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Comment by MrBuddyCasino | Hacker News Reader

My stance on GMOs changed from pro to very sceptical when I got acquainted with the Talebian viewpoint: https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/genetically-modifi...

Anyone got a good counter argument besides the generic "classical breeding isn't acually safer", which I don't buy without further detailing? The reason I'm asking is that over the years, I was often sceptical about his opinions and the way he presented them, but in the end Taleb always turned out to be right on the few predictions he did make, which is no small feat. If GMOs really are a global systemic risk, this would be an important science fact to get right, and I want to hear all sides. I figured there should be some competent people on HN.

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Genetic engineer here (though I've mostly worked in humans). Cross-kingdom gene transfer has been occurring due to pathogen vectors amongst plants for as long as plants have been around. On a geological time scale the amount of gene-flow is significant, and any tricks that would allow domination and apocalypse would already have come to the fore. Most every change we make to crops weaken them as wild competitors.

If you're looking for Talebian disaster, it has already happened. Seriously: Most of earth's arable land is dominated by a tiny handful of species in the order Poales, with much of the rest dominated by other invasive species brought in for grazing a few animal species. The point of genetic engineering is to help maximize yield and resilience of our intensively worked land so that we have some chance of saving what little is left of the natural world, whatever mistakes we commit now would not be materially worse than what we've already done, and we need every trick in the book to try to preserve what is left.

Do you think a better method is combining genetic engineering with vertical farming?

It's not an either or proposition. We should be using restorative agriculture (and similar practices) in regions where food can be grown outdoors to maximize yields and sink as much carbon and water as possible into the ground. Vertical farming becomes especially useful in areas where growing fresh food is hard, but energy access is abundant. Use GMOs in both cases, though they will be different variants.

Vertical farming is only economical with very, very expensive by weight crops. If you’re planning to use artificial light rather than sunlight you’ve got to compete with people growing crops in the open air or in greenhouses where the lighting is free.

His fear is about a self-spreading superplant, which is what's supposed to make GMO a special type of danger. Without self-spreading the worst you can get is a failed product. If it was that easy to make a superplant, evolution would have already figured it out.

The point of GMO is to engineer organisms for artificial environment under human supervision, and humans aren't going to protect harmful plants. Eg. nitrogen fixing may sound "obvious" but it takes energy, and empirically in most environments such plants were outcompeted by those that didn't spend energy this way. It's only net cheaper for humans, because the cost of manufacturing, transporting etc the fertilizer has to be included.

It's the same story for everything. It's going to take a really, really long time before human genetic engineering can hope to beat evolution on its own turf. By a rough estimate, at any second on Earth there's close to 2^105 ribosomes manufacturing proteins from RNA, only once simulation capabilities start to come close genetically engineered organisms start to become a systemic risk.

Funny story that confirms this view: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-49660-6 >However, it is clear from the data in Garziera et al.6 that the effectiveness of the release program began to break down after about 18 months, i.e., the population which had been greatly suppressed rebounded to nearly pre-release levels.

Ultimately, it was just a fun, harmless experiment, and as a bonus anyone arrogant enough to expect current human genetic engineering to beat evolution got a lesson in humility.

>> If it was that easy to make a superplant, evolution would have already figured it out.

Dont be so sure. It seems like nitrogen fixing plants could get out of control, and evolution hasn't produced them yet.

Sexual reproduction allows improvements from diverging lineages to combine in a single offspring. But only if they haven't diverged too far. Genetic engineering may bring beneficial feature from vary different species, or in this case kingdoms.

If a nitrogen fixing plant took over the world an obvious way to target it would be to aim at the nitrogen pathway, but then we might kill most of the bacteria our food supply depends on.

Having said that I think this work is a good idea, but if I can conceive of a way for it to go wrong I'm sure nature could come up with many more.

> Sexual reproduction allows improvements from diverging lineages to combine in a single offspring. But only if they haven't diverged too far. Genetic engineering may bring beneficial feature from vary different species, or in this case kingdoms.

As stated elsewhere, gene transfer also happens cross-kingdom by way of virus.

> It seems like nitrogen fixing plants could get out of control, and evolution hasn't produced them yet.

what about legumes? What's the difference between "built-in" nitrogen fixing and symbiotic nitrogen fixing that would make the former much more dangerous?

> If it was that easy to make a superplant, evolution would have already figured it out.

Is that the case when plants are now living in an unnatural environment,e.g with co2 at elevated levels compared to the levels that today's plants evolved in?

The game today is entirely new, and who's to say what sort of things will thrive in these new conditions.

> Ultimately, it was just a fun, harmless experiment, and as a bonus anyone arrogant enough to expect current human genetic engineering to beat evolution got a lesson in humility.

Why is is any more "trying to beat evolution" than, say, using antibiotics? In a 18 month timespan, there is not much useful mutation (afaik!). The problem was that there was already a variant that could survive the attack.

How can we quantify the risk a given attack will fail/calculate how many such interventions would be needed?

I worked at a Monsanto subsidiary when I was in college and became somewhat familiar with GMOs. I think it depends. You’re right that genetic-guided breeding is low-tech, efficient, and safe. But some traits can’t be bred, and nitrogen fixation sure sounds like one of them. Given the GHG emissions and environmental impact of anhydrous ammonia application to crops, this seems like a worthy use of GMO. Bt-corn perhaps is as well, when considering the reduction in pesticide use.

(I should note: I have no love of Monsanto nor wish to defend them/apologize for them.)

Also the problem with GMOs is it transfers ownership of the plant from the public to the large companies that have modified it (as they will inventibly want to patent it). Is it really fair that they take thousands of years of evolution, change a gene or two, and become the sole owner of the strain? And often limiting the ability of the plant to reproduce, so you have to buy more seed from them. If it continues that way the amount of plants available under public ownership will continue to decrease.

Plant patents date back to 1930, predating even the discovery that DNA is the genetic material.

In many crops the seeds planted are hybrids, which don't breed true either. That non-issue has been there since before you, and possibly your parents, were born.

What keeps the (gasp! shudder!) corporate ownership of these things from sinking us into a dystopian hellscape? Competition. You don't like one kind of hybrid? Buy a different kind. The seed makers compete fiercely for farmers' business. The same is true of GMOs.

> Plant patents date back to 1930

That doesn't mean that they are a good idea.

> In many crops the seeds planted are hybrids, which don't breed true either.

And in many other crops Monsanto sues the hell out of farmers who replant the non-hybrid seeds.

> Competition.

Are there actually seed makers that would not sue their customers for replanting?

Plant patents (and patents on new GMOs) are an excellent idea, and it's remarkable you could think othewise. They mean we actually get the improvements, since they cannot be immediately taken by those who didn't invest in their creation. They do NOT mean you have to stop using something that existed before the patent.

Monsanto had a contract with farmers to not replant the seeds. The farmers were free to not use the seeds and not sign the contract. Enforcement of contractual obligations is a vital glue that holds society together; why are you against it in this case?

In all this, I detect entitled selfishness on your part: you want (or you think the farmers should have) the benefits of these improvements, without having to respect the mechanisms that allow the improvements to be made.

OK, I think we are agreed that all seed providers would use the similar kind of contract. (I'll assume you concede this, since you didn't address my question about it.) In which case any claims of "competition" and "freedom" are somewhat hollow.

As for how patents (and other intellectual property rights) correlate with innovation, that is debated. Here's a random article I picked out of a web search: https://www.knowablemagazine.org/article/society/2018/do-pat...

For whatever it's worth, the research we're discussing here is being done not at a for-profit seed maker but at a non-profit university. Universities are good at getting government grants, for example, for innovations that would benefit everyone, like improved seeds.

There is no reason for a supplier of hybrid seeds to have this sort of contract, as the hybrid would not breed true.

As for patents: while patents in general have dubious applications, plant patents in particular are not dubious at all. Patents are absolutely essential here, because the cost of manufacturing is extremely low (just grow the plant!) If plants that breed true could not be patented then developing them would be worthless. The cost of development could not be recouped after the first sale.

Plant patents are considerably narrower in scope than utility patents, at least in the US. In particular you can't get plant patents that cover sexual reproduction of plants or asexual reproduction via edible tubers (like, say, potatoes do), so you can't use them to stop farmers replanting their seeds. That's why agritech companies wanted to be able to file utility patents on plants, which they eventually managed thanks to GMOs.

Also, the whole "plant patents date back to 1930" line is literally out of Monsanto's talking points.

Talking points tend to include facts. I'm sorry if the facts are not helping your narrative.

Yes, the 1930s plant patents are a bit different. But they are still corporations owning IP in plants. It didn't end the world then, it's nothing but a source of faux outrage now.

The only thing they become "sole owner" of is the newly modified plant genome.

The original one is still there for all to use.

I thought this was wrong, but it's been true in the USA since 2013. https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/testing/genepatents

The medium article keeps jumping around explaining global vs local, blight and health risks. What exactly is it saying again?

My summary is that there are "economical" (farming failing due to blight, etc) and "health" (whatever the hell they talk about proteins in chemical pathways).

I'm not particularly worried about the economical effects, in part because I am reasonably confident that we don't have to "solve gravity" because we can't grow wheat.

Health concerns, of course, are legitimate. It's getting more and more clear that glyphosate is a carcinogen, and all deliberate efforts by big botany to suppress this research should be condemned. But to say the "proteins" in your diet are harmful to you is a stretch. There might be some effects, but that's not a given.

Ingested proteins typically do not directly participate in any chemical pathways that don't involve their degradation (exceptions exist like prions). We are gaining more insight into how our immune systems can indeed be reprogrammed by some proteins in our diet but that's still a stretch that one new modification in one of ten thousand proteins in a plant you eat is gonna screw your body.

Also remember mad cow disease? That was caused purely by shitty factory farming, no GMO needed. Most (not all) worries about GMO is just misplaced fear mongering, and it only serves to squash any legitimate conversation about it lest a sane individual gets grouped with insane posse. What do you think of this argument?

No, it's not "getting more and more clear glyphosate is a carcinogen". Of course, if you have enough motivated reasoners torturing the evidence, eventually it will confess and tell you anything you want to hear.

A quick Google found a recent summary - https://www.bmj.com/content/365/bmj.l1613.full

Is it unequivocal? No. But whatever I've read seems to indicate a smoking fire, at least a small one.

It’s a valid perspective. If there were to be a contagious disease that could rapidly spread via eg spores, it could wipe out the entire population of these crops. I am hoping that various ag labs around the country store a diversity of cereal grains.

That being said, it’s unlikely that GMO crops will stop being popular anytime soon. The best we can hope for is that labs get really good and fast at producing GM crops so that when the disease eventually hits, the lab/company can quickly produce a disease resistant variety.

The population of the world is growing rapidly. We absolutely do need highest yielding food crops if we are to not cut down every forest to just feed everyone.

> If there were to be a contagious disease that could rapidly spread via eg spores, it could wipe out the entire population of these crops.

That's more or less how we started down the GMO path in the first place, back in the 60s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat_leaf_rust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug

Is there a point where the conversation shifts from we need to produce more for less to feed or growing population to we need to stop growing.

Obviously a hugely loaded subject, but also worth thinking about.

> The population of the world is growing rapidly. We absolutely do need highest yielding food crops if we are to not cut down every forest to just feed everyone.

Do we really need GMO for this though? The EU is more or less self-sufficient[0] without GMO production. It is true it relies on GM imports (soy, rice) but it also exports a ton of other stuff.

I am not against GM crops, but I'm not unconvinced they are the only option.

Africa is (was? I'm not up to date) a net food importer, but it has crop yields 5 times lower then US/EU/Asia, which could also be improved by other means such as better land management.

[0] http://register.consilium.europa.eu/doc/srv?l=EN&f=ST%201336...

My personal hope is that we'll shift from big, centralised labs producing and selling vast quantities of essentially the same organism to lots of decentralised hackers modifying their own strains and scaling up if they find a real winner. Potential for the best of both worlds there.

>in the end Taleb always turned out to be right on the few predictions he did make

Yeah, the bond prepayment crisis of 2005 was terrible.

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