http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6518787.stm<b>Firm in GM insulin breakthrough

Insulin produced by genetically modified plants - with a human gene added - could be on the market in three years, a Canadian company has claimed.</b>

Sembiosys said it has made scientific breakthroughs and found a short cut through current drug regulations. The firm's CEO Andrew Baum said his company could become one of the first to sell a plant-based pharmaceutical.

However, critics believe that these products pose greater environmental and health risks than GM food crops. Most insulin is now produced by genetically modified bacteria, inside sealed tanks. The new technique uses GM plants grown out in the open.

If the firm can demonstrate that the plant-based insulin is identical with human insulin, it won't have to go through all the long and costly stages of full clinical trials.

However Clare Oxborrow, of Friends of the Earth, said the risks of contamination from pharmaceutical plants was actually greater than from food crops. She said there had already been contamination incidents with experimental pharmaceutical plants. One American company, Prodigene, was heavily fined for its mistakes in 2002. Similar problems have occurred recently with GM food crops.

<b>Pollution fears</B>

She said: "It's worrying enough when it's a crop intended for human consumption." "But when it might be a pharmaceutical crop in the future that contaminates the food chain, that raises serious worries and questions about the risks involved for human health."

Ms Oxborrow said the promised benefits would not be great enough to shift public opinion. She pointed to many other factors influencing public views - like the impact on the environment, potential health concerns and corporate control of the food chain.

However Mr Baum insisted: "The goodness of what we're doing is so clear - people who are dying of diabetes in the developing world will eventually get insulin - that I think people can understand it."I wonder how far-reaching this madness has to become before people do something about it.

Plants are being engineered to produce pharmaceuticals, and unleashed into the wild, where they can permanently pollute the environment without any way of removing them. The company is doing it so they can get a patent, and get rich, and bypass clinical trials for safety. And of course, there's the standard bull**** line about helping the developing world, even though the real plan is to get rich in the fat developed world where people actually, uh, suffer from diabetes because of their crappy diet.

This is almost as stupid as genetically engineered mosquitoes.

I wonder how far-reaching this madness has to become before people do something about it.

When the damage is seen. Probably ten years too late.

This is almost as stupid as genetically engineered mosquitoes.

This isn't as bad as genetically engineered foods and releasing GM mosquitos. The risks of contamination to other crops and to the natural food chain still exist.

GM crops are a lot scarier to me than GM animals. Pollen just doesn't stay in one area, it gets picked up by the wind and blown around the world.

GMO contamination is extremely common, especially where you have GMOs planted in fields adjacent fields. GMO farmers are getting sued by organic and conventional (non-GMO) farmers for crop contamination.

Even Bayer's GM rice, which was supposed to be experimental and limited to isolated test fields, somehow got out last year (http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/international/press/reports/rice-industry-in-crisis.pdf) and contaminated huge quantities of rice exports all over the world, causing chaos in the market as those countries scrambled to destroy all their imports and ban future U.S. imports.

These companies never take any serious precautions to prevent contamination. Why should they? It's their patent, so wherever it grows, they own it, and they can sue people who grow it without paying royalties (even if it got there accidentally).

Somehow got out? Are they total idiots? How do you prevent insects from cross-pollinating with other plants? How do you prevent the wind from picking up pollen and blowing it? The wheat rust spore is spread by the trade winds, why wouldn't pollen itself do it as well?

These companies never take any serious precautions to prevent contamination. Why should they? It's their patent, so wherever it grows, they own it, and they can sue people who grow it without paying royalties (even if it got there accidentally).
That's asinine. Negligently allowing your technology to spread unchecked should be grounds for forfeiting your patent rights. If the law were to support such forfeitures it would provide a huge incentive for companies to be more careful.

That's asinine. Negligently allowing your technology to spread unchecked should be grounds for forfeiting your patent rights.Not only don't you forfeit your patent rights, but you are able to enforce them, if you can show that the victimized farmer used the plant.

There's a well-known case from the Supreme Court of Canada in 2004 that ruled that a canola farmer whose crop had been heavily contaminated by apparently accidental exposure to GM canola was infringing on Monsanto's patent for the crop. Monsanto had earlier gone on his land and had taken and tested a sample, and, when they discovered it was partially contaminated with their GM canola, they sued him for not paying the $15/acre license fee (plus other damages). In the end the farmer was also forced to destroy all his own seed, which he had been developing for decades, because of the contamination. (As a consolation, the Canadian court ruled that he didn't have to pay Monsanto damages, because he obviously wasn't profiting from the contamination.)If the law were to support such forfeitures it would provide a huge incentive for companies to be more careful.Here's a better idea: remove the ridiculous rule that permits people to patent life, starting with the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Diamond v. Chakrabarty (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_v._Chakrabarty). That is the real source of this mess. Without that rule, GMOs would mostly cease to exist, and we wouldn't be dealing with this crisis.

Well you are just idiotic here.

Almost every drop of insulin now comes from GMO E. Coli.

Let me say this another way.

Evil scientists in the 70s and 80s took DNA(well rDNA and RNA) from human beings.

And inserted it into Escherichia coli bacteria. Which then now can produce HUMAN insulin.

And it was all an evil cabal and plot to prevent those with Diabetes Mellitus from dying natural deaths. Thereby preventing your 90% thing.

And now all these people with DM are breeding more and more. Such that there are more genetically predisposed people with DM, who are now just feeding the huge Pharmaceutical Profit Mania Machine. When they should have just died, or not been born at all.

And it was all done just to make profit, to make money.

Imagine if this E Coli escaped the huge sterile vats at Genentech, and got out into the digestive tracts of billions of people. It would wipe out the whole race of man, dying of hypoglycemia.

Well you are just idiotic here.

Almost every drop of insulin now comes from GMO E. Coli.That is contained in a laboratory, which is the critical difference.

Growing pharmaceutical-creating plants in the wild without containment is about as stupid as growing dangerous untested viruses out in the open in the middle of a shopping mall.

Which is to say, STUPID.And now all these people with DM are breeding more and more. Such that there are more genetically predisposed people with DM, who are now just feeding the huge Pharmaceutical Profit Mania Machine.Let's skip the bull****, type 2 diabetes is almost completely preventable with a proper diet and exercise. The explosion of diabetes is just a consequence of the explosion of obesity, which is just a consequence of people sitting all day on the couch flipping channels while eating bags of Doritos and guzzling liters of coke. In most cases, it is not some sort of inevitable genetic medical condition.

Diabetes parents make Diabetes children, that much is fact.

You are not arguing with that, I know.

Imagine our progeny, 20 generations from now. When Diabetes is treatable to a post reproductive age.