Science and Exploration

[dreadgeek]

But Hollylane, that strawberry isn't in its natural state. Everything we eat, every fruit and every vegetable and every domesticated animal has been genetically modified. The difference between genetic engineering and what humans have been doing since we invented agriculture is two-fold:
1) Instead of doing things blindly we are being far more targeted and subtle with it.
2) We are able to across the species barrier in ways we couldn't before.

Other than that, the essence of what is happening is exactly the same. We are taking genes and selecting the ones we want/need for our purposes. When I say we are no longer doing things blindly I mean that in the past, all we could do was take one plant or animal that had traits we wanted and cross it with another planet or animal that had traits we wanted. The problem was that many traits don't breed 'true' and there could be genes that were 'hangers on' that might bring in traits we didn't want.

Now, if we want to breed for a particular trait, all we have to do is know what genes or combination of genes code for the appropriate protein.

The second issue, being able to cross the species barrier, I can understand a bit more but it still seems, to me, to rest on an essentialist view of living things. Even you say so below that you want a strawberry to only be a strawberry as if the insertion of a gene that makes a protein that prevents damage from freezing somehow makes it not a strawberry. The *only* reason why strawberries never hit on this neat little trick is that Nature never put that species in the position where the ability to resist extended cold was selected for. Plants have a different mechanism for surviving cold and, in the case of strawberries, it's called 'seeds'. But if strawberries had evolved in an environment where it was *always* cold (like under the ice pack) then they almost certainly would have hit on a similar trick. We are not, however, taking some essence of fish and putting it into a strawberry. We're simply taking a gene that, for reasons of historical contingency and evolutionary history, found itself in a fish and putting it in a strawberry where it does the same thing as it does in the fish. Nothing 'fishy' comes over because the protein *happens* to come from a fish, it isn't necessarily a protein that a fish and only a fish could ever have need of.

So why didn't the strawberry come up with anti-freeze on its own? Here I have to digress into evolutionary biology because it's the only way to make sense. I'm going to use two examples to explain evolutionary contingency, one real and one fanciful.

First the real:

The primate eye is actually built 'upside down'. What one would expect, if the eye had been designed by, say, an optical engineer that the light-sensing cells would be facing the source of light with all of the supporting infrastructure (blood vessels, etc.) behind the eye. That is not, in fact, how the primate eye is built. Instead, the light sensing cells are at the *back* of the eye and all the other structure of the eye is on top of it. This means that our eyes are less efficient then they otherwise could be. Now, if evolution could take steps backward the primate eye could have been rebuilt over evolutionary time so that it was more efficient (the eyes of cephalopods--squids and the like) are actually built the right way round. But evolution can't take back steps it can *only* work with what it already has.

The other example is the potential for human flight. The reason why we *can't* fly isn't that it is impossible for us to develop wings but that all of the things it would take for us to develop wings are simply not available to our species. Those pathways were closed off millions of years ago and there's no way to go back even though the ability to fly like bats would be mightily helpful to our species. Strawberries and fish haven't shared a common ancestor for hundreds of millions of years. The reason why the fish and the strawberry would never meet isn't that nature doesn't *want* them to but because there's no pathway by which they *could* meet. Not because there's something 'wrong' with it but simply because there's no selective benefit for either the fish or the strawberry to trade genes with one another.

Lastly, there's the issue of commonality of genes. While you look nothing like a banana you share 70% of all your genes with bananas. You are also not much like a fruit fly or a mouse (although you are, obviously, much more closely related to a mouse than a fruit fly) yet the very same gene that tells the developing human body "build eyes here" tells both the developing mouse or fruit fly to "build eyes here". To think about the implications of this try this thought experiment. If we took the gene, called 'eyeless', out of a human being and implanted it in a mouse what kind of eye do you think would grow? If you said "a human eyeball" you're wrong. It doesn't. The gene doesn't specify "grow this kind of eyeball here" instead it specifies "whatever kind of eye is appropriate for this species, it goes here". Do we know this to be true? Yes. How? Because we can and have taken that gene from a fruit fly, inserted it into the genome of a mouse where that gene had been 'knocked out' and pasted it in. Mice grew mice eyes where the gene specified it should. The same thing worked in reverse. A copy of the eyeless gene from a mouse, inserted into a fruit fly, caused the fruit-fly to grow a fruit-fly eye in the specified location.

Was there anything 'mouse-like' about the gene? No. In fact, there's a gene--the HOX gene--that specifies the body plan for almost everything living on the planet that *isn't* a bacteria.

DNA is DNA. There's no such thing as 'fish' DNA which is different from and incompatible with banana DNA. DNA either codes for a protein or tells another strand to start or stop.

I'm not saying we should go full-speed ahead with genetic engineering but I am saying that there is a lot of confusion and, in my mind, needless fear of the technology. I am not, let me be clear, defending Monsanto or any other agribusiness. I am talking solely about the scientific questions of genetic engineering.

At the end of the day, selective breeding and genetic engineering are the same kind of thing. Selective breeding is walking, genetic engineering is ballet.

Cheers
Aj

Originally Posted by Hollylane

While all of this is amazing, and only possible because of the human brain, I am still appalled. In nature, a strawberry and a fish would never meet. If I buy a strawberry, I want it to be only a strawberry. Thankfully, I can avoid all of these mutations (for now) by purchasing locally grown organic fruits/vegetables, and making sure that other vegetables/fruits that I may buy are non-gmo.

I want to see strong labeling laws, that protect those of us who desire to eat whole foods, that are unaltered from their natural state. The sick part of all of this to me is, that even though I am making these important choices for myself, the fact that these things exist, means that I may still be exposed to them over time.

Altering animals to produce things that they would never produce naturally will never be okay with me, and I don't think it is a matter of me "freaking out", it is simply appalling to me that humans are meddling in nature this way, and subjecting other creatures to experimentation for the purpose of production.

[Hollylane]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

But Hollylane, that strawberry isn't in its natural state. Everything we eat, every fruit and every vegetable and every domesticated animal has been genetically modified. The difference between genetic engineering and what humans have been doing since we invented agriculture is two-fold:
1) Instead of doing things blindly we are being far more targeted and subtle with it.
2) We are able to across the species barrier in ways we couldn't before.

Other than that, the essence of what is happening is exactly the same. We are taking genes and selecting the ones we want/need for our purposes. When I say we are no longer doing things blindly I mean that in the past, all we could do was take one plant or animal that had traits we wanted and cross it with another planet or animal that had traits we wanted. The problem was that many traits don't breed 'true' and there could be genes that were 'hangers on' that might bring in traits we didn't want.

Now, if we want to breed for a particular trait, all we have to do is know what genes or combination of genes code for the appropriate protein.

The second issue, being able to cross the species barrier, I can understand a bit more but it still seems, to me, to rest on an essentialist view of living things. Even you say so below that you want a strawberry to only be a strawberry as if the insertion of a gene that makes a protein that prevents damage from freezing somehow makes it not a strawberry. The *only* reason why strawberries never hit on this neat little trick is that Nature never put that species in the position where the ability to resist extended cold was selected for. Plants have a different mechanism for surviving cold and, in the case of strawberries, it's called 'seeds'. But if strawberries had evolved in an environment where it was *always* cold (like under the ice pack) then they almost certainly would have hit on a similar trick. We are not, however, taking some essence of fish and putting it into a strawberry. We're simply taking a gene that, for reasons of historical contingency and evolutionary history, found itself in a fish and putting it in a strawberry where it does the same thing as it does in the fish. Nothing 'fishy' comes over because the protein *happens* to come from a fish, it isn't necessarily a protein that a fish and only a fish could ever have need of.

So why didn't the strawberry come up with anti-freeze on its own? Here I have to digress into evolutionary biology because it's the only way to make sense. I'm going to use two examples to explain evolutionary contingency, one real and one fanciful.

First the real:

The primate eye is actually built 'upside down'. What one would expect, if the eye had been designed by, say, an optical engineer that the light-sensing cells would be facing the source of light with all of the supporting infrastructure (blood vessels, etc.) behind the eye. That is not, in fact, how the primate eye is built. Instead, the light sensing cells are at the *back* of the eye and all the other structure of the eye is on top of it. This means that our eyes are less efficient then they otherwise could be. Now, if evolution could take steps backward the primate eye could have been rebuilt over evolutionary time so that it was more efficient (the eyes of cephalopods--squids and the like) are actually built the right way round. But evolution can't take back steps it can *only* work with what it already has.

The other example is the potential for human flight. The reason why we *can't* fly isn't that it is impossible for us to develop wings but that all of the things it would take for us to develop wings are simply not available to our species. Those pathways were closed off millions of years ago and there's no way to go back even though the ability to fly like bats would be mightily helpful to our species. Strawberries and fish haven't shared a common ancestor for hundreds of millions of years. The reason why the fish and the strawberry would never meet isn't that nature doesn't *want* them to but because there's no pathway by which they *could* meet. Not because there's something 'wrong' with it but simply because there's no selective benefit for either the fish or the strawberry to trade genes with one another.

Lastly, there's the issue of commonality of genes. While you look nothing like a banana you share 70% of all your genes with bananas. You are also not much like a fruit fly or a mouse (although you are, obviously, much more closely related to a mouse than a fruit fly) yet the very same gene that tells the developing human body "build eyes here" tells both the developing mouse or fruit fly to "build eyes here". To think about the implications of this try this thought experiment. If we took the gene, called 'eyeless', out of a human being and implanted it in a mouse what kind of eye do you think would grow? If you said "a human eyeball" you're wrong. It doesn't. The gene doesn't specify "grow this kind of eyeball here" instead it specifies "whatever kind of eye is appropriate for this species, it goes here". Do we know this to be true? Yes. How? Because we can and have taken that gene from a fruit fly, inserted it into the genome of a mouse where that gene had been 'knocked out' and pasted it in. Mice grew mice eyes where the gene specified it should. The same thing worked in reverse. A copy of the eyeless gene from a mouse, inserted into a fruit fly, caused the fruit-fly to grow a fruit-fly eye in the specified location.

Was there anything 'mouse-like' about the gene? No. In fact, there's a gene--the HOX gene--that specifies the body plan for almost everything living on the planet that *isn't* a bacteria.

DNA is DNA. There's no such thing as 'fish' DNA which is different from and incompatible with banana DNA. DNA either codes for a protein or tells another strand to start or stop.

I'm not saying we should go full-speed ahead with genetic engineering but I am saying that there is a lot of confusion and, in my mind, needless fear of the technology. I am not, let me be clear, defending Monsanto or any other agribusiness. I am talking solely about the scientific questions of genetic engineering.

At the end of the day, selective breeding and genetic engineering are the same kind of thing. Selective breeding is walking, genetic engineering is ballet.

Cheers
Aj

I do understand the science and technology behind it all Aj, I can even dig deep, and find a way to relate to how you feel about it.

For me, I want more of what I would be likely to find at the Portland Farmer's Market, and less of what I find primarily at places like Fred Meyers. Without going into my whole belief system here, I'll just say in other words, I'd like zero ballet, and a lot more walking when it comes to my food. Personally, I don't believe that because we can do something, means that we absolutely should do that something.

Maybe, just maybe, these pathways don't exist in nature, for a multitude of reasons.

On a side note...

I truly appreciate the thought and care that you put into your response. Though I don't agree with you in this instance (not about the facts you presented, just on how we use science and technology where food is concerned), I frequently do agree with you. On many occasions, you have brought up things that send me diving down a rabbit hole looking for more information, thus expanding my mind.

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Hollylane

I do understand the science and technology behind it all Aj, I can even dig deep, and find a way to relate to how you feel about it.

For me, I want more of what I would be likely to find at the Portland Farmer's Market, and less of what I find primarily at places like Fred Meyers. Without going into my whole belief system here, I'll just say in other words, I'd like zero ballet, and a lot more walking when it comes to my food. Personally, I don't believe that because we can do something, means that we absolutely should do that something.

Maybe, just maybe, these pathways don't exist in nature, for a multitude of reasons.

On a side note...

I truly appreciate the thought and care that you put into your response. Though I don't agree with you in this instance (not about the facts you presented, just on how we use science and technology where food is concerned), I frequently do agree with you. On many occasions, you have brought up things that send me diving down a rabbit hole looking for more information, thus expanding my mind.

Thanks for the response. Can I ask you a couple of follow-up questions?

1) Since you agree that a protein is just a protein, why does it matter where it came from? I mean I could understand if the protein were, say, one that causes persons with an allergy to peanuts to have a reaction but provided its *not* one that causes an allergic reaction why does it matter?

2) What do you mean by maybe the pathways don't exist in nature for a multitude of reasons?

This is the deeper question, to me, and the reason I'm a little confused about it is this; it seems to me that the explanation I gave, just to take one for instance, why strawberries never developed anti-freeze on their own is sufficient to explain why that genetic pathway had to wait until we came along to show up in that species. For example, it would be extremely useful if humans could see down into the infrared and up into the ultraviolet. We *know* it's possible because there are other animals that can see into either one but our genome was simply never faced with the correct set of problems that would push us toward being able to do so. It's not that there's some grand design nor is it that there's something *wrong* with being able to see a little farther along the EMF spectrum than we already do, rather it's that not only Homo sapiens but primates as a whole were never in any environment where the selection pressure pushed *any* of us toward being able to see into the IR or the UV parts.

That explanation is sufficient to explain why we can't see UV or IR and there doesn't need to be any other reason. Likewise, the fact that strawberries--because they are flowering plants--never had the problem of "what do you do when your entire life-cycle is spent underneath an ice pack" is sufficient to explain why they never developed anti-freeze. Since strawberries are native to latitudes where winter is, more or less, what those of us living in the temperate zones are used to the long-standing plant solution toward the cold (e.g. produce seeds which can spend the winter underground) and that has been sufficient to preserve strawberry genes down the ages. No other explanation is really required. Why go to the trouble of evolving anti-freeze when the cold that could kill you is only 90 days long and you can just keep your genes in a seed for that period of time? No reason. Just like primates came up with a pretty decent solution for not being able to see well in the darkness--don't be active at night. Hominids came up with an even more elegant solution--fire.

I'm asking these questions of you not because I'm trying to prove some point but because most of the time when I've engaged others in this topic they haven't understood the science and so they've had some rather profound misconceptions about the nature of genes, the nature of proteins, the nature of DNA or they haven't really grasped that, for instance, while fruits *want* to be eaten vegetables, on the whole, *don't*. (I'm speaking metaphorically, of course, neither fruits nor vegetables 'want' anything.) So what is the problem with genetic engineering, in general? Not Monsanto's business practices (that's a separate issue) but with genetic engineering specifically?

Why is it unnatural to take a gene that does precisely what we want done and *only* that thing and implant it in a species unnatural when if we simply selectively bred for resistance to cold and got to, more or less, the same protein but it took us a thousand generations (plant not human) to get there it would be natural? It's the same protein, it does the same thing, the only difference is one is a one-step process and the other is a blind, multi-step process with each step along the way having a risk of picking up genes we don't want and which might have deleterious effects.

Thanks for answering. It's a rare treat to be able to ask someone who understands the biology, can do "gene's eye view" thinking, grasps the 'central dogma' of modern molecular biology (that genes code for proteins) and still is opposed to genetic engineering in the terms you've expressed above.

Cheers
Aj

[Hollylane]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

Thanks for the response. Can I ask you a couple of follow-up questions?

1) Since you agree that a protein is just a protein, why does it matter where it came from? I mean I could understand if the protein were, say, one that causes persons with an allergy to peanuts to have a reaction but provided its *not* one that causes an allergic reaction why does it matter?

2) What do you mean by maybe the pathways don't exist in nature for a multitude of reasons?

This is the deeper question, to me, and the reason I'm a little confused about it is this; it seems to me that the explanation I gave, just to take one for instance, why strawberries never developed anti-freeze on their own is sufficient to explain why that genetic pathway had to wait until we came along to show up in that species. For example, it would be extremely useful if humans could see down into the infrared and up into the ultraviolet. We *know* it's possible because there are other animals that can see into either one but our genome was simply never faced with the correct set of problems that would push us toward being able to do so. It's not that there's some grand design nor is it that there's something *wrong* with being able to see a little farther along the EMF spectrum than we already do, rather it's that not only Homo sapiens but primates as a whole were never in any environment where the selection pressure pushed *any* of us toward being able to see into the IR or the UV parts.

That explanation is sufficient to explain why we can't see UV or IR and there doesn't need to be any other reason. Likewise, the fact that strawberries--because they are flowering plants--never had the problem of "what do you do when your entire life-cycle is spent underneath an ice pack" is sufficient to explain why they never developed anti-freeze. Since strawberries are native to latitudes where winter is, more or less, what those of us living in the temperate zones are used to the long-standing plant solution toward the cold (e.g. produce seeds which can spend the winter underground) and that has been sufficient to preserve strawberry genes down the ages. No other explanation is really required. Why go to the trouble of evolving anti-freeze when the cold that could kill you is only 90 days long and you can just keep your genes in a seed for that period of time? No reason. Just like primates came up with a pretty decent solution for not being able to see well in the darkness--don't be active at night. Hominids came up with an even more elegant solution--fire.

I'm asking these questions of you not because I'm trying to prove some point but because most of the time when I've engaged others in this topic they haven't understood the science and so they've had some rather profound misconceptions about the nature of genes, the nature of proteins, the nature of DNA or they haven't really grasped that, for instance, while fruits *want* to be eaten vegetables, on the whole, *don't*. (I'm speaking metaphorically, of course, neither fruits nor vegetables 'want' anything.) So what is the problem with genetic engineering, in general? Not Monsanto's business practices (that's a separate issue) but with genetic engineering specifically?

Why is it unnatural to take a gene that does precisely what we want done and *only* that thing and implant it in a species unnatural when if we simply selectively bred for resistance to cold and got to, more or less, the same protein but it took us a thousand generations (plant not human) to get there it would be natural? It's the same protein, it does the same thing, the only difference is one is a one-step process and the other is a blind, multi-step process with each step along the way having a risk of picking up genes we don't want and which might have deleterious effects.

Thanks for answering. It's a rare treat to be able to ask someone who understands the biology, can do "gene's eye view" thinking, grasps the 'central dogma' of modern molecular biology (that genes code for proteins) and still is opposed to genetic engineering in the terms you've expressed above.

Cheers
Aj

I haven't been on much lately, and I just saw this. I'm prone to being succinct in my answers Aj, even more so when I've just arrived home from work. So, I hope that my short answer helps.

Basically, I think that necessary evolution of plants and animals happens in its own time. It is probably my Native American side that recoils from tampering with plants and animals, and changing them by inserting proteins or anything else into them, that would not be possible through a natural evolutionary process or through selective processes.

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Hollylane

I haven't been on much lately, and I just saw this. I'm prone to being succinct in my answers Aj, even more so when I've just arrived home from work. So, I hope that my short answer helps.

Basically, I think that necessary evolution of plants and animals happens in its own time. It is probably my Native American side that recoils from tampering with plants and animals, and changing them by inserting proteins or anything else into them, that would not be possible through a natural evolutionary process or through selective processes.

If I can ask you one other follow-up, does that same feeling (I don't know what to call it when you say your Native American side) apply to editing *out* genes? I ask that in the context of the Huntington's chorea example I gave a few days ago. Since we know that any number of repeats above 35 is where things start to go badly and there is *no* benefit to having 39+ repeats of the CAG motif on chromosome 4, editing out all repeats above 35 would prevent people from a rather horrible disease. Are you saying that just as you don't think we should be changing genes except in the long, blind process (which, in my mind, is pretty wasteful) of selection that we shouldn't edit out genes even if doing so would save lives? I'm trying to understand where the line would get drawn.

If inserting genes in is, for lack of any better term, against nature isn't editing genes out also against nature? If we apply the standard consistently (i.e. don't insert anything and don't remove anything) then aren't we condemning people who could otherwise be saved? Admittedly, it is perfectly natural to die of Huntington's. I will not argue that somehow it is unnatural. There are lots of fates that are perfectly natural but that I am glad we can overrule. I'm not ready to condemn people to a horrible disease starting at 27 just because they have 50 repeats of a gene on chromosome 4. There's no evolutionary benefit to Huntington's disease. It is simply one of those things where nothing nature says it *can't* happen so it *does* happen.

So why on Earth does the motif continue to show up in a small portion of the population? Why hasn't it been selected out? Because by the time you reach your late 20s, in the environments in which we evolved, you've already likely had children. Any gene for a disease that can, if you'll excuse the term, hold its horses until *after* you've had at least one child will tend to be able to ride along with the rest of your genome. After you've passed your genes on at least once, nature really doesn't have much use for you. Another way of putting it is that genes that cause diseases that kill you before you have a chance to reproduce are selected out. So all of the low-hanging fruit, from the gene's point of view, was selected out hundreds of thousands or millions of years ago. The genes for diseases that we see tend to strike after your early twenties which, in the EEA (Environment of Evolutionary Adaptation) was well into the average person's reproductive career. So diseases like Alzheimer's and Huntington's and heart disease and high blood pressure are all back-loaded toward the end of one's reproductive career. A bunch of fifteen year old people dying is a net-loss from the gene's point of view, particularly in the EEA. A bunch of 45 year old people dying is zero-sum from the gene's point of view. By 45 you've already reproduced a few times, your oldest surviving children are, at that point, adults. From the point of view of nature, you're now superfluous. Thanks for playing. Nice of you to leave some genes around. You're expendable, your genes are not. That's nature for you.

So unless we intervene using technology (selective breeding in humans, needless to say, is a road we should not even contemplate going down) then we're pretty much signing the death warrants of any person unlucky enough to have 39+ repeats of the CAG motif on C-4. That's the natural way. I think we should veto nature because I think it is wrong vis a vis Huntington's.

Cheers
Aj

[Hollylane]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

If I can ask you one other follow-up, does that same feeling (I don't know what to call it when you say your Native American side) apply to editing *out* genes? I ask that in the context of the Huntington's chorea example I gave a few days ago. Since we know that any number of repeats above 35 is where things start to go badly and there is *no* benefit to having 39+ repeats of the CAG motif on chromosome 4, editing out all repeats above 35 would prevent people from a rather horrible disease. Are you saying that just as you don't think we should be changing genes except in the long, blind process (which, in my mind, is pretty wasteful) of selection that we shouldn't edit out genes even if doing so would save lives? I'm trying to understand where the line would get drawn.

If inserting genes in is, for lack of any better term, against nature isn't editing genes out also against nature? If we apply the standard consistently (i.e. don't insert anything and don't remove anything) then aren't we condemning people who could otherwise be saved? Admittedly, it is perfectly natural to die of Huntington's. I will not argue that somehow it is unnatural. There are lots of fates that are perfectly natural but that I am glad we can overrule. I'm not ready to condemn people to a horrible disease starting at 27 just because they have 50 repeats of a gene on chromosome 4. There's no evolutionary benefit to Huntington's disease. It is simply one of those things where nothing nature says it *can't* happen so it *does* happen.

So why on Earth does the motif continue to show up in a small portion of the population? Why hasn't it been selected out? Because by the time you reach your late 20s, in the environments in which we evolved, you've already likely had children. Any gene for a disease that can, if you'll excuse the term, hold its horses until *after* you've had at least one child will tend to be able to ride along with the rest of your genome. After you've passed your genes on at least once, nature really doesn't have much use for you. Another way of putting it is that genes that cause diseases that kill you before you have a chance to reproduce are selected out. So all of the low-hanging fruit, from the gene's point of view, was selected out hundreds of thousands or millions of years ago. The genes for diseases that we see tend to strike after your early twenties which, in the EEA (Environment of Evolutionary Adaptation) was well into the average person's reproductive career. So diseases like Alzheimer's and Huntington's and heart disease and high blood pressure are all back-loaded toward the end of one's reproductive career. A bunch of fifteen year old people dying is a net-loss from the gene's point of view, particularly in the EEA. A bunch of 45 year old people dying is zero-sum from the gene's point of view. By 45 you've already reproduced a few times, your oldest surviving children are, at that point, adults. From the point of view of nature, you're now superfluous. Thanks for playing. Nice of you to leave some genes around. You're expendable, your genes are not. That's nature for you.

So unless we intervene using technology (selective breeding in humans, needless to say, is a road we should not even contemplate going down) then we're pretty much signing the death warrants of any person unlucky enough to have 39+ repeats of the CAG motif on C-4. That's the natural way. I think we should veto nature because I think it is wrong vis a vis Huntington's.

Cheers
Aj

No, I am not applying that to intervening with technology where humans are concerned. Humans can make choices about their bodies, and about the health and well-being of their children, animals and plants cannot.

Additionally, there is a lot of information available that suggests, that many problems in humans(and in animals and plants) exist, because of the things that humans do to this planet (with science & technology), and what they choose to put into their bodies (food, medication, chemicals..etc).

When I refer to my Native American side, I am referring to how I feel about taking care of this planet, with the belief that everything is connected, and that every thing that we do has an effect on something else. Despite all of the information available, despite the existence of amazing science and technology, I cannot agree with changing plants or animals by inserting anything, or removing anything, in a manner that would not occur naturally. I also adamantly refuse to accept that torturing animals in the name of science, is our right as coinhabitants of this planet.

A simple example of where this has gone wrong, is corn production. The majority of corn produced in the US at this time has very little nutritional value in comparison to the original crop native to this continent, maize. Corn grown today, could not have existed as a wild plant, in its present form. A great film that illustrates perfectly the reasons why I used corn as an example, is the documentary, King Corn.

[Toughy]

I posted this in the Zombie thread....however it does belong here:

from HuffPo

Bats' Oral Sex Helps Prolong Copulation, Scientists Say (VIDEO)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/0...een&ref=topbar