Level the playing field: Genetics makes us not only different but unequal. CRISPR could change that. Should we do it?

 Erik Parens | December 9, 2020

Over the past decade, economists, sociologists and psychologists have begun collaborating with geneticists to investigate how genomic differences among human beings are linked to differences in their behaviours and social outcomes. The insights sought are wide-ranging: why do some of us have a greater sense of subjective wellbeing than others? Why do some go further in school than others? When it comes to income, why do some people earn more and others less?

As surprising as it might be to readers familiar with the history of often-ugly efforts to investigate complex behaviours and outcomes through genetics, some prominent members of this new cohort of researchers are optimistic that their work will advance progressive political agendas. According to the progressive authors of a recent European Commission report, insights from what I call ‘social genomics’ are ‘fully compatible with agendas that aim to combat inequalities and that embrace diversity.’

Indeed, findings from social genomics are compatible with what we in the United States consider Left-leaning agendas to combat inequalities. They are, however, equally compatible with what we think of as Right-leaning agendas that accept – or make peace with – inequalities. Moreover, such findings are as compatible with a Right-leaning version of ‘embracing diversity’ as they are with a Left-leaning one. This should move Left-leaning social genomicists to curb their optimism about the potential of their research to advance their political agendas..........To Read More....

Viewpoint: Nobel Prize for CRISPR refutes anti-GMO activist rhetoric about crop gene editing

 Stuart Smyth | December 8, 2020

The year is coming to an end, and 2020 has popped a balloon filled with myths, untruths and lies deliberately spread by environmental groups (eNGOs) on gene editing. This fall the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded for the discovery of the gene editing technology CRISPR/Cas9. This gene editing advancement, co-discovered by Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna, is a transformative innovation that is demonstrating the staggering potential for improving global food security and human health. Early field trials of crop varieties developed by gene editing are reporting significant yield increases (such as 20% in rice), and we expect CRISPR/Cas9 to continue these advancements. In terms of improving human health, virtually all of the coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccines in development are utilizing gene editing technology..........To Read More....

GMO's Are Not the Problem. They're the Answer!

By Rich Kozlovich

On September 13, 2019 Cameron English posted the article, GMO, CRISPR-edited crops can cut pesticide use—if environmental activists do not block them saying:

In 2017, University of Florida plant geneticists Zhonglin Mou and Kevin Folta, along with their team of graduate students, announced a new method to fight common diseases in fruit plants. Their discovery could drastically reduce the use of fungicides if widely implemented by growers. 

Unfortunately, their methods may never be put to use thanks to the controversy surrounding crop biotechnology. 

The research confirms a point that cannot be stressed enough: scientists continue to make agriculture safer and more sustainable with the tools of modern genetics, but activists have waged such an effective scare campaign against crop biotechnology that it often remains unused by industry.

Luddite urban dwellers only consume, they don't produce, so they not only don't realize just how important this is, they don't want to know since environmentalism has become the neo-pagan religion of the urban atheist.  In their worship of the planet they self-righteously believe they're morally superior to the rest of us in their "all natural" views.  It would be nice if they had to take responsibility for the consequences in human suffering they're "all natural" views produced in preventing these major crop engineering advances.

Genetic engineering advances that would have brought Golden Rice to the dinner tables of those in Southeast Asia, whose diet lacks sufficient Vitamin A because rice is the primary carbohydrate source in this area of the world, and as The Golden Rice Project notes:

Rice does not contain any β-carotene (provitamin A), which their body could then convert into vitamin A. Dependence on rice as the predominant food source, therefore, necessarily leads to VAD, most severely affecting small children and pregnant women. In 2012 the World Health Organization reported that about 250 million preschool children are affected by VAD, and that providing those children with vitamin A could prevent about a third of all under-five deaths, which amounts to up to 2.7 million children that could be saved from dying unnecessarily. "

This picture is from the Golden Rice Project

The map shows the vast areas impacted by this problem, which gives you an idea of how many millions of people are suffering unnecessarily. 

Marc Brazeau in his March 5, 2019 article Golden Rice is coming. Finally! Will it be the game-changer hinted at for almost 20 years? saying:

Comes the news that the government of Bangladesh is about to approve Golden Rice for commercial release some time in the next three months. 

First and foremost this is fantastic news for Southeast Asia for humanitarian and economic development reasons. On a less consequential level this is great news for the overall debate surrounding the use of biotech in agriculture. Golden Rice occupied a space in the debate as the Great Golden Hope of Biotech Crops, a wholly virtuous crop devoid of the grubby commercial concerns of intellectual property or profit motive. In this case, the IP had been donated, the rice was being developed by a non-profit NGO and the rice will be given freely to farmers and local breeding programs—a trait of value directly to consumers, among them some of the most vulnerable people on the planet. Because of this history, it is a crop not linked to so-called ‘industrial agriculture’ and its key trait is not tied to pesticide use.

Let's try to get this once and for all. Activists are constantly touting the idea what they do "is for the children".   That's a logical fallacy known as the appeal to emotion fallacy, and when someone uses it you need to start looking very closely at what they're really promoting.  Because what these activists have done isn't "for" the children, what they've done has been "to" the children.  From DDT to GMO's the green movement is now, and has always been, foundationally misanthropic. 

For twenty years this has been going on.  That means if we take the number 2.7 million at face value that comes to 54 million children whose lives would have been saved.  And untold millions more would have been saved from other afflictions as a result of Vitamin A deficiency. 

I would like for everyone to think about this.  If GMO techniques become common place here's what would happen. Agriculture would be able to produce food in an abundance that was never dreamt of.  It would be done with less land use, allowing for animal protection, less pesticides, less labor, less cost and in some cases less water would be needed, all of which makes agriculture amazingly "sustainable".  Isn't what they claim they want?   Isn't "sustainability" their ultimate goal?  Yet, these "all natural", "anti-pesticide", "sustainability" advocate Luddites are against it.  Why? 

Because they're not really against pesticides, land use, water use or GMO's, and they don't really care about "sustainability".  What they're against is humanity. 

The radicals among these activists think humanity is a plague on the planet that needs to be eradicated.  The "moderates" only want to eliminate between four and six billion people.

We are rightly outraged by the actions of the socialist monsters of the 20th century who killed over 100 million people, and they got started taking power in 1917.  But environmentalism has probably been responsible for the deaths of that many and more, and they didn't really get started until 1972 with the ban on DDT.  Where's our outrage over that? 

Definition leads to clarity.  Clarity leads to understanding.  We need to understand the green movement is irrational, misanthropic and morally defective.  That's history, and that history is incontestable.

You may wish to view my GMO file. 

Pseudo-science alert: For $9,500, Politico provides disinformation about crop biotechnology, GMOs and pesticides

Andrew Porterfield | Genetic Literacy Project | March 19, 2019

The Politico news website is known for its political coverage in the United States, posting stories on a wide range of topics, mostly cataloguing the infighting in the nation’s capital.

But more recently, the site strayed into territory outside of its comfort zone, into science and the controversial issue of agricultural biotechnology — GMOs and the pesticides used by farmers, organic and conventional — and its ideological naiveté and lack of science expertise showed through, much to the embarrassment of the political news site.

The site’s graphics editor, Patterson Clark, who has no background as a working scientist or journalist writing about crop biotechnology, produced an infographic that illustrated how food has been genetically modified by corporations, and purported to offer a “deep dive” into gene editing — for as much $9,500! But the information they offered was poorly sourced and inaccurate. And when given the chance to address the actual science behind the issue of breeding, they declined.

Here’s the story..........To Read More.....

CRISPR-Created Foods are Different than GMOs. It's Wrong for Anti-GMO Activists to Pretend They're Not.

By Chuck Dinerstein — April 3, 2018

Monsanto, perhaps to rebrand itself, and certainly to remain a leader in agricultural biotech has helped establish and fund Pairwise Plants a start-up using CRISPR-Cas9 technologies to modify seeds. They have given the new company money and their vice-president of global biotechnology to head the start-up, so this is a strategic business move not simply hedging their bets. This is important because CRISPR-Cas9 may genetically modify a crop, but it doesn’t necessarily result in a genetically modified organism, the dreaded GMO. To understand how that can be, we need to understand both genetic modification and federal regulations.

Mutagenesis...........To Read More....