Sunday, November 14, 2010

Monsanto: Devoured by its Monsters

It is one of the basic principles that one learns in high school biology - the tendency for species to evolve strains that adapt to environmental challenges. But this is a principle that the geniuses at Monsanto have forgotten. In designing monoculture crops to resist herbicides, the weeds it intended to kill have now evolved into superweeds, thus devouring their GMO crops, and so necessitating the increased use of herbicides that GMOs were touted to reduce...

Grist: Why Monsanto is paying farmers to spray its rivals’ herbicides

Plus this debacle...

ISIS: Mad Soy Disease Strikes Brazil

Perhaps they should have heeded the advise of a scientist they attempted to silence...

Organic Consumers Association: Arpad Pusztai and the Risks of Genetic Engineering

Fundamentally the science of genetic engineering is crap. One gene expressing one protein is the basis of genetic engineering, but the Human Genome Project discovered 23,000 genes, and there are 200,000 proteins in every cell. With this discovery, genetic engineering should have disappeared into the dustbin, but the biotechnology industry is so strong. Genetic engineering is a product driven technology. If you have enough money to throw at it, you can do many things. But the industry won't waste money on safety assessment.

Consider this the harbinger of a paradigm shift... The "Gene" is dead.