On bioethics and property

[madd0ct0r]

scenario: A bio-tinkerer develops a brassica that accumulates all concentrations of heavy metal from the soil. She's planning to sell it for clearing old factory sites and low impact, low yield mining as well as use it to clean a site near her water supply.
A second group object to the ownership of a living thing's code and release it into the wild. A third group object to this action, since they see it as damaging the purity of the unexplored parts of the wild ecosystem, as well as the practical matter of not wanting a cross breed adding heavy metals to their salad crops.

Who is in the right? What happens?

[Alyrium Denryle]

A bacteria is a bacteria. If it is made from whole cloth I dont see a problem in owning it, and setting something like that loose in the wild is fucking insane.

Here's the problem. There are the dual problems of bioaccumulation and horizontal gene transfer. This little bacteria eats lead paint (just to toss one out). It gets eaten by other bacteria--or when it dies the genes that let it eat lead paint get picked up by other bacteria. They get eaten by other bacteria, that are in turn eaten by paramecia up and up the food chain it goes, accumulating more and more lead at each step.

Jesus fucking christ that is a bad idea.

It would be one thing if you were to keep it in the lab. Bring in a bunch of soil or an old house's walls and let it go to down before harvesting its biofilm, autoclaving everything (to sufficient temperature to scramble DNA completely), and then putting the soil back after innoculating with soil bacteria. I could potentially grok that.

But not this. Releasing this into the wild is a bad bad idea.

[AMX]

A bacteria is a bacteria.

Brassica, not bacteria.
It's a plant, not a microorganism.

[Alyrium Denryle]

A bacteria is a bacteria.

Brassica, not bacteria.
It's a plant, not a microorganism.

Oh. Derp. It was 5:30 in the morning, my brain was not firing in all cylinders. Point still mostly stands, it will still be eaten by things and bio-accumulate. Less bad than bacteria, but also likely less effective. Still probably only good in a reclamation greenhouse setting.

[Zeropoint]

At long last, children everywhere gain a good excuse to get out of eating broccoli!

Okay, more seriously: bio-remediation is a very cool technology, and there are already plants that do this (spinach, for instance, is known to collect cadmium). As far as human consumption goes, you'd just have to be sure that you don't eat any brassica cultivars grown in areas with high levels of heavy metals. I have no knowledge of what kinds of animals eat brassica in the wild, or what effect this would have on the food web. Obviously, that's something that a responsible team would investigate before releasing it into the wild.

[Zeropoint]

I forgot to include my ethical evaluations:

First party, the bio-tinkerer: in the right. She's doing something that's a win for everyone.
Second party, the eco-terrorists: while I, too, have serious reservations about anyone being able to own the genetic code of living things, releasing a genetically modified organism into the wild, deliberately, without proper study and authorization is grossly irresponsible at best. I'd say they're in the wrong.
Third party, the bio-conservatives: Their objection to the eco-terrorists' actions is on target, IMO, but kind of pointless since it's already happened.

What happens: If it were up to me, we'd have studies to track the spread of the modified strain in the wild, as well as evaluations of its impact on the food web. We'd also monitor brassica cultivars being sold for food for both the modified genes and heavy metal levels.

Once opened, a can of worms cannot be re-canned without using a larger can.

[Simon_Jester]

At long last, children everywhere gain a good excuse to get out of eating broccoli!

Okay, more seriously: bio-remediation is a very cool technology, and there are already plants that do this (spinach, for instance, is known to collect cadmium). As far as human consumption goes, you'd just have to be sure that you don't eat any brassica cultivars grown in areas with high levels of heavy metals. I have no knowledge of what kinds of animals eat brassica in the wild, or what effect this would have on the food web. Obviously, that's something that a responsible team would investigate before releasing it into the wild.

The thing is, party that released the organism did not do that, and once you release a plant into the wild you have little or no control over what species eat it or what happens to it.

When it comes to things like genetic engineering, being responsible is far, far more important than having good intentions. Because it is entirely possible to have good intentions and 'accidentally' do something that if you'd just used your damn brain, you would have predicted would destroy the world.

So basically we have no way of even estimating the amount of damage that could be done here.

[Zeropoint]

Well, that's why I called the party who released it "eco-terrorists".

[Zixinus]

At the possible failure of using a sledgehammer to correct a nail, would it be possible to bio-engineer a virus or something that would kill the rouge brassica before it spreads too far?

[Zixinus]

Also, on a bit of actual bioethics: has the bio-tinkerer added any control measures to the brassica? Things like kill switches or things that can otherwise stop it?

If its a prototype, then the bio-tinkerer had the responsibility of ensuring the brassica only survives in the lab.

If it was sort-of a final product, it has the responsibility of having such control measures precisely to prevent unwanted contamination.

[madd0ct0r]

I'm not sure a virus or similar is wise. It'd probsbly be an even higher risk of species jumping into crops than the metal gatherer genes are.

I do agree that the prototype is obliged to be kill switched, but sterile and dependent on corporate addittiives is the kind of binding of life for monry that led to formation of seccond group in the first place

[Lagmonster]

The OP scientist isn't doing anything new. The eco-terrorists in this scenario would be taking a bizarre turn from the norm, however - almost every case I can name involved the destruction, not liberation, of such plants. It'd be like an anti-gun advocate raiding an arms factory and then mailing everything they took to random homes across the country.

As a sidestep to the OP, and just to help everyone sleep worse at night, we've had about 70 years of highly successful work done on anticrop agents. The big boom was in the 40s and 50s, then petered off in the 70s with the signing of various treaties banning the practice (although there are always countries testing things like wheat rust or wheat smut anticrop weapons), but in the nineties the war on drugs brought it back into the limelight with actual funded attempts at creating something which would specifically target drug crops.

I can't say how successful such agents are, because there really isn't much info out there. Their use is unbelievably unpopular, wildly unethical and almost certainly illegal in ways that even the US couldn't brush off.