2014/03/new-form-of-gmo-sneaking-into-food-supply-this-year/
Well, if we as a species are to ever leave this planet (and we WILL have to leave at some point, or face certain extinction), then we are certainly going to need a lot of redesign in terms of environment tolerance (temperature, gravity, radiation just for a start).
If designing, testing and perfecting the systems to design desirable attributes de novo is the best way forward for an “As Human as Practicable” space-faring race, then maybe the sooner we get started the better.
Or will we wait for the development of “Human-Machine hybrids”, or maybe “The transference of Consciousness to the Machine” as anticipated in Ray Kurzweil’s “The Singularity is Near” book?
With the much-reported “Imminent demise of Cheap Energy”, maybe it’s time to collectively “get our skates on” and do something with a REAL long-term benefit for a change!
GMOs could cause ‘irreversible termination of life’ on Earth, risk expert warns
Sunday, March 23, 2014 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer
(NaturalNews) When discussing the issues surrounding genetically modified organisms (GMOs) — that is, organisms bearing the genetic traits of other species or bacteria — the focus is typically on how safe (or unsafe) these novel, food-like products are for humans. But distinguished risk engineer and two-time best-selling author Nassim Taleb thinks an even bigger problem with GMOs is their threat to the planet, and the statistical likelihood that they will eventually lead to the collapse of life on Earth.
In a new study, which is still in draft form, this professor of risk engineering from New York University uses statistical analysis to make the case that GMOs, by their very nature, will disrupt the ecosystems of this planet in ways that mankind is only just beginning to comprehend. Because they represent a systemic risk rather than a localized one — GM traits are known to spread unconstrained throughout the environment — GMOs will eventually breach the so-called “ecocide barrier,” leading to catastrophic ecosystem failure.
“There are mathematical limitations to predictability in a complex system, ‘in the wild,’ which is why focusing on the difference between local (or isolated) and systemic threats is a central aspect of our warnings,” Taleb is quoted as saying by Fool.com, noting that it’s essentially impossible to contain the inevitable spread of GMO traits far and wide.
“The [precautionary principle] is not there to make life comfortable, rather to avoid a certain class of what is called in probability and insurance ‘ruin’ problems,” write Taleb and his colleagues in their paper. “For nature, the ‘ruin’ is ecocide: an irreversible termination of life at some scale, which could be the planet.”
GMOs are not ‘scientific,’ and nearly every argument used in their defense is flawed
Besides using math and risk-based analysis to show that GMOs simply cannot coexist with nature as is commonly claimed — GMOs will eventually contaminate the natural world around them — Taleb also deconstructs many of the “arguments” used by GMO advocates to defend the commercial use of untested transgenic materials, including the oft-repeated lie that GMOs are no different than natural organisms.
“Genetically Modified Organisms, GMOs fall squarely under [the precautionary principle]… because of their systemic risk on the system,” explains Taleb. “Top-down modifications to the system (through GMOs) are categorically and statistically different from bottom up ones (regular farming, progressive tinkering with crops, etc.).”
“There is no comparison between the tinkering of selective breeding and the top-down engineering of taking a gene from an organism and putting it into another. Saying that such a product is natural misses the statistical process by which things become ‘natural.'”
Taleb also draws attention to the deceitful strategies of biotechnology companies in trying to legitimize the continued use of GMOs through fear. Claiming that famine, starvation and widespread crop failures will occur if we all fail to adopt GMOs is no different than playing Russian roulette in order to get out of poverty, claims Taleb — such an approach is hardly scientific or logically sound, and yet these and other tactics are the basis of the pro-GMO agenda.
“What people miss is that the modification of crops impacts everyone and exports the error from the local to the global,” concludes Taleb and his colleagues. “I do not wish to pay — or have my descendants pay — for errors by executives of Monsanto. We should exert the precautionary principle there — our non-naive version — simply because we would only discover errors after considerable and irreversible environmental damage.”
You can read their complete paper in draft form in the below link: [Stucky Note: It’s just 5 pages and relatively easy to read and understand. It’s a complete refutation of SSS’s Monsanto-loving bullshit.]
Paper ———- http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/pp2.pdf
Article Source — http://www.naturalnews.com/044409_GMOs_global_ecocide_precautionary_principle.html#
Nick A
You are full of shit. Let nature do the redesign. How could one think that scientists, businessmen, and politicians who have been fucking up for eons could possibly change nature without fucking it up? You would trust a computer generated design from Monsanto with your life and future generations?
Stucky
Glad someone is paying attention.
I love TED!! (Technology, Entertainment, Design). Been watching them for a very long time. Some of the more popular talks are also available on Netflix.
T4C, that’s an excellent video. I admire that man a lot. A man that DOES something to improve his neighborhood! What’s not to like?
Plus, he has a pretty good sense of humor. He said. “Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not talking about no free shit. Cuz, free is not sustainable. The funny thing about sustainability …. you have to sustain it! What I’m talking about is getting people to work and kids off the street.” Oh, yeah, preach it, brother!!
Thanks for posting it.
You (and other TED lovers) will enjoy the link below; “15 TED Talks That Will Change Your Life”. Some of them are really really really good. Enjoy.
http://mashable.com/2013/07/08/ted-talks-change-your-life/
Fortunately, the local food movement is expanding rapidly nationwide. From chemical free, just picked produce to raw milk to pastured meats. Maybe–just maybe–enough people will become buyers to make the US once again as verdant as the aboriginals left it. They managed the country as a vast garden, resulting in the richest soils in the world; soils which we’ve rapidly let wash away. Fortunately, it won’t take much to turn it around. A properly managed herbivore (cow, buffalo, etc.) is an incredible solar powered soil builder, returning vast quantities of carbon and water to the soil where it once was.
On a side note, you really haven’t lived ’til you’ve had a pastured, soy-free chicken properly roasted (usually 425F for about 23 minutes a side), seasoned only with sea salt. It’s as if the taste is just reward for paying the farmer enough to ensure the chicken had the best possible life. Prepare any of this food yourself and it won’t cost more than what a CEO charges for an often disappointing fast food “meal”.
Stuck, I haven’t heard any more about the ‘shit burger’, protein made from e-coli grown on kaka. It seems future ideas are spawned in the Sci-Fi stories we grew up reading or watching in theaters.