[HN Gopher] EPA fast-tracking of gene-altering pesticide sparks ...
___________________________________________________________________
EPA fast-tracking of gene-altering pesticide sparks concerns
Author : PaulHoule
Score : 112 points
Date : 2023-10-22 19:01 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thenewlede.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thenewlede.org)
| mnode wrote:
| Good reasons to be cautious, but a game changer if it works. This
| is gene silencing rather than gene editing so in principle risks
| to humans and the wider environment are relatively low.
| throw47848 wrote:
| I heard this two years ago. I will stay far away from this.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| Does this kind of behavior exist in nature? If not it's pretty
| bold to claim what the systemic effects will be ahead of time
| asdff wrote:
| Yes, its done in most eukaryotes.
| neilv wrote:
| > _Multiple studies have "confirmed" that the product has no
| harmful effect [...] said a spokesperson for GreenLight
| Biosciences."_
|
| What would you fear has even less objectivity about safety, than
| a novel pesticide company?
|
| One where they even named the company "greenlight".
| astrodust wrote:
| Someone's gunning to be the next Thomas Midgley Jr.
| xkcd-sucks wrote:
| All concerns of safety notwithstanding, which is generally fucked
| in the industry and government, it's pretty cool that a RNAi
| product was developed to be literally sprayed on fields -- Things
| have probably progressed in the 15 years since I was active in
| lab work, but the general consensus was RNA would fall apart if
| you even talked too loudly, and the people regularly working with
| RNA all developed weird rituals and got all twitchy and paranoid
| (from stress, not poisoning!)
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| Even if a bunch of it falls apart, just having enough survive
| to be effective is all you need, really.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| The progression was more-or-less figuring out how to get it to
| not fall apart.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9238147/
|
| https://www.matinasbiopharma.com/lnc-technology/lnc-platform
| walterbell wrote:
| How about inter-generational resistance?
|
| _> Hansen also wonders about the pesticide's efficacy - and
| the efficacy of RNAi pesticides more generally. A 2021
| Scientific Reports study assessed a similar double-stranded
| RNA, which was being developed for a spray to combat the same
| potato pest. It found that within nine generations, 11,100
| times the original quantity of pesticide was needed to get the
| same effect - an "extremely high" level of resistance,
| according to the study itself._
| thereisnospork wrote:
| Hard to see serious objections with a sound technical basis
| arising when _literally everything_ that classifies as food is
| chock full of random, purposeful, and /or 'junk' RNA/DNA.
| Different genes, sure, but it's not as if eating spinach turns us
| green and kicks off mammalian photosynthesis.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| I understand your point and agree with you to an extent.
|
| But there are also these cute packages of DNA/RNA in nature
| that can cause extreme illness in humans - they're called
| viruses :D
|
| There are also a great many plants and microbes with toxic
| components - we just happen to have very effectively eliminated
| them from the modern food system. This wasn't the case for
| primordial hunter gatherers, say.
|
| So it's really not a good argument against caution and
| conservative safety protocols, because lots of things in nature
| _are_ harmful to us.
| thereisnospork wrote:
| The point is that the character of RNA is intrinsically
| different than other classes of chemicals. More formally, the
| Bayesian prior of an RNA being dangerous/ toxic is far lower,
| ergo less caution _is_ warranted. (Opportunity cost, wasted
| effort, etc.)
|
| More concretely as relates to the prior, but can't a person
| fairly literally eat a spoonful of isolated influenza[0]
| without getting sick?
|
| [0] or other virus, RNA, DNA, etc.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| Can you name a source of RNA being injected into an
| organism that isn't harmful?
|
| I can only think of diseases; which would mean my priors
| suggest such things should be avoided.
| asdff wrote:
| You can quite literally inject this RNA product into your
| arm and nothing would happen. The sequence needs to be
| specific to a human mRNA in order for silencing to occur.
| On top of that you have to deliver the RNA into the cell
| itself intact. The fact this works is this beetle happens
| to be responsive to environmental RNA, meaning they could
| simply take a piece of potato and dip it in beetle
| specific double stranded RNA, and the larvae would eat it
| as the delivery mechanism. There is probably some fitness
| advantage to being able to engage in such uptake
| normally, and this is what is being taken advantage of
| here for insecticide purposes.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Reducing it to just RNA is equivalent to reducing pesticides to
| just "chemicals" and pointing out that all food is made of
| chemicals.
| asdff wrote:
| It's no different than saying the alphabet produces unique
| computer code from the same set of characters. These products
| are targeted to a given species unique sequence for a given
| transcript. You can validate that your siRNA targets only
| your species of interest by using a BLAST search against
| other species.
| coolhand2120 wrote:
| Regulatory capture is a conspiracy theory
| smolder wrote:
| Regulatory capture is a term for a failure mode of
| representative government wherein a regulated entity amasses
| and uses political influence to get special treatment and other
| favors from the government. Your comment isn't even coherent.
| However, if I assume what you meant is that regulatory capture
| is a made up thing that doesn't really happen, then you're also
| wrong.
| genewitch wrote:
| I think it was intended to be sardonic or sarcastic.
| smolder wrote:
| Perhaps it was. Poe's law is tough.
| hedora wrote:
| Given their recent behavior with round up (they let it be sprayed
| on crops at harvest -- I'm surprised it doesn't have to go on the
| ingredient list!), the bar for fast tracking this without safety
| studies should be "the execs, regulators, and their families
| drink a gallon", not "the day laborers at the farm wear
| respirators, and we don't perform any follow up checks on their
| health".
| siftrics wrote:
| I've always been a fan of this.
|
| If RoundUp is so safe, why don't the execs and lawyers and
| shills all douse themselves in it? It'd prove their alleged
| point against the guy who got horrible lesions and cancer all
| over his body after being exposed to it in a work accident.
| gruez wrote:
| But they never claimed that it was "so safe" that you can
| ingest or douse yourself in it? It says so right in the MSDS.
|
| https://labelsds.com/images/user_uploads/Roundup%20Pro%20Con.
| ..
| heavyset_go wrote:
| That's what they're subjecting farm workers to.
| gruez wrote:
| Isn't that the farm's problem? At least in theory workers
| are supposed to be protected with PPE and/or proper
| procedures. Blaming them for the failure of that feels
| like blaming chainsaw manufacturers for causing hearing
| loss.
| bastawhiz wrote:
| If the chainsaw company executives have to repeatedly try
| to convince the government that their product is actually
| safe despite being excessively loud over and over again,
| but they won't actually put themselves in a situation
| where they themselves wield their own chainsaws because
| of safety concerns, then yeah, it's on them.
|
| If you're in the US, you've probably consumed glyphosate
| today. Farm workers wearing PPE will be exposed to
| elevated levels of glyphosate no matter how hard they try
| because humans aren't perfect. If execs won't put
| themselves in the same position as the people handling
| their products, they're evil hypocritical bastards.
| gruez wrote:
| > If the chainsaw company executives have to repeatedly
| try to convince the government that their product is
| actually safe despite being excessively loud
|
| We're going in circles here. As mentioned earlier the
| MSDS provided by bayer clearly says you shouldn't get it
| on your skin or ingest it. Therefore it's pretty clear
| that glyphosate isn't "safe", at least in those
| circumstances.
|
| >Farm workers wearing PPE will be exposed to elevated
| levels of glyphosate no matter how hard they try because
| humans aren't perfect.
|
| You can make the same argument for chainsaws. Earmuffs
| aren't comfortable to wear in 100 degree weather. Should
| they be liable for hearing loss for the same reason?
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Earmuffs in 100 may not be the most comfortable thing in
| the world, but its still perfectly fine to use for hours,
| you just sweat a bit more on ears and around. Also, if
| you want rest just stop cutting and put them down. I've
| seen forest workers use them all the time in summer heat.
|
| Now we switch to same conditions but requirement is to
| wear pretty good 'airtight' face mask. Most people would
| be nearing collapse after some time when doing some hard
| work, I know I had some proper hard time during covid
| when trying some rather low efforts.
|
| Those 2 examples are really not that comparable. Also,
| you very conveniently ignore the fact that chemical crap
| poisons _everything_ , and ends up in my and your and my
| kid's food chain. Some chainsaw 20 km in the forest is
| really no such concern.
|
| I can go on and on like this. Really, not comparable
| examples at all. Yeah, fuck Bayer and all those involved,
| I am normally peaceful person but for those involved
| while knowing, or at least strongly suspecting the truth
| I wish only horrible things in their lives.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| They know how it's being used, spend millions on
| downplaying and denying its harms and lobby the
| government to loosen safety restrictions on its use.
|
| This is the same excuse drug dealers use when selling
| substances they know are being abused and harm people.
| Following your logic, the MSDS sheets for heroin and
| fentanyl make it clear on how they should be dealt with
| safely.
| justinclift wrote:
| > Isn't that the farm's problem?
|
| From a legal perspective, maybe.
|
| From the farm workers perspective... it sounds they'd
| better try avoiding the situation anyway.
|
| ---
|
| An analogy is an accident between a semi trailer and a
| motorbike.
|
| Even if the semi trailer was the cause of the accident
| (legally), it's still a really bad idea for the motorbike
| to not try avoiding it. That way leads to a squished
| motorbike rider. :(
| jona-f wrote:
| "Lobbyist Claims Monsanto's Roundup Is Safe To Drink,
| Freaks Out When Offered A Glass"
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovKw6YjqSfM&t=10
| jzebedee wrote:
| Even that stunt might not be enough for a sufficiently evil
| shill, e.g. Thomas Midgley Jr. He famously did a similar move
| at a press conference for tetraethyllead (TEL), where he
| washed his hands in the stuff to prove its safety:
|
| > On October 30, 1924, Midgley participated in a press
| conference to demonstrate the apparent safety of TEL, in
| which he poured TEL over his hands, placed a bottle of the
| chemical under his nose, and inhaled its vapor for 60
| seconds, declaring that he could do this every day without
| succumbing to any problems.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr.#cite_ref-
| Se...
|
| It probably won't shock you that he frequently suffered from
| lead poisoning.
| ars wrote:
| Why you call him an evil shill? It sounds like he actually
| believed it.
|
| It's not evil to be wrong.
| j-bos wrote:
| There was evidence of the negative health effects from
| his own research.
| flagrant_taco wrote:
| I'm not sure how that line could be drawn. If a person
| does something that most would consider evil, but does it
| for reasons they honestly believed in which side is
| right?
|
| Some of the Nazis may have honestly believed that Jewish
| people were the cause of Germany's economic problems, but
| I don't think many would claim they were anything less
| than evil.
| Frost1x wrote:
| The trick to this stunt is to, as usual, hide behind
| complexity. While this sort of stunt may be telling in some
| cases where a single or handful of exposures lead to health
| problems, there's an increasing amount of investment in
| things that may or may not be so obvious, where an exposure
| or handful of exposures are unlikely to have a huge effect.
|
| In that context you only give the shills more sway. We
| could take the golden public health case of something like
| cigarettes. The evidence these days is pretty rock solid
| and irrefutable but if you didn't have that information
| because said thing is new, you could consume it right in
| public with almost no side effects. While it's not
| advisable, you could smoke a pack of cigarettes over a year
| in such demo's and have little side effects/risk overall.
| Heck, if you're smart about it you only puff a few puffs
| each time to demonstrate to make the exposure even less.
|
| So while these sort of safety demos can be valuable and
| shine a light on truth, risk, and just how far someone may
| go to sell something and reap the benefits, you have to
| make sure the context like dosage, exposure, whatever else
| is relevant match.
|
| We've been living in a highly reductionist scientific world
| for awhile and in a lot of cases reductionism is fantastic,
| if we can generalize and peel away a bunch of context
| that's great, but we have to remember we can't always do
| that and these demos appeal to that sort of overly
| reductionist mindset. It makes it very hard to tell someone
| not educated about real risk that may exist to take
| something like a short exposure demo as ironclad proof that
| something is low-to-no risk and it'll be difficult to ever
| show that person otherwise.
| siftrics wrote:
| > In that context you only give the shills more sway.
|
| This is a really good point that I overlooked.
|
| I'm in an industry where sophisticated participants can
| see the blatant scams, but laypeople have no chance at
| spotting them. Your claim makes a lot of sense.
| hanniabu wrote:
| > Given their recent behavior with round up (they let it be
| sprayed on crops at harvest -- I'm surprised it doesn't have to
| go on the ingredient list
|
| Source?
| hedora wrote:
| A search for "roundup drying agent" will produce dozens of
| sources.
|
| Here's a link to a story about a bill from 2019 that would
| have banned the practice in the US (it did not pass):
|
| https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news-release/bill-would-
| ba...
|
| Note that the bill would restore the permissible residue
| levels to the previous limit, which is 1/300th the current
| limit. The limit was raised in order to allow the practice in
| the US.
| hanniabu wrote:
| Fuck i hate capitalism
| mike_ivanov wrote:
| Dude. Let me tell you a story.
|
| I was 13 years old, a schoolboy on a trip to the
| countryside to "help" farm workers to harvest cabbages.
| It was a routine thing those days because the centralized
| Soviet industrial-government apparatus couldn't properly
| plan even such trivial things. There were about a hundred
| kids on that field. As we went with our business, a
| tractor spraying DDT came from the other side of the
| field. It passed us no more than 20 meters away, spraying
| everything around with the clouds of white stuff.
| Everybody knew it was DDT, everybody knew it was
| poisonous at that time. Our teacher approached the
| tractor and asked the operator to wait until we are done;
| the guy basically told her to fuck off and went on with
| spraying.
|
| Now go ahead and tell me about capitalism, I'm all ears.
| Danjoe4 wrote:
| Yeah they're poisoning the food supply. You haven't heard?
| https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news-
| release/2018/10/round...
|
| The government agencies are beyond incompetent. They are
| complicit and need to be destroyed.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Is it incompetence or money
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| Taleb popularized the myth but I like the usenet quote from
| Dewar better:
|
| "When Roman engineers built a bridge, they had to stand under
| it while the first legion marched across. If programmers today
| worked under similar ground rules, they might well find
| themselves getting much more interested in Ada!"
|
| (Robert Dewar)
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| If you think they're provided respirators or can afford to buy
| them and the cartridges, I have a bridge to sell you.
|
| Also, try wearing one in a hot field working your ass
| off...anyone claiming that field workers are wearing
| respirators is crazy.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I want it to be easier to get initial approval, but harder to
| keep approval.
|
| Ie. 'we approve sale of 1,000 gallons of this product, but if you
| want approval for more you need to do these additional tests '.
|
| That's because I have a higher expectation of safety with a
| product that ends up in the food of 10 million people than the
| food of 1 million people.
|
| Unfortunately thr regulations for food tend to be black and white
| - something is either approved or not. And that's wrong - the
| level of effort into verifying something is good to feed to
| people should go up with more people you are feeding it to.
| meristohm wrote:
| Feels like we're the test subjects if initial approval is
| easier. I'd rather move slowly and not break people so much.
| 999throwaway wrote:
| Off topic so sorry but concerning roundup. I was at a trade show
| / ag convention type event at del mar fairgrounds in around 1987
| and roundup had a big display and one of the salesmen were doing
| thier promotional spiel and this one guy said that this product
| was so safe that he opened a carton from the wall display and
| poured some into a cup and drank it right there. I have always
| wondered what ever happened to that guy
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Friend of a friend used to clean his dogs with it. He's dead
| now because of it
| Madmallard wrote:
| really absurd that we continue creating things no one's body
| evolved to tolerate that we continually ingest. And we wonder why
| chronic illness is skyrocketing in incidence and weird seemingly
| unsolvable health problems becoming ever more common
| genewitch wrote:
| what's the annual global expenditure on cancer treatments,
| these days; and what percentage of oncologists would subject
| themselves to cancer treatment?
| bglazer wrote:
| Overall five year survival rates for cancer have risen from
| about 50% in 1975 to about 75% currently. That includes
| several extremely difficult subtypes of cancer, which means
| that many types of cancer have improved much more than the
| overall trend.
|
| Together this constitutes millions of years of extended life
| for millions of people. Millions of families given a reprieve
| from the worst outcome, millions more memories that wouldn't
| have happened otherwise.
|
| Societally, that's worth a tremendous amount of money, not to
| mention the other positive effects that we get from spending
| lots of money on research.
|
| https://progressreport.cancer.gov/after/survival
| zmgsabst wrote:
| Right -- the implication is that we made all those people
| sick in the first place, and the associated cost of
| food/agriculture science isn't worth it.
| mym1990 wrote:
| Upgrade by Blake Crouch is a fiction book that uses gene altering
| pesticides as a culprit for a global food shortage that triggers
| a massive famine(don't worry, that isn't really a spoiler).
|
| It's interesting to read fiction and then read headlines like
| this!
| hedora wrote:
| This article also reminds me of "The Sheep Look Up" by John
| Brunner (1972).
|
| The author is from the UK, but it's mostly set in the US. It
| contains a brilliant parody of Trader Joes / Whole Foods (from
| well before they were founded, of course).
|
| Apparently, he wrote a series of dystopias. I've been meaning
| to read the other ones.
| jryb wrote:
| To be clear, this changes gene expression, and does not alter DNA
| in any way.
| bastawhiz wrote:
| The title is misleading. But that doesn't mean gene silencing
| couldn't make someone very sick or cause fatal birth defects.
| asdff wrote:
| You could eat kilos of this stuff and it would just be an
| interesting protein supplement. The sequence is specific to a
| gene in these insects its targeting. Even if it was human
| specific I doubt eating it would lead to anything. It would
| probably be degraded readily.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| "We don't change their genetics, just epigenetics!"
|
| This hairsplitting verges into dishonesty -- and is why people
| increasingly distrust the scientific establishment.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-10-23 09:01 UTC)