The Unfortunate Sex Life of the Banana | Hacker News Reader

The Unfortunate Sex Life of the Banana

damninteresting.com

101 points_b8r035 comments

I contend this entire (and entirely interesting) article was written solely so the OP could use the word "bananageddon".

If so, well played, well played.

would also have accepted "bananapocolypse"

Well, that and "large squads of banana sex workers"...

Wouldn't situations like these be one of the easier cases for GM food to be accepted by the vast majority of the population? I mean, if normal bananas die out, and the only ones left are GM bananas, it's not like anyone can claim that GM bananas are crowding out 'real' bananas. And hell, since they're all clones (by hand!!), there's no worry about them 'alien genes contaminating nature'.

If people were given a choice between no bananas and GM bananas, doesn't that make GM bananas a no brainer? (I can't answer directly as I actually dislike bananas...)

Just look at our power plants. We want to switch away from coal and fossil fuel, but we are so gridlocked by argument over what is the best replacement we're getting nowhere and thus still use coal and fossil fuel.

I would not be surprised if we argue about GM, even on this excellent candidate, until all bananas have been wiped out. Sadly, everybody looses that way, but we're really good at arguing.

The 'best replacement' isn't something that's the government's job to determine, but rather that's the job of the market under cap-and-trade. The whole point of cap-and-trade is that it allows the market to find the most cost effective solution while the market as a whole has a fixed carbon output that we decide in advance.

I think you are underestimating the power of public opinion. Nuclear power was a contender to replace coal and fossil fuel until the Three Mile Island accident. Since then there have been no new nuclear power plants constructed in America. The average age of nuclear plant operators in America is around 60. http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/RDS2-26_web.pd...

While GM foods are very far from the reputation nuclear power in America has the framework is set so one public scare will deter people from trusting GM foods for a very long time. Almost all grocery stores now carry 'organic' foods that are aggressively marketed.

For people to adopt GM foods they have to be introduced slowly. Take a look at Butter and Margarine: http://www.margarine.org/historyofmargarine.html "1902 - Amendments to the Federal Margarine Act raised the tax on colored margarine five-fold, but decreased licensing fees for white margarine. But demand for colored margarine remained so strong, that bootleg colored margarine flourished."

So yes while arguing about which replacement is best will delay the process ultimately public opinion will determine the fate of GM bananas.

This would be the situation, if the anti-GM crowd was a largely rational one.

You would think that "this GM crop will allow us to feed millions of otherwise starving children" would be a good enough argument for most people.

When you hear the words, "Think of the children," do you expect a rational discussion to follow?

I'll do my best. Is "GM Bananas or starving children" a false dichotomy? If the world had no bananas, couldn't we use the plantations to grow something else?

The idea that science itself can provide a further answer to "how do we feed starving children" is false in and of itself.

There's no shortage of food or food-bearing land in the world today. The remaining problems are purely political problems of distribution and corruption and economic problems of perverted incentives (food aid crowding out regional and local farming).

I'm not a blanket opponent of GM, but beyond the silly "Frankenstein food" rhetoric there's a real argument about the limitations in our knowledge of the potential side effects; particularly where unlike cross-bred bananas, plants are being "enhanced" with genes purposefully to make them toxic to certain species. We're not really in a position where we can confidently state that a gene will always behave in the same way when introduced to an alien species and left over a few generations, or that a particular "harmless to humans" protein will continue to be harmless to humans when consumed in higher volumes as part of a staple foodstuff. Testing ameliorates that risk but doesn't remove it altogether.

Obviously similar arguments apply to our lack of real knowledge of the side-effects of pharmaceuticals and vaccination programs even after substantial testing, but there's an argument that the rewards for developing cures for disease are worth risking the side effects in a way that increased crop yields aren't. Moreover drugs tend to directly affect the individuals taking them, whereas 'enhanced' crops and their non-sterile wind-blown pollen affect an entire ecosystem.

Then again the alternatives seem to be less-than-risk-free pesticides anyway...

> particularly where unlike cross-bred bananas, plants are being "enhanced" with genes purposefully to make them toxic to certain species.

Folks cross-breed, look for, and induce mutants (via radiation and other means) for exactly the same purposes as they use gene-splicing.

It would take longer to get round-up resist corn via cross-breeding, but folks would be trying to do it if they didn't have gene techniques.

How about "The Amish really like GM crops"? And they do.

As a person who cannot fathom there being no bananas, as I am in fact eating one right now completely coincidentally, I am in somewhat of a conundrum as to whether I would support GM bananas over no bananas. I think it would depend on other factors, such as whether the 'ownership' of the GM banana were open. I try to purchase free trade/organic produce and if the GM banana were a closed item this would probably lead me to start enjoying guavas, or something else.

Why are you against GM? I always find it fascinating that most people are for using technology for everything but food.

This fellow's argument doesn't seem to be against GM but rather against the predatory practices perpetrated by the purveyors of GM seeds.

Yes, you are correct. (Oh, and it's 'fella', if that's the female gender of that noun?)

more likely monsantonana.

Essentially all food people is eat GM food. Some of it was just GMed in by people who might not have had helpful tools like computers, DNA, Mendellevian hereditary, or written language.

Take a look at the cow: four little bitty legs attached to a bag of delicious meat. The cow cannot exist in nature. It doesn't have to, since when nature comes close to our delicious meat we kill it.

It's like that old joke - if you want to save an endangered species, you just have to convince everyone that it tastes good.

Considering the plight of tuna, we can safely put this old saw away.

The problem is that nobody effectively owns Tuna.

granted, feral cattle can be quite nasty (wouldn't want to meet one in the wild)

The cow cannot exist in nature.

umm, yes it can http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bos

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs

and Aurochs originated in India, where cultural tradition prohibits using them for meat

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle_in_religion

The cow was possibly revered because the largely pastoral Vedic people and subsequent generations relied heavily on it for dairy products and for tilling the fields, and on cow dung as a source of fuel, fertilizer, and psilocybin mushrooms which naturally grow out of the animal's own excrement.

If people were given a choice between no bananas and GM bananas, doesn't that make GM bananas a no brainer?

Sure. But it's a false dichotomy. The world is full of bananas, we are just running out a single (albeit very commercially profitable) clone variety.

The server gives an intermittent 503 for me, so just in case:

http://cache.historious.net/cached/1204/

A----- less erotic than expected.

Really interesting. in Brazil we have some dozen completely different kind of bananas, so I really never thought about why they replanted the roots for a new tree.

Does anyone know why the "upscale" grocery stores in the US (e.g. Whole Foods) don't try to sell other varieties of bananas? It seems like they could charge quite a premium for the "exotic" bananas not available to the people of Walmart.

Just a guess, but every non-cavendish variety I've seen in southeast asia is much smaller. Haven't tried them though. Maybe they taste better.

some upscale markets in Brazil did have the south Asian varieties.

They were darker in color (reminding a month old regular banana in some cases and reddish in others). much smaller. less sweet. way more expensive.

Poor me

Reply on news.ycombinator.com