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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> A viable option actually

We've come up with a definition for "GMO" which is about as arbitrary as "plants grown on the north side of a mountain."

Look at a wild carrot [1]. There is no good reason for plants to stuff their roots with beta carotene. But nutrient-rich roots are tastier and healthier, so we bred them. It blows my mind that someone might consider a mutation bred [2] vegetable healthier or safer than one where the desired gene is precisely injected.

The economics of GMO produce are compelling. They will be produced. All anti-GMO consumers guarantee is having their views, tastes and concerns ignored as agriculture develops. That lack of consumer input is, in my opinion, unhealthy for us all.

[1] http://www.carrotmuseum.co.uk/wild.html

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation_breeding

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This raises a question for which I have never found a satisfactory answer, perhaps some of the people chiming in here can help.

It seems likely (intuitively, which is why this is a question) that a naturally-occurring mutation which is artificially selected-for by a grower actually is very different from a transgenic insertion. The former arises within the complex regulatory/inhibitory genetic environment of the natural plant, so it sort of feels less risky, less likely to be disruptive or to renovate the biochemistry. Transgenically-inserted genes are mitochondrial, activated by default, and not part of a regulatory chain, and may produce arbitrary metabolites -- this is where they get their power. An ecosystem analogy comes to mind, natural mutations are like species evolving in an ecosystem, and transgenic insertions are like invasive species, potentially throwing the ecosystem seriously out of whack.

Is this just a sort of romantic fallacy, supported by a bad analogy?

I think it's tangential to the safety question -- actually-existing commercial GMO crops have been tested and demonstrated to be safe, that seems to be clear. But I think the space for unsafe combinations is much larger than it is for natural mutations, and the analogy to selective breeding understates the danger (and the power)?

> a naturally-occurring mutation which is artificially selected-for by a grower

Actually plant breeders use radioactive radiation, and certain mutagenic poisons, to increase to mutation rate way above normal, in order to get more mutated offspring to work with.

What you write about "transgenically-inserted genes are mitochondrial" and "not part of a regulatory chain, and may produce arbitrary metabolites" is total bollocks and I have no idea where you got that particular misinformation from.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation_breeding

Most of what I've read on this subject, from the scientific community, suggests that gene editing is safer than breeding for characteristics, because it's more targeted and controlled. If the concern is long-term viability of a species, then plants whose genes have been carefully edited are subject to all of the same evolutionary selection pressures as plants that have been altered through breeding.

Note that for instance the heavily-selection-bred Cavendish banana is currently facing possible extinction due to its susceptibility to a fungus. So on the one hand here you have exactly the problem you're worried about with gene-edited crops, and meanwhile gene editing is a possible solution to the problem.

I regret that I'm not well-enough versed in the science of this subject to communicate it better.

A natural nutation may be dangerous. For example the difference between the sweet and bitter almonds is a single gen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almond#Sweet_and_bitter_almond...

In particular:

> The acute oral lethal dose of cyanide for adult humans is reported to be 0.5–3.5 mg/kg (0.2–1.6 mg/lb) of body weight (approximately 50 bitter almonds), whereas for children, consuming 5–10 bitter almonds may be fatal.

The mutation that makes the bitter almonds produce cyanide is very old, totally natural and dangerous. It was mutated at least 300 million yeas ago, before the almond became a different plant than peach and cherry and other similar plants. Probably to make the animals avoid the plant and kernels.

> It was mutated at least 300 million yeas ago

I don't know, the whole group of flowering plants is about 300 million years old (says Wikipedia). Perhaps you mean 30 million years.

I got the number from http://amsdottorato.unibo.it/3843/1/Cervellati_Claudia_tesi.... (in the abstract) that cites https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11101-006-9033-1

Apparently is a very very old feature (even older than what I though).

Ah, ok. Yes, the last paragraph on page 1 says that the feature appeared before flowering plants, conifers and ferns split up. So yes, it is very ancient. Thank you.

I expect a more recent mutation to make the kernels more toxic than the edible part of the fruit, but I couldn't find an article that discuss that.

This is interesting, and a good point, but the existence of harmful natural mutations isn't by itself a refutation.

The idea I have (again, perhaps wrongly) is approximately that harmful-to-humans mutations make up a smaller fraction of the space of viable (i.e. allows the organism to survive at all) natural mutations, and a larger fraction of the space of viable transgenic mutations. A secondary point is that this is because the space of viable transgenic mutations is not constrained by the prior state of the genome, the same thing that makes transgenic mutations powerful also makes them risky.

So, I am (or I was, anyways) positing _fewer_ dangerous natural mutations, not necessarily zero.

I'm certainly less convinced that there's an important difference than I was yesterday, though, but mostly because the _accessible_ space of transgenic behaviors is evidently limited by investigator effort, which does not scale, so even if the _theoretical_ space is larger, it doesn't matter, we're not going to sample it.

>>> I think it's tangential to the safety question -- actually-existing commercial GMO crops have been tested and demonstrated to be safe, that seems to be clear.

Actually, it's not that clear. They have been proven to not be unsafe, which arguably is a lot easier. But a lot of countries still ban them specifically because the "safe" part wasn't proven. Obviously this depends on the crop, as GMO means a lot of different things.

How about "contains genetic modifications that are strictly Copyright (C) Mother Nature". Seems like a good first approximation at a working definition.

So, "north side of the mountain" is non-GMO right off the bat.

This is a meaningless distinction. It's like saying two files with idential content and checksum are different because one file was written by Vim and the other by Emacs.

The law can and does make this sort of distinction.

http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23

I don't see what IP law has to do with nutrition.

Everything, since the nutrition comes from things that are covered by IP law.

The law can, if it chooses, make a distinction between on the one hand a plant with a genome produced by non-GMO methods and on the other hand a plant with the same exact genome produced with GMO methods. The law regularly chooses to pay attention to things like this even though nature makes no distinction.

Sure, but that doesn't have any affect on the safety of eating the plant, which was the topic here.

> How about "contains genetic modifications that are strictly Copyright (C) Mother Nature"

Plants have been patentable since 1930 [1]. In 1970, the Congress gave breeders "up to 25 years of exclusive control over new, distinct, uniform, and stable sexually reproduced or tuber propagated plant varieties" [2]. IP concerns and GMO are orthogonal issues, as non-GMO varieties have been patented.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_Patent_Act_of_1930

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_Variety_Protection_Act_o...

> Congress

That's that gathering of political representatives from all corners of the planet, to make decisions for humanity.

Nobody puts labels like this on products unless they (1) respond to a regulatory requirement or (2) convey something positive about the product. In both cases, the label implies there's something wrong with products containing genes that aren't "strictly Copyright (C) Mother Nature".

You may think the only issue the ethical problem of enforcing genetic IPR, but casual consumers do not give a shit about IPR ethics. They assume "genetically modified" is in approximately the same category as "contains toxic herbicides".

Ironically, the most commercially viable way to produce non-GMO crops are toxic herbicides.

> strictly Copyright (C) Mother Nature

What would be the point of it? In both cases we're seeking genetic modifications. In one case, it is targeted and precise, in another - random and probabilistic, i.e. we don't know whether the modification we want (sweeter apple, nicer carrot, etc.) didn't also bring along something we don't. Or at least we don't without analyzing the genome and selecting only those with genome we want - in which case it's just a very convoluted way of producing GMO.

It's like typing code by throwing rock at the keyboard until they hit necessary character and calling it "natural Organic coding" - surely, you could do that, but what exactly is the point?

If you say "but those genetic modifications have been tested by centuries of time" - also not really, many cultivars we're eating today are relatively recent, late 19th to 20th century. E.g. Fuji apples one sees everywhere were introduced to US marked in 1980s. And for many cultivars, there was no serious studies about their safety. Of course, if people start dropping dead in place from eating certain kind of apple, it would be noticed. But otherwise - we have little data, and nobody is too worried about it.

> What would be the point of it?

Simply to try to define "GMO"; do you have a better idea?

Since everything is "modified", the definition is meaningless if M refers to all modification. To be useful, the definition probably has to carve some subset in the M space.

> It's like typing code by throwing rock at the keyboard until they hit necessary character and calling it "natural Organic coding"

That may be so, but I like being a human rather than some organic molecules on the surface of a rock from which I evolved by this ineffective, dangerous process.

> Simply to try to define "GMO"; do you have a better idea?

Yes. "GMO" is a scare term, devoid of any real content, used by tiny number of overly cautions ecologists and vast number of charlatans to trick gullible people into fearing modern technology.

> Since everything is "modified", the definition is meaningless if M refers to all modification

That's where you realize "GMO" is meaningless, and stop using that term.

> I like being a human rather than some organic molecules on the surface of a rock from which I evolved by this ineffective, dangerous process.

You are both. One does not contradict the other, and being made of organic molecules in no way diminishes your humanity. And being made of other organic molecules, some of which were purposedly put there to make it better (for varying definitions of "better") does not diminish the quality of your food. Which is not just declared by me, some guy on the internet typing some bullshit into the browser, but was actually verified by scientists.

> That's where you realize "GMO" is meaningless, and stop using that term.

It's not meaningless at all. GMO could be used maliciously. A tomato could be produced which deliberately make a protein such that a fraction of a milligram can kills. That is not likely to happen with random evolution.

"GMO" is just as meaningful as "infected executable".

> You are both.

Completely besides the point; which wasn't about human versus molecules, but rather that random evolution did a pretty good job there.

> A tomato could be produced which deliberately make a protein such that a fraction of a milligram can kills. That is not likely to happen with random evolution.

That's a strange claim to make about a member of the nightshade family.

> GMO could be used maliciously.

Anything can be used maliciously.

> That is not likely to happen with random evolution.

That is happening all the time with evolution. Hundreds of types of plants produce poisons. In fact, producing various poisons is the plant's main weapon in the struggle for survivial - it has no claws and can not run, so it's either making itself completely indigestible (like trees) or making itself unfit or at least hard for eating. Like tomatoes, which were, like all nightshades (potatoes, tomatoes, etc.) originally highly toxic. Only we humans convinced tomatoes and potatoes not to kill us, by genetically modifying them since at least 500BC. Of course, we could develop ones that kill too. Or we could worry about grocers to just shooting you - if they'd be willing to kill you with tomatoes, why not with rifles? Of course, in reality nobody tries to kill anyone, so worrying about weaponized GMO is pointless - if you wanted to kill people, nobody would bother with GMO, there are much cheaper ways.

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