New at Reason

Tim Cavanaugh | October 13, 2004

Ronald Bailey releases new and improved organisms into the wild.

Comments

|10.13.04 @ 2:24PM|#

Linking to Mark Sagoff in a column about invasive species is like linking to the Discovery Insitute in a column about evolution. Yet another persecuted truth teller with his pockets bulging. The entire rest of the world's biologists are all part of a massive plot to advance phony science, but they guy who says what the richest corporations in America want to hear, for a fee, will set us all free. Mmm-hmm. At least Bailey was kind enough to give his readers a clear marker by which to judge his credibility.

"After all," Bailey writes, "lots of unmodified organisms are unrecallable too." Yes, like kudzu, purple loostrife, phragmytes, Africanized bees, and zebra mussels. How's that working out? The idea that you would use the damage wrought by invasive species as evidence that invasive GM species couldn't be harmful is laugh out loud funny to anyone who hasn't drunk the Kool Aid.

Organisims evolve to fill a role in an ecosystem. Over evoloutionary time periods, if any organism becomes so successful that its population booms, something else evolves that keeps it in check. Japan's foliage doesn't get wiped out by Japanese beetles, because there are predators in Japan that eat Japanese beetles. Since the insect-predators in America didn't evolve to eat those particular beetles, once they were introduced here, they run rampant and cause considerable damage. Like those Asian gypsy moths that the Forest Service spends so much money trying to keep under control, ahem ahem.

Under natural circumstances, the rate of foreign species introduction and the rate of evolution among macro- and micro-predators is close enough that the ecosystem keeps chugging along, maybe with another species added into the mix. But the rate of introduction in the last two centuries has sped up so much that the natural means of maintaining biodiversity, and keeping new species from taking over an ecosystem, can't possibly keep up.

|10.13.04 @ 2:34PM|#

I'm an unpaid shill for the Sante Fe Institute.
If they can't figure out the complexities of what we're discussing here, "What me worry?"

|10.13.04 @ 2:37PM|#

Well at least you're putting down a marker to show where you're coming from. Is it really your belief that every scientist in the world other than this guy feels the way you do? That seems to be what you are stating.

Having seen similar statements from you regarding the unwavering scientific consensus about global warming supporting your chicken little viewpoint, I'd guess that you actually believe that. In which case, you really need to find some new sources for your scientific information. Lefty political journals aren't always the most accurate places to figure out what's going on with technology.

|10.13.04 @ 2:40PM|#

Well put, Joe. Messing w/ species, I imagine it will number in the thousands before too long, in a short time span is asking for trouble. Most species have been evolving over at least thousands of years. Say one hour on a clock is equivalent to ten thousand years, and then you virtually intantaneously change the genetic make-up thousands of species in a few seconds. Hard to imagine anything other than chaos.

His in favor argument was nothing more than a sophmoric listing of a few positive examples.

|10.13.04 @ 2:53PM|#

As JDM points out, what I wrote above about species introduction, and the impact of dramtically increasing the speed at which it takes place, couldn't possibly be true, because I'm a librul. so absolutely, don't take my word for it. Peruse scientific magazines, get in touch with biologists at nearby universities, look on the internet for symposia on the subject of invasives and biodiversity.

I have absolutely no doubt what an honest reckoning of the impact of invasive species reveals, because I've had occasion to study the issue in graduate level landscape ecology courses. But I realize that a lot of people need to take their cues on this issue from the more general media. I'd encourage anyone who isn't sure whether to believe the environmentalist position or the anti-environmentalist position to educate themselves on the issue, using the most responsible, objective sources they can find.

|10.13.04 @ 2:57PM|#

I'd worry much more about the legal pollution than the biological pollution. What happens when a critter with a patented gene spreads throughout Florida, and the patent holder wins an injunction to defoliate the whole damn state to correct the infringement? Every genetically engineered pollen particle carries a lawsuit embedded in its DNA.
--G

|10.13.04 @ 2:58PM|#

"like kudzu, purple loostrife, phragmytes, Africanized bees, and zebra mussels"

Ooh, don't forget cane toads and rabbits.

Australia loves introduced species. Really adores them.

|10.13.04 @ 3:00PM|#

.. if you don't like GM food you'd better stay away from nectarines, tangerines or any of the other "foods" from that GM monster Luther Burbank .. he devoted his life to making new foods out of old.. like it or not, virtually everything that we eat nowdays has been genetically altered ..

.. the horror!!

|10.13.04 @ 3:08PM|#

Thank you, hobbit, for the openning to discuss another logical fallacy common to anti-anti-GM activists:

THERE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN MODIFIED SPECIES, SINCE THE BEGINNING OF CIVILIZATION. Because, after all, the degree, speed, and intensity at which a process takes place couldn't possibly lead to different outcomes. That's why, after coming home on a cold, day, I skip sitting by the heater, and just douse myself with gasoline and light a match.

PS, I'm as squishy on the GM issue as I am on campaign finance reform. I just get annoyed when people try to steal debate victories with dishones arguments, rather than actually winning them on the merits.

|10.13.04 @ 3:11PM|#

"As JDM points out, what I wrote above about species introduction, and the impact of dramtically increasing the speed at which it takes place, couldn't possibly be true, because I'm a librul."

Ummm. No where did I say that. I didn't even come close. Learn to read, then get back to me. I await your ironic post about how dishonest I am being.

Just to clarify, I pointed out that your position is absurd, then speculated that you hold the position because you get too much of your information from leftist rags, along the way pointing out as evidence that you are similarly wrong in your assesment of the "consensus" regarding global warming, which also just so happens to jibe with your leftist cohort.

One more time, more simply still. Your position - "every scientist in the world is against GMO release into the wild" - is prima facie false. The other groups, outlined in Ron's article, which are *actively releasing GMOs* to help solve certain problems, obviously take a position different from yours.

I didn't even make fun of your bizzare assertion that "everything evolves to fill a role" in nature.

s.m. koppelman|10.13.04 @ 3:41PM|#

Mr. Bailey paints his smiley-face picture of unregulated propogarion of GM organisms with the most innocent examples possible: grasses. Who doesn't like grass? Everybody loves a nice green lawn and a rolling meadow, and what could be better than hypoallergenic, herbicide-resisnat grass?

Unfortunately this assumes that grass will always be desirable everywhere it can grow and that it won't fall out of favor. What if a couple hundred years from now some other families of creeping plants become the lawn cover of choice and this grass comes to be thought of as a hard-to-kill "weed"? What if one not-particularly-attractive species of herbicide-resistant grass proves to be so robust that it proves invasive and pushes out other, more aesthetically pleasing or otherwise useeful varieties? Or speaking in economic terms, what if the external cost of this grass -- in the damage it does to driveways and sidewalks -- outstrips the savings to people who want to simplify their lawncare by using stronger herbicides on their weeds?

Heck, what if it turns out that the herbicide-resistant grass produces an enzyme that harms an important species of worms or insects and disrupts regional ecosystems? What if the allergens that give me hayfever are important nutrients or feeding cues for another organism?

Oh well. I suppose if something happens that makes a GM herbicide-resistant grass undesirable, someone will just genetically engineer some really big goats to eat it all.

Why'd you pick harmless, inanimate grass, anyway, Mr. Bailey? I don't suppose it's easier to make a rhetorical case for free propogation of GM organisms with innocent l'il blades of grass than it is with, say, GM salmon that have already been shown to wreak gene-pool havoc when they enter wild populations, is it?

clarityiniowa|10.13.04 @ 4:14PM|#

Mr. koppelman steps sideways into the logical fallacy behind the "Precautionary Principle," which is that we must maintain the technological status quo unless advances can be proved %100 benign. One of the reasons for this is so future generations can enjoy what we have now, and not be subjected to our certain technological screw-ups in this generation.

The fallacy here, as mr. k. suggests, is that we don't know what those future generations might want or prefer. Perhaps they would prefer abundant, cheap pharmaceuticals produced through GE pharming over begging for discounts from the government while being surrounded by acres of "natural" but useless prairie grass. The bottom line in this argument is simple: To a certain very noisy class of anti-GE "activists" ( A term which means they generally sit on their ass and carp, or at best wave signs and chant in the street rather than learn some science and put it to use.), if it happens "naturally," that is to say, accidentally, it's good. If it happens through human design, it must be bad, or at least fatally flawed.

|10.13.04 @ 4:26PM|#

Linking to Mark Sagoff in a column about invasive species is like linking to the Discovery Insitute in a column about evolution.

Biologists are essentially unanimous in supporting evolutionary theory. In contrast, your hysterical fear of genetically modified organisms are not shared by most biologists.

|10.13.04 @ 4:36PM|#

"Thank you, hobbit, for the openning to discuss another logical fallacy common to anti-anti-GM activists:

THERE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN MODIFIED SPECIES, SINCE THE BEGINNING OF CIVILIZATION."

The argument is broader than that. It is that we have been "distorting" ecological equilibrium since the beginnig of civilization. We don't like nature, we like nature modified in such a way as to eliminate weeds, minimize mosquitoes, and so forth. SM snarks that we will just introduce a GM goat to take care of our GM grass when the need arises, but that is in fact what we have always done. We make our environments fit our needs.

The degree and speed of introduction can make a difference in outcomes, but that is not to say that high rates and high intensities are catastrophic. The difference in perspective is how sensitive one believes large ecosystems to be. They survive pretty well, really.

|10.13.04 @ 4:58PM|#

"They survive pretty well, really."

Actually, they don't necessarily survive. They change constantly. Not on the scale of a human lifetime, but even on the order of hundreds of years, areas can go from forest to desert, to grassland to forest again.

For example, at my present location 10,000 years ago, I would have been sitting under a mile thick layer of ice. In the interceding time, the current Pacific Northwest ecosystem has grown up. It will similarly one day disappear. It is a myth that ecosystems are fragile permanent things that must be saved at all costs. They are, in fact, completely frangible, and utterly unsavable.

I can think of no reason beyond religion to think that the cause of their destruction has to be "natural." Or to say that when the changes come, that the "natural" changes will be for the better, and the manmade will be for the worse.

|10.13.04 @ 5:18PM|#

You can argue until your blue in the face as to the biological implications of releasing GM organisms in the wild. In the end, it'll all come down to the details of the genetic modification.

However without a doubt, it's the legal/patent ramifications -- pointed out by Grant Gould -- that should worry us the most.

s.m. koppelman|10.13.04 @ 5:29PM|#

"clarityiniowa" dives headlong into the "Vulcan logic" fallacy that posits issues like bioengineering are all-or-nothing propositions, that either you're for unfettered freedom to release any and all GM organisms into the world, or you're a luddite who wants bioengineering outlawed.

|10.13.04 @ 5:42PM|#

Jason,

I agree with you that the argument (I prefer discussion, but it seems hard to come by in these forums) is broader. Certainly man has been modifiying our surroundings forever, however, there is a fundamental difference between leveling forests or domesticating species versys changing the genetic code of species. One could posit that breeding dogs, for instance, is a form of changing genetic code, but my contention is even that is a far cry and fundamentally different from intantaneously changing the genetic code of many species.

The basic problem is that we do not know the consequences of the change, which for the most part is no big deal, when done on a small scale, or incrementally. However, it is not difficult to imagine many genetic modifications in a short period of time, the skills and knowledge of the genetic people are growing exponentially (the new scientific frontier, really). Statistically, it's just a matter of time until the unintended consequences rear their ugly head.

Ronald Bailey|10.13.04 @ 9:21PM|#

Some of you (especially Joe)are clinging to an old paradigm of ecology in which ecosystems must be preserved essentially as delicate museums. I can't link to it, but the New Scientist in Septmeber 18 has a fascinating article on how a completely man-made tropical rainforest on Ascension Island has grown up in only 150 years. Ecosystems don't collapse, they change. As biologist David Wilkins writes: "The Green Mountain system [on Ascension Island] is a spectacular example of ecological fitting. It is a man-made system that has produced a tropical rainforest without any co-evolution bewteen its constituent species." The New Scientist article continues:[T]he experience suggests that perhaps natural rainforests are constructed far more by chance than by evolution. There is a term for this among dissident ecologists. They call it 'ecological fitting.' Species, they say, don't so much evolve to create ecosystems as make the best of what they have. What works works."
For a short version see URL: http://www.mongabay.com/external/man-made_rainforest.htm . The scientific article is by David Wilkinson in Journal of Biogeography, vol 31, p1 (2004).

Transgenic critters are unlikely to pose anywhere the problems that introduced species have and introduced species are far less of a probolem with regard to ecosytem functioning than many biologists have supposed.

|10.13.04 @ 10:46PM|#

I see partisans everywhere.

Political partisans, religion partisans.

Here we see science partisans, two polarized sides to a debate that has ceased to have any meaning, due to the extreme positions of both sides.

Ronald Bailey paints a sunny world where the benefits outweigh the potential dangers of tinkering with DNA, as a range of current crises, from hunger to disease are fixed by our friends the Transgenes. Whatever goes wrong, we'll figure out a way to deal with it.

joe asserts that it is inevitable that once we modify the genes of organisms, we incur significant risk, the worst-case scenario of which is potentially catastrophic.

You're both right and you're both wrong.

Bioengineering is just like everything else in life- it's possibilities exist on a wide spectrum, where can be found anything from the elimination of widespread hunger because of increased abundance of food, all the way over to complete elimination of one (or perhaps many) food crops due to transference of sterilization genes or mutated viruses.

What both (rather polarized) sides to this debate need to realize is that both of these two extremes is within the realm of the possible. And just about everything else you can imagine in-between.

We must honestly weigh such possiblities as the total elimination of famine from Africa as well as the possiblity that our grandkids will never taste corn or apples or carrots.

All of the posibilities exist.

When will we have an honest conversation about them?

|10.14.04 @ 11:49AM|#

I don't think I've ever seen JDM so out of his depth. You usually limit your arguments to issues, such as sprawl, about which you have enough knowlege to credibly argue. The Evolutionary Niche model is a "bizarre assertion?" OK dude. Whatever you say.

Dan, "Biologists are essentially unanimous in supporting evolutionary theory. In contrast, your hysterical fear of genetically modified organisms are not shared by most biologists." Misunderstanding - I didn't claim that there was virtually universal agreement about the danger of GMOs among biologists. I claimed that there was near-universal consensus among biologists about the harms caused by invasive species. You are correct, however, that making such a claim about GMOs would have been inaccurate. There still isn't enough data in for anything but the most preliminary conclusions.

JL, "We make our environments fit our needs." Well, we try to, anyway. "We" (actually, one dude with a really bad idea) thought introducing gypsy moths to North America would make our environment fit our needs better, because we could have a domestic silk industry. Oops.

JDM, again. "(Ecosystems) change constantly. Not on the scale of a human lifetime, but even on the order of hundreds of years, areas can go from forest to desert, to grassland to forest again." In a natural state, this is true. However, human beings often dramatically change ecosystems over the course of just a few decades, years, weeks, or even days or hours. And the faster and more dramatic the change, the more likely it is to cause significant harm, because as you note, the natural methods of coping with change require a much longer time frame than human activity. The introduction of invasives like purple loosestrife and phragmytes has dramatically changed wetland habitats in the northeast in just a few years, resulting in significant net loss of biological function in those wetlands, as the species animals evolved to live among (and eat, and nest in) have been crowded out by other species that do not fill the same ecological niche (that crazy, crazy idea of mine) as those they replaced. The British replacement of hardwoods with conifers in highland Himalaya forests has significantly reduced both the diversity and overall biological mass in those forests, as the species therein did not evolve to exploit conifers. BTW, it also reduced the wealth of the people who live there, whose economic system developed to take advantage of the forest products of a healthy old growth hardwood forest.

Ron, "Some of you (especially Joe)are clinging to an old paradigm of ecology in which ecosystems must be preserved essentially as delicate museums." No, I most certainly am not, as inconvenient as that may be for you. I posited natural change over time as the pre-existing and most beneficial state.

From my very first post: "Under natural circumstances, the rate of foreign species introduction and the rate of evolution among macro- and micro-predators is close enough that the ecosystem keeps chugging along, maybe with another species added into the mix. But the rate of introduction in the last two centuries has sped up so much that the natural means of maintaining biodiversity, and keeping new species from taking over an ecosystem, can't possibly keep up." OK reader, am I arguing that ecosystem change is bad, and ecosystems are supposed to remain static? Or am I drawing exactly the fine distinctions that Bailey accuses me of ignoring?

"Ecosystems don't collapse, they change." Collapse is one form of change an ecosystem can experience, and only the most extreme of numerous types of bad changes. When phosphorous caused massive algae blooms in water bodies, and the fish population crashes beyond recovery because of depleted oxygen, that is indeed a change. When the wetlands in a region are all significantly shrunk because phragmytes sucks up the water, with the result that the species dependent upon wetland biotic activity see their populations crash, that is a change. In both cases, one type of ecosystem can change. And in both cases, we have traded down - in the former, the water body is less pleasant for recreation and the fishing economy requires expensive intervention to replace. In the latter, the diversity of birds and critters is reduced, and the water-absorbing capacity of the wetlands is degraded (wetlands can hold more water than uplands - think about a damp sponge vs. a dried out sponge), increasing flooding of roads and homes.

Also, please note that the example of a positive change Ron provides involves a situation in which the pre-change environment was very low in biomass and biotic activity, which is drastically different from the situations he describes in the article about foreign species being introduced into already-biologically rich ecosystems. In these cases, the invasive almost always results in a net loss of biological activity and mass, because even if there is a one to one replacement of the old plant with the new plant (usually not the case, because the invasive can grow much faster, owing to the lack of natural enemies in the new location), the other species in the ecosystem either cannot use the new as well as the old, or a minority of species can do so much better that they experience an unsustainable population boom. (of course, who's to say that the barren Alaskan Island wasn't once a luch forest, degraded to its low-biotic-value state because of the demands put on it in the pre-historical era?)

|10.14.04 @ 3:25PM|#

"I don't think I've ever seen JDM so out of his depth."

That's interesting. I was 3 semesters from a biophysics degree when I decided to go for cash rather than grad school, and switched to computer science. It is you who seem out of your depth. I remember distinctly my professors spending a great deal of time deprogramming imbeciles who romanticize nature. This was in both ecological and evolutionary biology classes, and genetics/biochem related classes. Maybe they were all "dissdents," to borrow Ron Bailey's term. I was certainly taught the ecological fitting model.

As Ron Bailey points out, "everything has its place" notion is really romaticism. Nothing in nature "fills a role," or serves a purpose other than its own.

There is no reason to think that planned release will cause more harm than unplanned. In fact, you'd have to be nuts to think that it couldn't cause good. That doesn't mean that every nut with a new 5 legged frog should turn it loose, but the idea that a few rogue genes are going to transform the earth into a barren wasteland is stupid. The idea that keeping the world exactly as is serves any real purpose, is unfounded.

In short, you could describe plowing under the great plains for cropland as "harmful," but it would not make much sense. It has been an unmitigated benefit on the whole.

And again, if the Sherpas want hardwood trees, they should plant them.

And again, my original point is that your assertion that all scientists oppose GMO release in the wild is just ridiculous. Who are the people releasing the GMOs? Carpenters? Homemakers? No doubt they are Republicans...

free-galleries|10.27.04 @ 8:35AM|#

galleries free