Silverseren

u/Silverseren@kbin.social
218 posts · 953 comments

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I have a couple of concerns with this.

The first being if some states are going to try to use this against any kids charged with being child sex offenders, like several states have done with teenagers who have sex with each other (or have nude pictures of each other).

An additional concern is obviously conservatives trying to use this against trans people and drag queens, whom they are already trying to define as sex offenders just for existing in public.

Another concern or just question is...is this meant to be a deterrent? And is it even effective in that? For a lot of child sex offenders, a major component of the pleasure derived is from having power over the child in question. Removing their genitals wouldn't necessarily change that? It's possible it may even have them turn more to violence toward children as their outlet.

I'm just wondering on the effectiveness of this method. Is there any evidence at all or is this being done on an emotional whim?

Other methods have been used in the meantime, for decades. But they are only so effective. Vitamins, other foods, and other methods have been in process. But they each have their own limitations, both on supply to remote areas and getting local peoples to take up those methods.

The latter is the biggest issue, especially with trying to introduce alternative foods like carrots. If they aren't a part of the local cuisine, many of the individuals, who are often subsistence farmers who have limited land and only grow explicitly what they need to survive, aren't interested.

Hence why golden rice was developed, because rice is a main part of the local diet in these areas and so it is much easier to get them to adopt growing a different cultivar of something they already eat than it is to convince them to grow a completely different food.

Greenpeace actively fearmongers with any and every conspiracy claim they can come up with on the subject. If you look at the reasoning they used in the OP article above and given to the Philippines, you'll see that they never use any detailed claims, but always vague ones. They reference "safety concerns" without specification and without any consideration of the dozens of papers published on golden rice in the past two decades.

Do you have any idea of the history of litigation around cross pollination from GMO crops?

I do. In that it was made up by the organic companies to fearmonger about GM crops. The only lawsuits that happened were against people who were purposefully harvesting the GM crops of their neighbors to plant only those. Cross-contamination doesn't result in a subsequent harvest of 99+% GM crops.

Rice already has the beta-carotene genetic pathway. It's just missing the final enzyme gene to cause production of the precursor product.

Furthermore, people have already tried to introduce alternative crops. But people who live there aren't interested. If a crop like carrots isn't a part of their cuisine, they have little to no interest in altering the foods they eat. Especially if they're already subsistence farmers with limited crop growing areas.

Oh hey. I didn't realize anyone was still pushing that long since debunked canard.

The guy in question was a lying hack, who purposefully set up his fields next to a farmer who grew the GM crop and then purposefully harvested the crops that were along the connecting edge of the field so he could replant them without having to have bought them. When he was called out on that, he lied and blamed cross-contamination, but there was no way for his subsequent harvest to be 99+% the GM crop from cross-contamination unless he had collected and planted them on purpose.

So, yeah, he was sued. Including by his neighboring farmer for theft.

It's actually interesting looking at what traits seem scary, but are actually massively negative in the wild. Like, there were a bunch of people freaking out about that modified salmon that grows three times faster (and requires 3 times the amount of food to compensate).

If that ever escaped into the wild, it would die. Period. The only way it stays alive is by being fed directly and by not having to use its energy to swim a lot. There is no advantage in the wild for growing 3 times faster. Heck, because of that, it likely wouldn't even match up with the spawning season properly.