@MorethanOrganic

martin, who tweets as @gedankenabfall:

"who decides what's natural and what's not? Is it just you? Can you give me CLEAR criteria of what to consider natural?"

@morethanorganic reply:

Im calling it as i see it - ive said all along my view is just that - mine. but i do think the dictionary definition of nature you gave is a misunderstanding.

So my crude view of nature would be:

Limitless interdependent causes and conditions that result in equilibrium.

Cause & affect is always happening. prior to the emergence of homosapiens, cause & affect was happening - it caused that emergence.

Now in our more 'developed' human state, cause & affect is still happening, and of course humans' continue to be deeply involved in that. 

What has shifted dynamically since the beginning of the industrial revolution, is our human level of interplay with cause and affect, and the results on our world.  

Both animals and humans use their intelligence to modify their world (as they see it) to benefit their survival. In this respect, where humans differ from animals is that we can use our intelligence to benefit ourselves, without having to appreciate interdependence. We (humans) are so smart, we no longer see we're part of the bigger picture of cause and affect - so we think we can do what we like - as long as we benefit. And we do benefit - but only for the short term, because we are never seperate from interdependence with everything else. We're just forgetting our long term survival involves the long term survival of everything else.

So you might ask , how does gmo differ from making a table out of wood - as both result from human interplay with cause & condition?

Yes, both are human interplay with cause & condition, but the level of interplay, or the importance of that interplay and the ongoing causes that creates are fundamentally different.  Nowhere in the development of gmo, has the interdependence with everything else been fully appreciated - we are starting to see that now with gmo contamination of wild plants and water ways. But the on-going results for humans and everything connected, will continue on & on - we (humans) have no idea of the long term effects.

Now, if you're looking for a pure, isolated definition of nature - i can't give you one. As humans are also nature.  In a way, the (human) problem is that we're always looking to seperate ourselves and everything else. In reality, this isnt possible - we've conned ourselves into thinking our interplay with cause and condition no longer needs to appreciate interdependence.

Hi Gavin,

I agree with much of what you are saying. Please forgive my quite long answer, but I want to avoid any future misunderstandings.

So my arguments were referring to the “established” or more “common“ meaning of the word nature, like it is defined in the Oxford Learners' dictionary:

nature – the phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of the earth, as opposed to humans or human creations [...]

 

 

When most people hear “nature” they will be referring to the “dictionary definition”, I think – the dictionary is just reflecting the actual use of the language. And that's the place everybody is looking up words she don't understands, right?

And yes, it is a negative definition and it separates humans from their environment, or it is describing the world from the perspective of humans. If you or me are agreeing with that view is completely irrelevant, for most people “nature” will have the meaning “everything not altered by man”. That's why it is in the dictionary. It may be helpful to keep that in mind and *not* introduce own definitions for otherwise well established terms, or there will be misunderstandings. If you speak another language nobody else is speaking, who do you want to talk to? I think, for a healthy discussion it is important to establish a common denominator (e.g. scientists will try to speak in plain and simple terms, we will stick to common definitions of words, etc.).

Your definition of the word “nature” is more like a description of “the world”, “the cosmos” or “the universe”. Actually I don't see the necessity to have a word for a platitude like “everything is connected by cause and condition”. Of course everything is.

But in that context, the word “nature” loses its meat and its meaning, it is vague and hard to grasp. As I see it, by your definition it is even hard to assign different levels of what is more or less natural. If you comparing, what are you comparing to? What's the ideal? If everything is nature, there is no ideal, as everything is already contained in the word itself. And isn't something that is “unnatural”, i.e. something *not* resulting from some cause, simply impossible?

Also, your definiton of nature demands a definition of “equilibrium” – commonly that will refer to something in balance, with no overall change taking place (I looked it up).

It is obvious, that the universe, the cosmos or nature by its classical meaning is not in perfect balance at all. The universe is expanding, stars form and die, galaxies form an collide, etc. Also in the “biological universe”, nothing is fixed and everything is changing over time – how would evolution be possible, if all relationships between all organisms would be in perfect balance with each other? The opposite is true: only by pertubation there is a chance to develop and to evolve. Change is a immanent feature of nature, balance and stagnation means death.

From the common definition of the word “nature” it is easy to conclude that all our food is not nature, as it has been altered to our needs, some foods for more that 10,000 years. By that, our tools, our products, our cultural and technical achievements are not “natural”. The only truly natural food are e.g. wild fruits, herbs and roots that are edible, and also free-living wild animals.

Organic food is marketed as “natural food”, but you are right, it is just ordinary food, that is produced without a specific set of human interventions, e.g. synthetic pesticides and synthetic fertilizer. By the dictionary definition, it does not qualify as strictly “natural”, but I see that it is produced with taking nature/environmental effects into account. It also appeals to the “good old times” and tradition, old varieties and pre-scientific discoveries (That's one ting bugging me about organic food: I have to think of the mind-bendingly stupidity of Rudolf Steiner's bio-dynamic agriculture, where you have to treat your soils with all kinds of esoteric garbage to transfer “cosmic forces” into it).

How does that relate to highly industrialized agriculture and GMOs? By the common definition, it is clearly not similar to nature, we both will agree. By your definition, it does is “less natural”.

If I look at the stuff we are doing with the “normal” industrialized and engineered agricultural systems, by molecular breeding and radiation-induced mutation, I don't see so much of a difference to the use of transgenic organisms. Of course, we are never really independent from our environment and all our actions will have a long-term effect, be it with or without GMOs. To say, GMOs in general are unsafe and are “contaminating” the earth, is not the point, actually. Biotechnology and genetic modification of organisms is just a toll to achieve something, for good or for bad.

You yourself said, you would be OK if one isolated gene is transferred from one species to another by gene technology, as long it is inside one plant family. But that isolated event never would happen without human intervention and the resulting plant would be a GMO. Other genetic modifications could help saving ecosystems and decrease the environmental burdens of agriculture – isn't that a good thing?

So are there levels of “naturality” of GMOs? Are genetic modifications really “new”?

You said, it's the level of tinkering with “cause of condition” - but I could not draw a sharp line between “normal industrialized agriculture” and “GMO agriculture”. Is that relationship not more like a continuum?

As @food_ethics pointed out, the issue is quite complicated. Gene transfer from even distantly related species takes place in nature, but that new traits are not selected by man. New traits of plants, by breeding or by GM, is a potential threat to health and environment and have to be tested thoroughly.

I don't think organic farming, the present “modern” farming methods or GMOs alone will be sufficient to answer all the questions we have about today's and future agricultural problems.

I think, science and research is the key to a more “sustainable” (whatever that means ...) production of food. By using objective criteria we possibly could approach an agricultural system that both is healthy for man and environment. That also means, we should not object certain technologies just because they are used to do bad things. We can learn from both organic farming and highly-engineered agriculture to distil the very best techniques for our needs.

Right?

Thanks for your reply Martin.

"it's the level of tinkering with “cause of condition” - but I could not draw a sharp line between “normal industrialized agriculture” and “GMO agriculture”. Is that relationship not more like a continuum?"

Yes, i can see why you would say that., It could be viewed as a continuem.  But my take on that, would be that gmo on the industrial farming continuem, would be like comparing a 200lb conventional bomb with a nuclear warhead - it would sit way down on the continuem.

I think you understand why im saying gmo is New Food.  This type of gene transfer doesnt happen in nature - without human interplay. 

If we compare gmo contamination of the environment with pesticide contamination - the difference is that gmo contamination is working at the genetic level.  This means that wild plants and ordinary crops within the same plant family as the gmo plant, are being fundamentally changed.  Without identifying all contaminated plants, this contamination cannot be reversed and will continue to create new contamination. 

I just watched the ceo of syngenta talking about gmo in Europe.  He was saying that in 14 years of commercial gmo use, there havnt been any clear cases of adverse health affects on humans.  Even if that is true, 14 years is a blink of an eye!  Causes & conditions are working all the time.  Plants have eveolved our millions of years to what we have now, and this joker thinks it's ok there is no adverse effects in 14 years? 

Where is the consideration?

Now regarding definitions of nature: I would say people would benefit by coming to their own understanding and not relying on dictionary definitions.

Yes, of course everything is changing constantly - my view is not at odds with that - cause & condition creates the appearance of change. Living beings exist in a state of balance - not fixed or stationary balance, but a state of dynamic balance.

Regarding natural balance or equilibrium, we can see it happening at many levels: For example, if we're cold, we will put on a sweater or turn on our heating system.  At the human level our health needs to be in balance for us to feel healthy.  The planet is no different.

Now, if you look at an unspoiled eco system, lets say the Himalayan foothills of Bhutan -  there will be a certain number of predators that can survive on the available prey in a given area.  If humans reduce the size of that given area, the number of predators reduces accordingly, as their prey is reduced - dynamic balance, which is connected with interdependence. 

The point is that humans have pushed and are continuing to further push the non-human living systems of this planet, past the point where they can dynamically maintain their healthy balance.  

I appreciate chatting with you. Its important to debate things if we are to really get into understanding a topic and understand how people view things differently.

best wishes, gavin     

Hi Gavin,

I'm also enjoying the discussion

I think you understand why im saying gmo is New Food. This type of gene transfer doesnt happen in nature - without human interplay.

As I said, this type of gene transfer happens in nature and is most visible at evolutionary timescales of several hundreds of millions of years. The gene transfer between prokaryotic parasites/endosymbionts and eukaryotic hosts is well documented, transfer among eukaryotes e.g. via virus infections or prey-engulfing protists seems to be possible. The sea slug I mentioned earlier is even considered to have possibly inherited algal genes. Other bacteria take a more direct route: Agrobacterium tumefaciens integrates its Ti plasmid into the hosts genome, from where it induces gall growth which feeds Agrobacterium.

There is horizontal gene transfer between closely and distantly related species, but if it really takes place, depends first of all on the spatial relationship. Obviously organisms that have no contact with each other will not interchange genes. In that respect GMOs are new, because now it is possible that even spatially seperated organisms can have a gene from one another. But is that relevant? Just because it does not happen, it does not mean, it is harmful. Breeding is also nothing more than accelerating something like a artificial evolution to our needs. Spatially distant relatives of plants and animals, that never would have “seen” each other, are interbred. At evolutionary timescales, also horizontal gene transfer takes place. So GM can be seen as an analogue to the natural horizontal gene transfer.

So, yes, I think there is not a sharp boundary between GM and conventional breeding, especially when there are genes from close relatives are involved. What makes you think that GM is like a nuclear warhead compared to a conventional bomb? What risks do you see in GM which could never occur in nature?

However, I don't think that we should look at nature and take it as a reference for our actions. Risk assessment has to be done without referring to a natural or religious dogma.

“Contamination” or biosafety is one of these risks. Genes and traits of GMOs can be transferred to relatives via pollen and also distant species via horizontal genetic transfer. And you are right, 14 years are probably not enough to asses all the risks. They are also not much time to assess all the risks of usual breeding.

BTW: One possibility to reduce the risk of GM pollen is to produce sterile plants or transplastomic plants, which bear a modified chloroplast genome. Chlorplasts of most plants are inherited by the female plants only – no GM pollen, no “genetic contamination”.

Regarding the definition of “nature”: It may be beneficial to make up their minds about their relationships with nature and what it all means for oneself, but at the same time it is important to know that we are talking about the same things.

Equibrium in nature.

A homeostatic system can remain stable by its own means in certain boundaries, some cannot. That's not a feature of all natural systems. But of course, unstable systems are wiped out and stable systems remain. In the past, there have been a lot of unstable situations where species went extinct and mass periods of mass mortality occured. A feature of life is the possibility to adapt. Ecosystems are established, prove stable or unstable, remain through time or are eleminated by changing environmental factors.

In the really big picture, there is no steady state, because our planet and with it, abiotic and biotic environmental factors change constantly.

Of course, the present global climatic system and ecosystem has been relatively stable for quite a while now. We are doing our best to destabilize the system and compromise everything. Nature does not care, even if we destroy the whole planet, there will be adaptive changes to establish more or less stable systems.

The static picture of nature that needs to be conserved is just plain wrong. We “just” need to find a way that makes it possible to not destabilize the system. We do not to “save” nature for the sake of nature, we should do that for ourselves and to not endanger our own species ...

Martin, it seems we disagree on a few key points:

"transfer among eukaryotes e.g. via virus infections or prey-engulfing protists seems to be possible"

1. Please show me examples of genetic transfer between eukaryotes (unaided by humans). This is important since the plants and animals that make up our (human) food have the eukaryote cell structure. 

2. Nature without human involvement results in dynamic balance.  This is NOT saying that some idylic paradise is possible.  We still have earthquakes, volcanoes,disease etc.  But go to a woodland that has been allowed by humans to mature - that is dynamic balance.  It is not solid - but constantly in flux.  Cut a tree down, and everything else in that wood is affected, and adapts to those changes.

3.  I do care about nature. Partly this is selfish because i know that this planet is nature and my childrens' future depends on nature. But partly i just love it - i love all the limitless work that goes into what we call nature, and most of all, I love being connected with that. 

...Also another thing related to point 1: 

Human plant breeding that has evolved over the last few thousand years has been focused on breeding plants within the same family.  Only with gmo, have humans started to introduce bacterial genes into plants.

So again, we see that GMO, is not the same as plant breeding - and indeed it is a massive shift along even the industrial farming continuem.    

examples of genetic transfer between eukaryotes (unaided by humans)

Just look it up in Pubmed, that's also all I can do. This is from the abstract of one of the first hits:

Transfers between eukaryotes also occur, mainly into larger phagotrophic eukaryotes that ingest eukaryotic cells, but also between plant lineages.

Second example: The sea slug Elysia chlorotica (eukaryote), that eats the green algae Vaucheria litorea (eukaryote), extracts the chloroplasts from the alga and integrates them into its gut tissues. It feeds on its products and can survive without other food for its remaining lifetime. It seems that the slug managed to integrate some algal genes, that are usually encoded in the nucleus and imports them into the “stolen” chloroplasts. Some of the photosynthetic proteins brake down over time and need to be replaced. It seems that the slug makes these proteins for the cholorplasts.

Look here for the original paper.

That's the two examples that came to my minf or could find within a few minutes of literature research. Try it yourself, you will be surprised how much scientific knowledge is indexed in Pubmed and Google Scholar.

Regarding point 2 I agree that stable ecosystems are steady-state systems. I agree that these have to be preserved for a large number of reasons. One of these surely is that people enjoy nature (point 3), so do I! I think, every scientist shares that fascination from the complexity and all the interconnections in the cosmos.

***

My reply to your second answer:

Yes, you are right, GM is of course a NEW way of manipulating plant genomes. But only “new” does not necessarly mean that it is more invasive or more insecure. „Massive shift“ is not contained in „new“. Yes, you can do crazy things with gene tech, but you don't have to. You also can make cats withoit tails and ears by breeding, but you don't have to.

All I want to say: it depends on what you actually do with the technology. You said, GMOs with genes from the same family maybe would be ok, but that is still GMO! You have a spectrum of possibilities to apply technology, it is us to choose from them. Transferring bacterial genes into plants does not necessarily mean that this is hazardous, just because it is new. 

If you look at the impact on the overall genome, radiating plants or crossing distant relatives inside one family have a much more disrupting effect. If you know where you insert your new gene that CAN be much more safe than crossing two plants you don't know what the outcome will be.

Martin,

Hmm - pls provide links to the research you talk about - ive looked on pubmed and cant locate the docs. cheers.

I linked them in my reply. Or what papers are you talking about? 

For example by the following search you will find plenty of work regarding horizontal gene transfer in eukaryotes

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed&cmd=search&term=eukaryotes+horizontal+gene+transfer

Of course, it takes a bit of effort to find out the relevant papers. 

interesting - this does seem to be an example - from sea slug to algae.  Again its parasitic type activity - & the paper itself goes on to say eukaryote to eukaryote HGT is extremely rare.

You may be interested in this new book:

Unintended Horizontal Transfer of Recombinant DNA

Further on you make an important point, that i agree with you about:

"All I want to say: it depends on what you actually do with the technology"

Of course, this is a big part of the lack of trust in gmo.  The genetic engineer, Michael Antoniou, seems to have a sane argument:

thanks Martin, for developing the conversation and broadening my own short sighted view, best wishes, gavin.