viral food

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pahunkboy -> viral food (8/25/2006 9:30:44 AM)
http://www.newswithviews.com/Richards/byron7.htm This is the first time viruses have been approved for use as food additives. The FDA wants you to believe it will be safe to consume these viruses every day for the rest of your life with no adverse health effects..... any thoughts on this? newswithviews tends to be alarmist...but ?

MistressLorelei -> RE: viral food (8/25/2006 10:08:06 AM)
Maybe this will be a bit of a rant, but.... From what I have seen lately (at least on these boards)... it doesn't seem like people really care what they put into their bodies or the bodies of their fellow human beings anyway. People accept buying pesticides, people smoke, and then think it's reasonable to share second hand smoke with the public; people can in good conscience consume tortured animal products; they don't care if foods designed for children (Tropicana fruit punch) are being colored with beetle-like bugs, etc. If people don't care what they are consuming themselves... why would I think the FDA or anyone else would care too much either. When people take a stand and fight for the right to be able to know what's in the food they eat, to have safe food sold to the public, or the right to breathe clean air in public places, they are considered the ones who are squashing freedom. It's ironic.

Rule -> RE: viral food (8/25/2006 10:45:13 AM)
It is an ideal way for people with evil intent to contaminate the population with fun virusses like the one that causes AIDS. Simply surreptitiously put some in the mix of virusses that is applied.

pahunkboy -> RE: viral food (8/25/2006 11:06:22 AM)
in the normal course of the day sloppy food handling - one has to beware of e coli and foods that sat out too long. some years ago an eelction was thrown - seattle maybe. a fringe group laced the salad bars so not many would show up and vote.....

ToServeIsToLive -> RE: viral food (8/25/2006 11:22:54 AM)
It's certainly something that's worrysome from reading that article, but you can find articles that paint the use of floride in drinking water and amalgam in teeth as incredible dangers to the public when they simple aren't. I'd like to read some more articles on it before saying anything bad or good; maybe articles that aren't lined on both sides with books you can buy would be more presuasive to me.

Daddy4UdderSlut -> RE: viral food (8/25/2006 1:57:18 PM)
I am not very concerned about it. They are using Bacteriophages - viruses whose hosts are bacteria. Viruses are pretty choosy about who they can infect. That's because in order to infect an organism, they need to carry out a very specific "lock and key" binding to specific molecules that are studding the cell membrane - it's a molecular recognition event that involves both shape and electronic discrimination. So there aren't "one size fits all" viruses. Secondly, these are being used to reduce the number of cases of toxic "food poisoning" by bacteria - a serious problem in the US. So, even if there is some potential for issues, you need to weigh that against the benefits, which is exactly what would be very carefully done during the review process that was needed to win approval. For more information, see for example the nice Wiki page on them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacteriophage

Daddy4UdderSlut -> RE: viral food (8/25/2006 2:14:21 PM)
Just a P.S.... I didn't explicitly say this up above... not only are viruses very specific in their host-binding, but since the target host here are bacteria, bacteriophages would not transition to animals (like us) easily, as eukaryotes (organisms with a nucleus) diverged from prokaryotes (organisms lacking a nucleus), over a billion years ago, so animals share only relatively few and far distant homologies (molecular-level similarities) with bacteria.

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