[dragonwriter]

> Selective breeding isn't genetic engineering though.

Yes, selective breeding is far less controlled and predictable as to unintended changes; people think of it as safer because of the way it used to be done which operates over longer time scales, which, aside from not actually providing any kind of safety, neglects the fact that modern methods allow selective breeding to operate over much shorter time scales.

[makomk]

I've mentioned elsewhere in the thread that golden rice has yield problems, as do many GMO foods. That's partly because this kind of genetic modification isn't actually all that controlled; one of the side effects is that it disrupts a random selection of completely unrelated genes.

[dragonwriter]

> I've mentioned elsewhere in the thread that golden rice has yield problems, as do many GMO foods.

So do many non-GMO engineered crops where the trait that is the focus of optimization isn't yield, since a “yield problem” is deteemined by comparison to mainstream crops which are engineered for yield traits.

> That's partly because this kind of genetic modification isn't actually all that controlled

That's even more true of selective breeding, whether by traditional or more rapid modern means, so that's not a problem with GMOs compared to any real alternative, it's a problem of all existing methods compared to a hypothetical state where we have both perfect modelling to predict phenotypical effects of genetic changes and perfect ability to make arbitrary, error-free edits to genetic code. And even then we are stuck with the fact that some traits at inherently in conflict.

[modbait]

Selective breeding performed slowly over longer time scales did at least give the breeders time to notice some kinds of severe problems. If you're breeding wheat and accidentally introduce a toxic mutation, you might notice the resulting pile of dead horses. There won't be a warning like this in every case, but it's not right to say that there's zero benefit to going slow.

That said, I don't really have an opinion on GMOs. I'm fine with you partaking first, though. :-)

[oxryly1]

Selective breeding doesn't create fundamentally new organisms like transgenic GMOs, however -- organisms for which there is no method to predict their interactions with our one and only environment (Earth, if that wasn't clear :p).

[dragonwriter]

> Selective breeding doesn't create fundamentally new organisms like transgenic GMOs,

Yes, selective breeding (both artificial and natural selection) create fundamentally new organisms.

[JoshMnem]

> GMOs are not necessarily any more fundamentally new than hybrids and mutated strains produced through other techniques.

"Not necessarily" but sometimes.

[nradov]

That is incorrect. GMOs are not necessarily any more fundamentally new than hybrids and mutated strains produced through other techniques.