There is nothing novel about pointing out that seedless watermelons are by definition not GMO because they cannot be patented.
Who else is expressing this point of view?
More to the point, when the patent expires, are they no longer GMOs? It's an amazingly weird argument.
Therefore, your mentioning something that can't be patented and claiming this is genetic modification is trolling, ie. bringing up irrelevant data points that do not in any way refer to the argument at hand in order to clutter the relevant discussion and scuttle discourse. It's the monkey dance, pure and simple.
So, by your definition, mentioning patents as being a defining characteristic of GMOs, with no support or reasoning behind it, is "trolling."
You're better off just engaging the argument as opposed to really poorly derailing it. It's one thing to have you go off on the corporate media nonsense, but it's another to make it personal while coming out of left field with something like this.
More to the point, when the patent expires, are they no longer GMOs?
Oh, for fuck's sake. Yes, Jeff, they remain genetically modified organisms, even after the patent protection expires. That's how they got the patent protection after all, by being unique life forms brought into existence well beyond what the in serendipitous parameters of random mutation would otherwise allow in nature.
As someone who's been married for a while, I highly recommend you never, ever use this twisted logic on your wife, at least not as long as you wish to stay married.
I have tried to be reasonable. You have refused. You are obstinately sticking to your delusion without considering anything anyone else has to say on the issue. "Onanism" comes to mind as a possible description.
But hey, don't get me wrong; I have nothing against masturbation, even mental masturbation. Just try doing it alone next time.
Oh, for fuck's sake. Yes, Jeff, they remain genetically modified organisms, even after the patent protection expires. That's how they got the patent protection after all, by being unique life forms brought into existence well beyond what the in serendipitous parameters of random mutation would otherwise allow in nature.
Do you see where I'm going with this yet? You're making a very strange distinction about GMOs that has no bearing or relevance to the real world. If what makes a GMO a GMO is, to use your words, "the necessary element of a patent," then the lack of a patent means what, exactly? If a genetically modified food is not patented, is it no longer a GMO?
I have tried to be reasonable. You have refused. You are obstinately sticking to your delusion without considering anything anyone else has to say on the issue. "Onanism" comes to mind as a possible description.
This is me considering it. You've made a rather absurd claim, so I'm drawing it out to figure out if it's me that has missed something or if it is you.
But hey, don't get me wrong; I have nothing against masturbation, even mental masturbation. Just try doing it alone next time.
That you have to resort to attacking me this much tells me a lot about the validity of your claim. The lack of any supporting evidence whatsoever even moreso.
I'll indulge with a quick primer. I hope you'll see the relevance, because I'm getting tired of your seemingly deliberate ignorance on this topic.
You're making a very strange distinction about GMOs that has no bearing or relevance to the real world.
No, I'm making the distinction about GMOs that has every bearing on the real world of patent protection. As someone who worked a few years in law firms, and much of that in a firm filing patents for patent protection consideration, I have a bit of first-hand knowledge about the process.
For a patent to be considered, it must be unique to those familiar with the arts (the industry that manufactures the product). So, if someone walks into a patent firm with a simple cross between species—stuff that was old hat in Mendel's day—the attorney preparing the filing would likely inform the client that this is too obvious to those in agriculture, and strongly suggest the patent wannabe save his or her money.
However, should a person walk into a patent office with a strain of corn that glowed green thanks to jellyfish DNA or whatever, that person would likely be a good candidate for a patent. Why? Simply because very few in the field can insert jellyfish DNA into corn. There are several processes that do this, but all are time and capital intensive.
Despite the talk about "gene splicing"—which makes the process sound so clean and neat, like splicing a length of new rope or wire into another—the actual process is literally hit-and-miss, and mostly miss. One fires stainless steel bullets coated with the desired genetic material with an air gun. A small percentage will survive the ballistic assault enough to sprout; a much smaller percentage of those that survive might bear offspring when mature; a very small percentage of those bear the desired genes; an even smaller percentage of those might have the genes within in a helpful and marketable manner.
So, your talk about seedless melons is specious. There is no special process to making seedless melons that has not, again, been known for thousands of years. There is therefore no reason to consider that the "genetic modification"—scare quotes inserted for emphasis, since the real term would be "crossing"—is sufficiently novel to those in the agricultural arts for granting a patent. Thus, trolling: crossing is not GMO as the term GMO is known to those in the industry.
And after the patent protection expires, the manner of their construction will remain a known fact, so they remain GMO.
Given this, your statement:
That you have to resort to attacking me this much tells me a lot about the validity of your claim.
Can simply be reversed. I honestly don't know how well versed you are about the GMO production, patent and patent enforcement process, but you're a smart guy in most matters, so I assumed you would be aware of the distinction—the legal distinction, as opposed to simply the semantic and rhetorical distinctions you have employed—between simple breeding methods and full-on laboratory gene fucking-with. Why would I provide "supporting evidence" for a topic so easily researched? What am I, a kindergarten teacher?
I'll indulge with a quick primer. I hope you'll see the relevance, because I'm getting tired of your seemingly deliberate ignorance on this topic.
This isn't about an exercise on patents, I get all of that. It's about your bizarre, novel concept that GMOs are GMOs not due to their genetic modifactions, but instead due to their patentability. No, someone in a lab constructing GMO corn may not see it the same way from an industrial standpoint, but that's not the point.
It's about your bizarre, novel concept that GMOs are GMOs not due to their genetic modifactions, but instead due to their patentability.
Wow. I mean . . . Wow. You have in one sentence encapsulated your complete opacity to the real issue at hand, and in an almost hilarious manner. I object to the entire enterprise because of the patents. Which of course leads to the hilarious conclusion to your hilarity:
No, someone in a lab constructing GMO corn may not see it the same way from an industrial standpoint, but that's not the point.
THAT IS EXACTLY THE POINT! Why is someone bothering him- or herself in a lab trying to shoot DNA into seeds rather than, say, researching disease or building a railroad? Because it is potentially profitable. Why is it potentially profitable? Because the end result can be patented.
I have noticed over the years a seeming conflation gene that dominates your thinking at times. I say, "I am against GMO crops." You say, "They have been proven safe, so shut up." You then berate the point about safety blah blah blah and think that I give two fucks about the limited efficacy of the testing process. What is this post up to, 213 comments, only a fraction of which deal with Neil dGT?
I object to the entire enterprise because of the patents.
Okay, and that's fine. But what about your claim of why they're GMOs? If your viewpoint is not "they're GMOs because they can be patented," then why did you start there?
Oh, never mind. I don't care to retrace and forensically analyze this pile of back and forth. Too many pixels have been slain for too little constructive purpose already.
Your claim that what makes a GMO is "the necessary element of a patent," that "GMO = patented life forms. (http://politicartoons.livejournal.com/4354736.html?thread=99104688#t99104688)"
I noticed you never addressed your initial point, but I found a video of someone who sees this the same way. You might not accept the reality from me, but I'd hope you'd accept it from him:
Seen it. It doesn't address my argument, so I didn't think much of it.
Again, my argument has nothing to do with the safety or lack thereof for GMOs—a label I apply only to patented crops and lifeforms, simply to distinguish them from other forms of modification—and everything to do with the business model employed by the patent holders, a model to which I strenuously object as completely wrong and one I think should be addressed through legislation.
As long, though, as the profits from these patents continues to fatten the coffers of our elected officials, I see no hope in that.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2014-08-03 05:40 pm (UTC)Who else is expressing this point of view?
More to the point, when the patent expires, are they no longer GMOs? It's an amazingly weird argument.
Therefore, your mentioning something that can't be patented and claiming this is genetic modification is trolling, ie. bringing up irrelevant data points that do not in any way refer to the argument at hand in order to clutter the relevant discussion and scuttle discourse. It's the monkey dance, pure and simple.
So, by your definition, mentioning patents as being a defining characteristic of GMOs, with no support or reasoning behind it, is "trolling."
You're better off just engaging the argument as opposed to really poorly derailing it. It's one thing to have you go off on the corporate media nonsense, but it's another to make it personal while coming out of left field with something like this.
no subject
Date: 2014-08-04 07:55 pm (UTC)Oh, for fuck's sake. Yes, Jeff, they remain genetically modified organisms, even after the patent protection expires. That's how they got the patent protection after all, by being unique life forms brought into existence well beyond what the in serendipitous parameters of random mutation would otherwise allow in nature.
As someone who's been married for a while, I highly recommend you never, ever use this twisted logic on your wife, at least not as long as you wish to stay married.
I have tried to be reasonable. You have refused. You are obstinately sticking to your delusion without considering anything anyone else has to say on the issue. "Onanism" comes to mind as a possible description.
But hey, don't get me wrong; I have nothing against masturbation, even mental masturbation. Just try doing it alone next time.
no subject
Date: 2014-08-04 07:58 pm (UTC)Do you see where I'm going with this yet? You're making a very strange distinction about GMOs that has no bearing or relevance to the real world. If what makes a GMO a GMO is, to use your words, "the necessary element of a patent," then the lack of a patent means what, exactly? If a genetically modified food is not patented, is it no longer a GMO?
I have tried to be reasonable. You have refused. You are obstinately sticking to your delusion without considering anything anyone else has to say on the issue. "Onanism" comes to mind as a possible description.
This is me considering it. You've made a rather absurd claim, so I'm drawing it out to figure out if it's me that has missed something or if it is you.
But hey, don't get me wrong; I have nothing against masturbation, even mental masturbation. Just try doing it alone next time.
That you have to resort to attacking me this much tells me a lot about the validity of your claim. The lack of any supporting evidence whatsoever even moreso.
no subject
Date: 2014-08-06 04:03 am (UTC)You're making a very strange distinction about GMOs that has no bearing or relevance to the real world.
No, I'm making the distinction about GMOs that has every bearing on the real world of patent protection. As someone who worked a few years in law firms, and much of that in a firm filing patents for patent protection consideration, I have a bit of first-hand knowledge about the process.
For a patent to be considered, it must be unique to those familiar with the arts (the industry that manufactures the product). So, if someone walks into a patent firm with a simple cross between species—stuff that was old hat in Mendel's day—the attorney preparing the filing would likely inform the client that this is too obvious to those in agriculture, and strongly suggest the patent wannabe save his or her money.
However, should a person walk into a patent office with a strain of corn that glowed green thanks to jellyfish DNA or whatever, that person would likely be a good candidate for a patent. Why? Simply because very few in the field can insert jellyfish DNA into corn. There are several processes that do this, but all are time and capital intensive.
Despite the talk about "gene splicing"—which makes the process sound so clean and neat, like splicing a length of new rope or wire into another—the actual process is literally hit-and-miss, and mostly miss. One fires stainless steel bullets coated with the desired genetic material with an air gun. A small percentage will survive the ballistic assault enough to sprout; a much smaller percentage of those that survive might bear offspring when mature; a very small percentage of those bear the desired genes; an even smaller percentage of those might have the genes within in a helpful and marketable manner.
So, your talk about seedless melons is specious. There is no special process to making seedless melons that has not, again, been known for thousands of years. There is therefore no reason to consider that the "genetic modification"—scare quotes inserted for emphasis, since the real term would be "crossing"—is sufficiently novel to those in the agricultural arts for granting a patent. Thus, trolling: crossing is not GMO as the term GMO is known to those in the industry.
And after the patent protection expires, the manner of their construction will remain a known fact, so they remain GMO.
Given this, your statement:
That you have to resort to attacking me this much tells me a lot about the validity of your claim.
Can simply be reversed. I honestly don't know how well versed you are about the GMO production, patent and patent enforcement process, but you're a smart guy in most matters, so I assumed you would be aware of the distinction—the legal distinction, as opposed to simply the semantic and rhetorical distinctions you have employed—between simple breeding methods and full-on laboratory gene fucking-with. Why would I provide "supporting evidence" for a topic so easily researched? What am I, a kindergarten teacher?
no subject
Date: 2014-08-06 11:46 am (UTC)This isn't about an exercise on patents, I get all of that. It's about your bizarre, novel concept that GMOs are GMOs not due to their genetic modifactions, but instead due to their patentability. No, someone in a lab constructing GMO corn may not see it the same way from an industrial standpoint, but that's not the point.
no subject
Date: 2014-08-07 01:03 am (UTC)Wow. I mean . . . Wow. You have in one sentence encapsulated your complete opacity to the real issue at hand, and in an almost hilarious manner. I object to the entire enterprise because of the patents. Which of course leads to the hilarious conclusion to your hilarity:
No, someone in a lab constructing GMO corn may not see it the same way from an industrial standpoint, but that's not the point.
THAT IS EXACTLY THE POINT! Why is someone bothering him- or herself in a lab trying to shoot DNA into seeds rather than, say, researching disease or building a railroad? Because it is potentially profitable. Why is it potentially profitable? Because the end result can be patented.
I have noticed over the years a seeming conflation gene that dominates your thinking at times. I say, "I am against GMO crops." You say, "They have been proven safe, so shut up." You then berate the point about safety blah blah blah and think that I give two fucks about the limited efficacy of the testing process. What is this post up to, 213 comments, only a fraction of which deal with Neil dGT?
Give it a rest, already.
no subject
Date: 2014-08-07 11:32 am (UTC)Okay, and that's fine. But what about your claim of why they're GMOs? If your viewpoint is not "they're GMOs because they can be patented," then why did you start there?
no subject
Date: 2014-08-07 11:01 pm (UTC)Huh?
Oh, never mind. I don't care to retrace and forensically analyze this pile of back and forth. Too many pixels have been slain for too little constructive purpose already.
no subject
Date: 2014-08-08 03:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-16 08:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-16 10:31 pm (UTC)Again, my argument has nothing to do with the safety or lack thereof for GMOs—a label I apply only to patented crops and lifeforms, simply to distinguish them from other forms of modification—and everything to do with the business model employed by the patent holders, a model to which I strenuously object as completely wrong and one I think should be addressed through legislation.
As long, though, as the profits from these patents continues to fatten the coffers of our elected officials, I see no hope in that.
no subject
Date: 2014-08-16 10:39 pm (UTC)