FrankenFish - new reports, verification of the fears, but still just the tip of the iceberg of trouble.

Why do humans want to play god?  My ex-wife believed herself to be godlike. She was certain she was without fault, and that her commands should be obeyed without question just as though they were commands from above.  And she is just the lowliest most miserable of humans, I can't imagine what it would be like to be around and to know those that have a little bit of genetic training and millions of dollars of gene splicing equipment at their disposal.  What kind of godlike manners and affectations do they possess?   My ex was UNBEARABLE to be around, what must the heads of Monsanto be like?  Or for that matter, and for this discussion, the heads of the gene tech company, Aqua Bounty. 

Makes me wonder about the personal lives of gene scientists.  Do they all gather around certain bars and talk smack to each other?  "Hey man, so what if you put a simple Bt toxin gene into corn, anyone can splice genes into plants.  Want to try some REAL work, try splicing live animal DNA.  Man you guys think your hot stuff, we are the BOMB!"  "Yeah, big deal, anyone can clone a sheep and it doesn't take any smarts to mix fish together.  Just get you some salmon eggs from the bait store and scramble them and something might turn up."   Yeah, smack from nerdy scientists is pretty boring.

Anyway, the news is not that good for the world at large when we look at what is going on with the newest monstrosity from the scientists that don't have real personalities or ever seem to think about anyone else other than themselves and their ability to make money for their masters.  Frankenfish are in the news again, and it doesn't look good.  It seems that there is a new report out about these abominations, and from the Canadian group, The Royal Society.  Now I know that Monsanto and other gene tech companies hate it when scientific groups publish reports with conclusions that are markedly different from what they want the world to think about Genetically Modified crops; the ever popular Seralini Report is one such example.  A very well respected group of scientists did the unthinkable, they fed GM crops to rats over the course of two years and found out that most of the test subjects ended up with some rather nasty health problems.  Monsanto found that the best thing for them to do was to attack the credibility of the conclusions, the methods, and the scientists.  Oh yeah, they even questioned the use of the strain of rats used, even though Seralini used the same strain that Monsanto uses in their 60 day feeding studies that showed no deleterious effects whatsoever.  These are the same tactics that all gene tech companies use when presented with evidence that they don't quite have a grasp yet on their scientists playtime pretending to be god.

It remains to be seen what will happen when Aqua Bounty responds to the Canadian Royal Society report recommending that the new genetically modified salmon NOT be allowed to by approved and that they should not be allowed to be grown anywhere near the wild.  Their conclusions are somewhat ominous and are pretty specific.  They have found that GM salmon can, and will cross breed with brown trout in the wild and that the new interspecies mutant fish will take over and dominate the native species in streams and rivers throughout Canada and the US decimating native populations and doing, at this time, UNKNOWN damage to the ecology of the environment.  (The Royal Society Report)  

What are the heads of spin at Aqua Bounty going to say about this?

To this day, I have not yet found any research being done about the problem that I predict will happen if these FrankenFish are released into the environment.  I don't know if no one has even thought that this might be possible and so haven't tried to determine the likelihood, or maybe they did and are just doing the normal business approved thing, and covering it up.  My fear is HGT.  Horizontal Gene Transfer.  We know this happens.  We have proof it happens.  Even though Monsanto denies it, it happens.  HGT is when the specific genes inserted into the targeted species migrate, or transfer, to other species.  What has been documented is that when human beings eat GM soy and corn, then the genes inserted into those crops have been found as part of the genetic makeup of bacteria living in the intestinal tract of the test subjects.  That means that if you eat GM corn, then the genes to make Bt toxin are probably in the bacteria in your gut and are doing what the scientists at Monsanto want them to do, and that is, make more Bt toxin.  Right there in your system, a little Bt toxin factory making the stuff for your system to absorb.  I want to know if the same thing will happen to anything that eats the Genetically Modified salmon.

What happens when the FrankenSalmon escape and take over native populations of fish.  we know that the fish grow faster and bigger, but what about those that eat the fish?  Will the inserted genes that produce the fish growth hormones become fixed in the bacteria living in the guts of any animal that eats the fish?  Will bears, that eat a lot of salmon, soon have genetically modified fish growth hormone producing bacteria pumping their systems with ever more growth hormone?  Will they grow, bigger, faster, and scarier?  Will we have twenty foot tall bears, huge predatory birds, giant ants, and an ecosystem that is a nightmare of creatures out of storybooks?  And all with the root cause being people wanting to play god without the proper training. 

Think about the smack at the local bar then, "Man you guys, they found a thirty-one foot tall grizzly bear yesterday, you boys really outdid yourself on that one.  Killed forty people on a rampage, wo ho, way to go boys, what's the death toll at now?"  "Yeah so.  I heard that you gene plant boys just got your Bt corn definitively tied to the increase in cancer, thirty million deaths now attributed to your crap.  You're sooo much worse then us."

Yeah, nerdy scientist smack is pretty pathetic.