The selection made by our ancestors is, in the strict sense of the term, genetic manipulation. Handling comes from hand. When in a given population, you take such an ear to make a seed, you choose the genes that it contains. At the expense of others. You manipulate genes ...
Too simple to understand?
On the contrary, it is elementary and even if I speak little on the subject, I never said the opposite. I just point out that what you call genetic manipulation, others call it selection,
which has nothing to do with direct intrusion into the cell ignoring the natural barriers of protection against any intrusion. We are not on the same scale of value!
We can compare this to vaccination (I know I break my feet with this subject, but it is the same process) Jenner, notes that the cowherds are immunized against smallpox after having
affected the udder of cows with variola vaccine. It is therefore an OUTDOOR contact without intrusion and therefore passing through the skin's immune system. Jenner will break through, break down this barrier to go directly under the skin, assuming that where the skin's immune system reduces vaccine infection, this would increase the chance of making the next immune system, the blood, even more effective. .and it could have worked except that in the following epidemics the vaccinated were the first and most important victims and it had not been planned, nor imagined by the health authorities or point that the English State removed the vaccination obligation of this sickness.
GMOs are the same catchphrase except that the 2nd protective barrier is also crossed without precautions (which ones, moreover?)
Too simple to understand?
Why confuse with reversibility or not ???
Because any intervention
DANCE the living depends on it! if we do a bypass, it is as irreversible as if we do a heart transplant!
Just because it annoys you? Irrepressible need to be right?
Or just common sense!
Reread. I did not say that it is irreversible.
It is true, it is I who say it, but not concerning the selection, but the intrusion. We have 2 centuries of experiments of all kinds on the living and with each new discovery, we realize that we were unaware that such or such mechanism, had close links with other complex, sophisticated mechanisms which it is necessary sometimes try to repair, when possible only.
But our DIY enthusiasts do not take it into account since no ethics committee supervises these bulb heads that manufacturers do not use for their beautiful eyes, but to extract industrial products that generate large quantities, huge benefits, especially since the living can be patented and their turnover has exploded. 7 billion, soon 10 billion customers, it is not nothing and as much as possible, not to lose them stupidly with organic, alternative medicines.
Nothing like. I'm not stupid enough (even in your eyes - I hope)
Especially in my eyes, I appreciate your efforts to direct the minds and actions towards a better respect for the soil, for its life, so it is not a question of bullshit, but from a different point of view
to challenge a truism: if we stop cultivating them ("cure" if you want), most varieties (even old ones) will disappear ...
They will not disappear, any more than the trees, flowers, fauna "
where the hand of man has not set foot »
. According to Darwinism natural selection will sort and the most robust (according to other criteria than ours) will resist as they have done for millennia.
b) how does this contradict the fact that creating these varieties was "genetic manipulation" by our ancestors (literally: with their own hands, they chose such genes over others)?
They knew nothing about genes, not difficult! But by selecting, with their hands, certain seeds, they did so to the detriment of others more robust, more adapted to the soil, to the climate, etc… and that concerns especially our time.
In this we can compare the current corn in our regions, greedy in water, with that of the regions originating from this product where the fields are not precisely watered, but producing less large ears, and there no need for chemical treatments. You have already raised the issue, I think!
Let us go further: on the contrary, the fact that this is reversible even confirms the nature of the manipulation: manipulated in the direction of human needs (therefore genetically different), these plants can no longer live alone. I remind you, this is quite true for the "ancient vegetables", so idolized today!
Again, I'm not talking about selection here, but
FORCE INTRUSION into the genome, without knowing the medium or long term consequences. As for the plants selected for the needs of man (sic) it is rather selected for industrial needs, they rather conform the needs of their customers to them. it's called marketing!
Biology is the same for everything that lives and the lessons we can learn from it are the same; and when the human pretends to have more knowledge and experience than that of all the billions of living beings that have lived without him, for millennia (others say millions but whatever) I find it conceited and dangerous to put the fate of life in the hands of these genius do-it-yourselfers, but history is behind us to remind us that badly employed genius has always generated disasters (maybe even global warming)
"We make science with facts, like making a house with stones: but an accumulation of facts is no more a science than a pile of stones is a house" Henri Poincaré