The original monarch study was led by John Losey anassistant professor of entomology at Cornell and appeared in the May 20, 1999 issue of Nature. Losey reported that many monarch butterfly larvae died when they were fed GM corn engineered to produce its own "Bt" insecticide. This generated a storm of publicity as Losey claimed that his study has potentially profound implications for the conservation of monarch butterflies. However a recent study shows that Losey's original work involves such unrealistic assumptions that his conclusions do not follow at all. But this is only half the story. Losey and naturally reporters also, simply ignored an earlier and relevant study of the same issue by two Iowa State University researchers Laura Hansen and John Obrycki. Their research showed low mortality when monarch larvae were fed milkweed that had the highest levels of Bt pollen that would be eoncountered in the field.
A recent study by Athony Shelton, professor of entomology at Cornell's COllege of Agriculture and Life Sciences and Rich Roush of U of Adelaide, Australia is a critique of Losey and appears in Nature Biotechnology.
Milkweed is a perennial plant that does not survive old-fashioned plowing, mechanical weeding or the or the chemical treatments that occur in corn fields. The milkweeds that sustain the monarchs grow in pastures or other unplowed or rarely plowed ground. None grow in corn fields and few at the edges where they are exposed to pollen from Bt corn. More of the danger to milkweeds is conventional chemical spraying of weeds in ditches etc. However, the real threat to monarchs is destruction of their winter habitat in Mexico.
THe article notes that "natural" Bt insecticide produced by Bt microbes is a treatment favored by organic farmers to suppress insect pests. This would presumably have exactly the same effect, if Losey is to be believed, as the bad GM stuff. So I suppose Monsanto can now commission an article on the dangers of organic gardening to the Monarch. It would be about as plausible as Losey's article.
Cheers, Ken Hanly P.S. The issue of resistant strains of pests is complicated. In some cases it may be a problem in other cases not. If the Bt GM engineering did produce a resistant pest then it equally would nullify the usefulness of the GM modified plant. But where is the evidence this has happened and where is the evidence that it could not happen using organic methods? Using loaded terms like overkill for the GM technique may be good rhetoric. I suppose the organic farmers must underkill :)
Dace wrote:
> Ken Hanley wrote:
>
> >Just how does O'Connor think that the contradiction between capitalism and
> the
> >environment will lead to socialism of any kind?
>
> He certainly doesn't think it will happen automatically. It will result
> from a unified political movement among those who are currently
> disenfranchised. This movement would involve "development of a common or
> public sphere, a political space, a kind of dual power, in which minority,
> labor, women, urban, and environmental organizations can work economically
> and politically. Here there could be developed not the temporary tactical
> alliances among movements and movement leaders that we have today, but
> strategic alliances, including electoral alliances. A strong civil society,
> defining itself in terms of its "commons," its solidarity, and its struggles
> with capital and the state, as well as of its democratic impulses and forms
> of organization within alliances and coalitions of movement organizations--
> and within each organization itself-- is the first prerequisite of
> sustainable society and nature. The second is the self-conscious
> development of economic and ecological alternatives within this public
> sphere or "new commons"-- alternatives such as green cities, pollution-free
> production, biologically diversified forms of silviculture and agriculture,
> and so on, the technical aspects of which are increasingly well known today.
> The third is to organize struggles to democratize the workplace and the
> state administration so that substantive contents of an ecological,
> progressive type can be put into the shell of liberal democracy."
>
> It looks to me like he's advocating the grass-roots creation of a public
> commons which would function economically as well as politically. It would
> pursue green economic activities within the commons, while agitating
> politically on the outside, for instance, in pre-existent workplaces and the
> state bureaucracy. Altogether this would transform the state into a vehicle
> for ecological socialism.
>
> But this could easily be one of those situations where you see a pattern in
> a picture that's more in your own mind than the picture itself. I may have
> gotten it woefully wrong.
>
> Perhaps O'Connor himself, if he's still following this list, could explain
> his position regarding the transition from capitalism to an ecological
> socialism.
>
> > If biodiversity is so great why are many ecologists opposed to GM seeds
> etc.
> >Not only do these increase biodiversity they increase the range of crops
> that
> >can be grown in a given area through drought resistance, etc. and they
> often
> >decrease the use of pesticides rather than increasing their use.
>
> The profit-motive has inspired premature marketing of GM seeds. The pollen
> of GM seeds can get absorbed by non-GM plants in fields adjacent to
> farmland. This can then harm other species that feed on those plants, most
> notably the monarch butterfly. If the monarch butterfly disappeared, this
> could then have other consequences, and so on. For another example, the
> incorporation of Bt into corn plants threatens integrated pest management,
> which depends on Bt but, unlike the GM plants, doesn't rely on the sort of
> overkill that produces mutant strains of pests. Once the GM plants trigger
> a mutant strain of pest, then Bt will no longer work for organic farmers.
>
> There are
> >problems with GM seeds but many of these problems have to do with the fact
> that
> >they being developed by capitalist corporations. In a socialist system,
> plants
> >would be developed that could compete effectively with weeds rather
> developing
> >plants that are resistant to herbicide so that one company can profit both
> from
> >a patented seed and a patented herbicide as with Roundup Ready
> Canola--produced
> >by Monsanto. So how many ecologists are calling for the nationalisation or
> >taking into public ownership Monsanto etc.
> >THe silence is deafening.
>
> The least we could do is revoke their charter.
>
> Ted Dace