NOW IT’S FRANKENFISH
As most of you know, I've been very concerned on this site about the phenomenon of genetically modified organisms entering our food supply. While I have talked mostly about Duponzanto's genetically modified crops - and the government and legal abuses accompanying them, in Transhumanism: A Grimoir of Alchemical Agendas my co-author Scott de Hart and I also talked about the modification of animal organisms. Our concerns when we wrote that book were about the possibility of engineered genetic mutations jumping from one species(the genetically modified plant) to another (humans). And I have also blogged here about the recent advances in anti-aging genetics, as scientists have now found the "aging gene" in mice... and turned it off.
Well, with all that background in mind, ponder this(so many of you sent me these two articles that it wasn't even funny!):
FDA Says Giant, Genetically Modified Salmon Is Environmentally Safe
Now...ponder those opening three paragraphs from the first article carefully:
"A salmon genetically modified to grow twice as fast as normal earning a nickname of ‘Frankenfish’ has been approved by federal health regulators making it the first scientifically engineered animal for human consumption.
"The Food and Drug Administration on Friday released its environmental assessment of the AquaAdvantage salmon, a faster-growing fish which has been subject to a contentious, yearslong debate at the agency.
"The document concludes that the fish 'will not have any significant impacts on the quality of the human environment of the United States.' Regulators also said that the fish is unlikely to harm populations of natural salmon, a key concern for environmental activists."
When we wrote Transhumanism one of the things we were concerned about what what other researchers had already discovered, namely, that the revolving door between the corporations with a vested interest in seeing their genetic modifications being accepted into the food supply, and the FDA, was constantly turning. Indeed, the relationship could be construed as incestuous, making the FDA but a corporate mouthpiece and ultimately not an objective measure of the safety of the products themselves.
But as the first article makes clear, even the FDA seems to be balking just a tiny bit (not too much to be sure) on this one.
And it's easy to see why: with the horizontal transposons now being documented - i.e., it is now a matter of record that genetic modifications of crops are crossing species and causing health problems - it becomes conceivable to imagine that a salmon, modified to grow twice as fast, might induce a similar effect in humans that consume it. We already see the effects in the general population of the injection of steroids into cattle, for our population today is generally taller than that of yesteryear, which did not consume such modified meat.
Hence, it is conceivable that regular consumption of such salmon might cause humans to grow faster... we can even envision monstrous possibilities: would humans reach adulthood much earlier? Would they continue to grow? Would consumption of this fish cause gigantism and all its ills? Would humans, because they grow faster, also perhaps age faster?
We don't know... and that's the point: we don't know because in the final analysis testing of genetically modified organisms has yet to be done on any serious long term basis. Once again, the FDA has failed.
See you on the...oh, yea, one more thing. While you're pondering that, consider this article sent to me (by Ms. P.H.):
Girls hit puberty earlier than ever, and doctors aren't sure why
Ok....now I'm done.
See you on the flip side.
31 Comments
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You’re an idiot and I can tell from how you talk that you didn’t take biology outside of highschool, if that.
The body breaks down everything – proteins, fats, sugars, nucleic acids – into their component monomers so that it can build its own proteins, DNA, and obtain energy. There is NO WAY that a gene that you ingest can be expressed within your body. It would be destroyed before it got anywhere, to be used to make human genes. Otherwise we’d be expressing genes that aren’t human all day! I mean for pete’s sake people, it’s JUST DNA. You eat it all day long, and yet we don’t grow leaves because we eat an apple, now do we? No matter how many apples you eat, you will always be a human with human genes and proteins. The fact that the gene happens to be from an ocean pout instead of a salmon doesn’t matter once the fish is broken down, digested and the gene is just floating by itself anyway. You might as well eat a lot of ocean pout, or eat the gene directly, you’d get the same effect – nothing!!!
The environmentalist movement’s problem is that it is, itself, very uneducated and often ignorant! And that doesn’t help the cause. With these GM fish, there are very valid concerns – but the “issues” you posted in this article aren’t among them.
My concerns were based on such articles as this:
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/horizontalGeneTransfer.php
I grant your point that I could have expressed myself with more clarity, but this is the problem in non-technical blogs. You, sir, might likewise have expressed yourself with a little more courtesy.
Nooot a chance good sir, I know bullshit when I smell it. I can’t say that I know you personally of course, but this sounds like a lot of uninformed fear-mongering to me. Not poorly phrased, but you just don’t know exactly what you’re talking about and are simply making an emotional, sensationalist impression. If you don’t like being called an idiot, don’t post things like this:
“it becomes conceivable to imagine that a salmon, modified to grow twice as fast, might induce a similar effect in humans that consume it.”
Not even close to conceivable! Anybody familiar with organisms’ biomolecular machinery would know that there is a huge jump between DNA floating around a cell’s cytoplasm and it being expressed by said cell, and then an even bigger jump to it being incorporated permanently into a host’s DNA. Retroviruses accomplish this only through the use of specialized proteins that they have evolved over millions of years, and yet you think it might happen by itself? If you like articles, howabout a real peer-reviewed one instead of a post from an organization as full of quackery as ISIS:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15761667
(ISIS supports homeopathy by the way, as well as other pseudosciences like alternative medicine. Usually a good sign that you aren’t looking at a trustworthy source).
Or if you prefer something a little more biased towards your side, howabout this:
http://earthopensource.org/index.php/5-gm-crops-impacts-on-the-farm-and-environment/5-12-myth-horizontal-gene-transfer-from-gm-crops-is-unlikely-or-of-no-consequence
These guys pretty much sum it up… “At present, this scenario is speculative. Although it is clearly possible to detect transgenic DNA in the tissues of organisms that consume GM feed, no research has been published that shows that the GM DNA is expressed in the tissues of those organisms.” Yes… speculative… as in it’s rubbish! Note how in that point of the article the citations dissappear. Like I said, if what you claim were the case, we would expect not only to grow twice as fast, but also to develop scales, gills, and lose our legs because we’d have ingested those genes from the salmon as well!
Not even the article you just posted claims that “genetic modifications of crops are crossing species and causing health problems”, as you say. At least, what you say is a wide interpretation – if by species you mean bacteria and possibly protists, and if you mean that GMO harms organisms as a separate claim, then yes you are right. But the way you phrased it it sounds like the Bt gene has already swapped into a cow and given it ulcers or some similar event, and nothing even remotely like it has been observed. Bacteria incorporate DNA horizontally, and they have mechanisms which actually facilitate this – we knew that long ago and it isn’t news. It helps them evolve. But that a human might incorporate GM DNA from a fish isn’t supported by anything.
Look, I’m not even against your general message – it is entirely possible that there are risks from GMO’s, and it’s even possible that horizontal transfer would cause ecological problems. But for pete’s sake, you’ve convinced two or more people who have posted comments that grizzly bears who eat the salmon will turn into giant super-bears. The enemy is already disseminating enough lies and trying to keep the masses ignorant, you aren’t helping mate!!! We need a public that is rational and understands what they do and don’t know.
And you don’t know about GMO’s! You have a degree in patristics, so go tell people what you think about that. You know about that. But the fact that you think a regulator gene from a fish would have the same effect in a human, making them grow bigger, shows that you don’t understand this subject! Only say what you know is true, and if you aren’t sure but want to let people know, make sure that people understand clearly that you aren’t sure.
And make sure you trust your sources!
As for my rudeness, you got me pissed with this one:
“We already see the effects in the general population of the injection of steroids into cattle, for our population today is generally taller than that of yesteryear, which did not consume such modified meat”
I’m tempted to call this one an outright lie, though of course you weren’t exactly clear on what you meant. For anyone reading, humans have grown 3-4 inches over the generations… and this growth started in the 1850’s, long before GMO’s were ever conceived, and correlates very strongly with better nutrition. So if by giving cows growth hormone, Mr. Farrell meant that the abundance of meat and protein has helped increase our height, then he is right. But it has nothing to do with the hormone itself, or GMO’s… in fact, Europeans are growing faster than Americans, and they eat much less GMO than we do.
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/04/05/040405fa_fact
scare·mon·ger
noun \-ˌməŋ-gər, -ˌmäŋ-\
: one inclined to raise or excite alarms especially needlessly
Be Rational,
Europeans have been guinea pigs ever since WWII ended. Ask a German under US occupation about those decades of mysterious mandatory vaccines.
And your explanation for premature adolescent puberty? Have you been inside a middle school lately? Girls didn’t look like that when I was in school. You can throw at me all the New Yorker articles you want, but you won’t convince me something has not changed. The human pituitary gland is under assault by something. Possibly there are no receptors for bovine growth hormones in the “normal” human brain. What about in the brain of a human weaned from birth on infant formula with bovine growth hormone? It seems to me the infant brain would be forced to make an exception and adapt. I would include in this the still developing brain of a young child.
While this may be just fallout from corporate greed, I could think of other more sinister reasons why some would want to attack the pituitary or master gland. And this you definitely won’t read in the New Yorker. Therefore, there may be other forms of attack on the pituitary gland that we are totally unaware of.
Be Rational,
I forgot to add– your a douche bag.
Be Rational
People like you scare me. You would have done well working for the inquisitions. I guess today, those types are now called Biologists. Aside from being a douche bag, you also stink!
I’m certainly not trying to convince people that they’ll turn into giant bear from eating salmon, it is YOU sir, reading too MUCH into my words for the sake of your own agenda… you highlight the bacteria problem and this is my concern. Trusting sources… scientists NEVER lie…
Especially those scientist whose allegiance is tied to the corporate $kirtS, that finance/back them; all to prove that Might Makes Right, ..er good/healthy science.
Well, I’am of to have a “safe” 1950 vintage smoke, and read about how mustard gas helped WW1.
Be Rational,
“But for pete’s sake, you’ve convinced two or more people who have posted comments that grizzly bears who eat the salmon will turn into giant super-bears. ”
Actually its now five or six. I told my grandmother about the GMO fish and the giant bears along with the clerk at the convenience store and two Jehovah’s witnesses and now they are all convinced as well.
I personally never subscribed to this theory because I’ve always believed human beings are growing larger either because the Earth’s gravitational force is increasing or because the Earth is now spinning faster and we are being elongated due to centrifugal force.
Remember– the ability to detect sarcasm is a measure of intelligence.
The iconic David Suzuki, “Anyone who says ,’Oh we know that this is perfectly safe’, I say is either unbelievably stupid or delibertly lying. The reality is we don’t know. The experiments haven’t simply been done and we have now become the guinea pigs”.[Angela Hall, “Suzuki Warns against Hastily Accepting GMOs”, Leader-Post]
Also Frankie, sadly the U.S. Grocery Manufactures estimate that 70% of ALL food in the U.S. now contains ingrediants from GMOs. And that figure is growing monsterously fast; it’s a monster mash, a graveyard smash. I even heard Boris has sent out for some of that Huge GM Salmon.
The reckless greed heads at it again as for the premature puberty there were stories about this about thirty to forty years ago same suspecisions as for News and Views from the Nefarium today you forgot the Manga Ghost In The Shell by M.Shiro publish by Dark Horse the only left of you that was human was your brain and spinal cord.
Gee why stop at salmon when there are an ocean of possibilities. FC mentioned bears growing to Godzilla size. But something is going to have to fight Godzilla so I’m proposing a giant crab. DARPA might even join forces with the frankenfoods guys to design one that flies. Steven Segal, Chuck Norris and Stallone could draws straws to see who gets to fight the winner when they advance from the elimination round (might help revive Japan’s flagging economy too by getting back into the B movie business).
Then yet another lab experiment gone bad finds us with, Dave, a two-legged human-salmon hybrid with an identity crisis touring the country as the main attraction in a R&B revue. Packing theatre houses everywhere, audiences eagerly anticipate Salmon Dave to belt out his finale, “I’m a Sole Man”.
terminally s,
Don’t laugh. There used to be an act along these lines at the old Coney island Freak Show. I think he went by the name of Lobster Man and he enjoyed singing and could roll and light cigarettes with just his mouth. I dated his sister for a while.
Wow! Lobster for dinner every night, relatively speaking.
All part of the monsterous Corporate Frankenstein that engines worldwide systems. A system that privatizes profits(company coffers) and socializes the debts(to the taxpayer[infaltion also a tax]). The US Government as an example: The US Government and corporate interests/BOTH esssentially form one Gigantic corporate almalgamated INSEPERATABLE entity-with a public division and a private one. When someone goes to the top from a private-sector to a top government job, it’s simply an INTRAcorporate transfer. This also facilitates the easy transfers of funds & regulations, benefiting the corporate side of the ledger.
The GMOs, have for sometime been a known frankenstein in the making. The “real” scientists, standing-up to the corporatized worldwide goverance, were “blackballed” from “publishing” and fired or sued or? For doing “real” science.
The fish in question have human dna, esoterically the lord is making a dam.
You’re leaving out the giant bears as well who may double in size from their salmon diet. Bears the size of Godzilla? A scary prospect.
Aside from the usual suspects, The NFL would surely love the idea of larger humans. Maybe they are in on this as well.
If WWIII leaves mankind fighting WWIV with just sticks and rocks as Einstein predicted, would not the advantage go to the giants? Maybe just some more of DARPA’s long term planning.
If history repeats itself as so many conjecture, than possibly the giants of old, whose graves we find from time to time, were the result of GMO food? In 200,000 years of homo sapien history there is a good chance we have been down this road before. Unless you subscribe to the version of history where we were solely eating berries, mammoths and rodents for 195,000 years, building carts with square wheels, and entertaining ourselves by eating entheogenic mushrooms and drawing on the cave walls while waiting for our wild grains and fruits to ferment? Come to think of it, it sounds a lot better than the way we live now.
i’m surprised your comments are being posted….
Jedi,
You’re right. I probably need to be shut off. It’s all just so bleak that I’ve entered a farcical world of unreality. I should really be outside picking flowers in a meadow and staring at a blue sky.
you’re right on the mark ….you’re one of the good guys.
hard too figure out the bullshit signs from reality…part of the parasites strategy.
Jedi,
Thanks for your kind words, but the damage has been done. I just registered for a 25 km cross country ski race. I’ve never been in a cross country ski race in my life. I must begin training immediately. Au revoir!
dog sledding is easier…take a wine skin…dims the pain on the horizon.
Jedi,
Sled dogs? I’m saving that for when this global warming trend sputters out and the ice age returns with a vengeance. In the meantime I think the impulse is to go outside in nature and get confirmation of what Dr. Farrell said in one of his vidchats recently that life is beautiful, instead of staring daily into this electronic square with great obsession looking for confirmation from all corners of the Earth that life is indeed hopeless and grim and getting more so by the day.
me too buddy
In considering the massive increase in cancer and diabetes, the pushing of so many harmful food products, and the suppression of natural remedies, and replacing them with harmful expensive pharma chemicals, fluoride in the water, eugenics sterilization programs in 33 states, the elitesters continued promotion of population reduction, talk of weaponizing ebola for population reduction, and so much more, I’m inclined toward the belief of it being more a matter of premeditated soft kill, than transhumanism.
“Food, Inc.” , a documentary by Robert Kenner should not be missed
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/food_inc/
http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/YXIPk6i-51c/
http://www.takepart.com/foodinc
solution…grow your own food, heal the earth while your at it..
Useless eaters!
Alchemovegetable man…..http://www.popsci.com.au/science/health/we-incorporate-genetic-information-from-food-we-eat