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Tavascarow
Joined: 06 Aug 2006 Posts: 8407 Location: South Cornwall
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Slim
Joined: 05 Mar 2006 Posts: 6612 Location: New England (In the US of A)
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Tavascarow
Joined: 06 Aug 2006 Posts: 8407 Location: South Cornwall
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Slim
Joined: 05 Mar 2006 Posts: 6612 Location: New England (In the US of A)
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Posted: Fri Nov 06, 15 2:06 am Post subject: |
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The traces of GE DNA are less surprising when you note that
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The primer pairs were selected from those reported in the literature ( Jennings et al., 2003), with the aim of obtaining short amplicons (118 bp), compatible with highly fragmented DNA samples |
and that they found more traces of chloroplast and other endogenous plant DNA than they did of the GE DNA. So the bigger news is that colostrum carries along DNA fragments from ingested feed. The pieces were "highly fragmented" and that is very much not equal to intact genes.
Even if intact genes are going through, it's another big leap to suggest that the kid's cells are going to take them up and do anything with them. (not saying it's impossible, but for gene therapy to work for example a vector has to actually insert the desired gene into an animal's existing DNA, within a cell. That's a few steps removed from DNA fragments floating around in blood and milk)
The striking difference in the paper is the change in milk fat and protein content. There's no ready explanation for that (even if you're blaming the GM technology - that still doesn't answer "How?"). The paper was a little ambiguous about the soybean meal used
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...soybean meal (13% or 20% of concentrate DM) which was from conventional or GM (MON40-3-2) soybean.... |
Clearly "MON40-3-2" is the roundup ready soy they used, but what was the conventional? Was it a non GE version of the same soybean variety? If not, that's a big experimental screw-up because the drastic differences we see could be from soybean varietal differences and not the presence or absence of GE technology.
EDIT: There's also no mention of how the two soybean varieties were grown. Was roundup actually used on either? etc.... For a study so entirely dependendent up on the goats' diet, their table showing its chemical composition is pretty lacking. (more of just an assumption that all things were equal)
They only said that 10 goats for each group were divided up. They don't say if the 10 goats were paired in relation to their baseline performance. (e.g., a goat that has kidded several times before will produce more and better milk than a goat kidding for the first time, if they behave anything like dairy cows). There's nothing here to say that those goats wouldn't have produced that lower quality milk anyway.
Okay, so that's my critical take on it. If they did everything right experimentally, than these findings will make big news and lead to more investigation for sure. Did they find what they think they found? |
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dan1
Joined: 23 Jun 2010 Posts: 102 Location: Bristolish
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tahir
Joined: 28 Oct 2004 Posts: 45672 Location: Essex
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dpack
Joined: 02 Jul 2005 Posts: 46218 Location: yes
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Slim
Joined: 05 Mar 2006 Posts: 6612 Location: New England (In the US of A)
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bagpuss
Joined: 09 Dec 2004 Posts: 10507 Location: cambridge
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dpack
Joined: 02 Jul 2005 Posts: 46218 Location: yes
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