Gene Silencing Pesticides By Monsanto- Next Step Showing Their Hatred Of Nature

Gene-silencing pesticides raise fears, hopes

"By zeroing in on a genetic sequence unique to one species, the technique has the potential to kill a pest without harming beneficial insects. That would be a big advance over chemical pesticides.

“If you use a neuro-poison, it kills everything,” said Subba Reddy Palli, an entomologist at the University of Kentucky who is researching the technology, which is called RNA interference. “But this one is very target-specific.”

But some specialists fear that releasing gene-silencing agents into fields could have unintended effects on wildlife and even human health. The Environmental Protection Agency, which regulates pesticides, held a meeting of scientific advisers this week to discuss the potential risks.

“To attempt to use this technology at this current stage of understanding would be more naïve than our use of DDT in the 1950s,” the National Honey Bee Advisory Board said in comments submitted to the EPA before the meeting, at the agency’s conference center in Arlington, Va.

RNA interference is of interest to beekeepers because one possible use, under development by Monsanto, is to kill a mite that is believed to be at least partly responsible for the mass die-offs of honeybees in recent years.

Monsanto has applied for regulatory approval of corn that is genetically engineered to use RNAi, as the approach is called for short, to kill the western corn rootworm. And it is trying to develop a spray that would restore the ability of its Roundup herbicide to kill weeds that have grown impervious to it."

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As previous posts on this blog noted RNA interference has been the next step in biotech/ag's plan to play God with the natural world. Using "pests" (that BTW can be managed effectively through IPM (Integrated Pest Management) as their first test subject is just the beginning. This was why Round Up was introduced to fail...in order to bring us to the next level of even more lethal pesticides and RNA Interference without knowing the potential consequences of them. I always wonder how it is that the word "targeted" is used when marketing pesticides as if putting it out into the environment won't somehow infect the whole environment at one point. For all of their supposed genius they are woefully ignorant of the effects these pesticides have on the natural world up the food chain... Oh hell, no they're not, they just don't care.

Also notice how Monsanto is deferring to mites killing off bees to cover up for the fact that Round Up and GMOs have been responsible as well and using it to spin their image to make us think they care about anything in the natural world after over a century of doing nothing but destroying it. It absolutely sickens me. I sincerely hope RNA Interference/gene silencing in regards to animals and let's face it in the future- humans is roundly condemned by scientists.

Also see:

USDA: RNA-interference Pesticides Will Need Special Safety Testing

New GM Nightmares With RNA

"DsRNA technology to silence genes based on specific sequence matching has numerous unintended off-target effects, and is no improvement over the conventional hit and miss GM technology that has already proven every bit as hazardous as some of us have predicted (see ISIS’ recent reviews ([22] Bt Crops Failures and Hazards, SiS 53, [23] Why Glyphosate Should Be Banned, ). We have been calling for a global ban on GM crops and a shift to sustainable non-GM agriculture since 2003 [24] The Case for A GM-Free Sustainable World (Independent Science Panel Report, ISIS publication). The case is stronger than ever now."