How Bill Gates Fits Into the GMO Discussion

Last week I blogged about I.G. Farbensanto’s latest gimmick to avoid legal entanglements when it (Bayer) bought out Mon(ster)santo, to become I.G. Farbensanto. I won’t go into the latest gimmick all over again. Rather, there’s something else coming down the pike that M.W. spotted and shared(and again, thank you!), and it’s such a whopper doozie I have to pass it along.

That something is “gene drive organisms”, and if that sounds to you a little “scary and creepy”, it’s because it’s far worse than that:

Normally I’d comment a great deal on stories like this, and I do intend to comment a bit today, but I don’t really think I need to do so extensively, because I’m sure that regular readers here will appreciate the rather horrifying implications of the following quotation from the article:

Synthetic gene drives are a new form of genetic engineering, created via the genetic engineering method CRISPR/CAS9, and are intended to permanently modify or eradicate populations, or even whole species, in the wild.

They are currently defined as a system where genetic elements or traits have more than the usual 50% chance of being inherited, irrespective of whether they benefit or harm the organism inheriting them.

The idea of gene drive technology is to force the inheritance of detrimental genetic traits. In this way, scientists hope to reprogramme or eradicate species such as disease-carrying insects and invasive species.

This is a key distinction between GDOs and genetically modified organisms (GMOs), which are explicitly designed to contain the spread of modified traits.

Most recently, Imperial College London created a modification that was able to eliminate populations of malaria-carrying mosquitoes in lab experiments. This work was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation under the Target Malaria project.

This is something that Martin Häusling, agricultural policy spokesman for the Greens and member of the European Parliament’s Environment Committee, called a “fundamental step for biodiversity,” warning that the long term consequences of this technology is “not foreseeable”.

Mareike Imken, from the German initiative Save Our Seeds, concurred, saying that “while the risks of gene drive technology have not yet been scientifically assessed, it could have a massive impact on already damaged ecosystems,” adding that it is “irresponsible to expose species and ecosystems to further risks“. (Emphasis added)

So, boiling all this down, virus-spreading expert (both computer and the other kind) Baal Gates, through his Baal and Malicious Gates Foundation, is funding research into gene drive organisms (GDOs) in the hopes of reprogramming species or just eradicating them if they’re nasty and we don’t like them and they carry nasty diseases. (Notice the criterion here could be applied to just about any organism, including us, and let’s not forget that Baal Gates is one of those overpopulation nuts that have been with us since the Most Serene Republic of Venice.)

Well, I have to confess part of me is attracted to the idea of getting rid of certain things. High on my list would be spiders and snakes (and those big lizard things in Japan). But, much as I dislike spiders and snakes, I realize that they do some good, if they’re not the human versions thereof. And as for Baal Gates, when I think of him (and I try not to do so), I think of the Peanuts cartoon character Pig Pen, surrounded always in a cloud of dust, dirt, and flies, or in this case, viruses.

And speaking of Baal Gates and gene driven organisms…

… what happens if, for example, those genetic drive traits jump species? I recall back when I entertained this outlandish speculation many years ago with respect to GMOs, I was roundly denounced by “scientific authorities” for being… well…outlandish.

Perhaps I am, and like all outlandish people, I claim the right to be wrong, or just simply outlandish. It later turned out that a couple of obscure papers had noticed that some genetic traits from GMOs started showing up in other organisms.

No apologies from the “scientific authorities” were ever forthcoming. My point at the time was rather simple: it wasn’t as if certain things had never jumped from one species to another before. So I wonder the same thing here: what happens if one modified the genes of, say, a species of reptile such as serpentus baalus gatus, in order to eradicate the species, or reprogram it not to spit bile and poison everywhere it slithered, or better, to make its own bile and poison poisonous to itself.

But if one allows the possibility of species jumping, this modification might jump to a particularly deadly species of spider, arachnidia sorosia, and serpentus baalus gatus would be depriving itself of one of its best friends, not to mention another vector by which to spread vitriol and bile.

Of course, the types of people involved in such research aren’t the cleverest of people and will press ahead with their research, in spite of the possibility that they might be caught in their own plans and snares.

In which case, it might be worth letting them do it after all.

… nah… it isn’t. They’re just insane, and colossally stupid.

See you on the flip side…

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Comments (5)

  • Avatar

    Charles Higley

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    Few people are aware that streams, lakes, and the oceans are veritable soups of DNA fragments and cells are constantly absorbing little pieces and sometimes even trying them on for size. It makes jumping in a lake not such a great idea for those in the know. The brain eating amoeba is also out there in the lake. Naw, I’ll stay on the dock, thanks.

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  • Avatar

    Tom O

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    I have always been concerned about genetic modification, and I am far more concerned about this new concept. And the biggest reason was the law of unintended consequences, also known, in many ways, as Murphy’s Law.

    It has always been obvious that in the environment, there is a reason for everything – even malaria carrying mosquitoes. Perhaps it is as a food stock, if you will, for other insects and aquatic creatures, and in a perfectly balanced ecological world, the numbers would be suppressed by the counterbalances.

    But man reshapes the world to his needs and wants, and the balance gets upset and finds a new balance. There is no way of knowing what the ecological damage would be if you eradicated a pest such as the malaria carrying mosquito. To do so in a controlled manner around the area in which humans live is one thing, but to introduce something that would spread that eradication throughout the ecological world is beyond foolhardy.

    Science is rapidly moving beyond being a servant and a benefactor because there are too many people willing to say “what if we try this” and then do so without understanding how or where the dominoes will fall. Let’s research how to make us more resilient to the diseases and afflictions rather than looking for ways to eliminate that which disturbs us. We really haven’t a clue what the “butterfly effect” of what those changes might cause.

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  • Avatar

    Finn McCool

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    It’s the thought process I don’t understand.
    Cheap and effective – DDT
    Complicated, expensive and probably evolution will have the last laugh – CRISPR-cas9.
    The choice is a no-brainer. Except if you want to make money.
    You can have your pet dog’s DNA read and clone it after it dies. At considerable cost. Or. You can buy a puppy.

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  • Avatar

    rod

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    The statement by Gates that to me overridingly exemplifies his modus operandi is his quote: “What you were born is not your fault; what you become, is.” Think of that in terms of his being able to unleash Gene Drive Organisms into the human chain. The thought of that should be as scary as if Hitler were a molecular biologist one hundred years ahead of his time.

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