On 07/01/2011 10:25 PM, Warp wrote:

>    I think you are confused. The modern banana (that yellow one) is
> only something like 200 years old. It's the product of a mutation of
> a single wild banana plant which suddenly started growing that yellow
> sweet version. The wild banana is much smaller, green, full of seeds
> and almost inedible in raw form.
>
>    The mutation in question is actually so severe that the modern banana
> plant is sterile: It cannot reproduce by itself, requiring human
> intervention for cultivation (this happens mainly by transplanting
> underground stems or tissue cultures).
>
>    (Ironically, the modern banana is so mutated that it can be considered
> by all practical means "unnatural", as without human intervention it would
> have died right from that very first mutated plant 200 years ago, which
> makes it a perfect example of gene manipulation by humans, yet people who
> strongly oppose gene manipulation have usually no problems in eating
> bananas.)

Well, there are plenty of other plants that are so mutated that they are 
now incapable of reproducing for themselves but for some special animal 
that farms them. (I might mention, for example, the fungi that 
leafcutter ants culture, for example.) The natural world is full of 
complex partnerships such as this. I don't think you could call the 
banana "unatural".

As for people who oppose genetic engineering, they will argue that 
bananas are OK, because the gene alteration happened "naturally". If the 
gene alteration had happened because of a man in a white coat, that 
would obviously be "unatural", which is bad. Obviously.

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