all right alex i want to thank you for weighing in on what you perceive to be the issues surrounding of the possible expansion of spider-man's in the united states that was radio host alex jones that's no joke for now for more on the stories we cover go to r t dot com slash usa i'll be back with much more news at five pm. sure is that so much of a moment in the materialization me even a lot of people are saving the euro in the financial and political costs of doing so is it all worth it there's a euro project need a serious rethink should there be. bringing you the latest in science and technology from the realm. of the huge earth covered.

live. a charter here broadcasting live from washington d.c. coming up today on the big picture.

live. today violence is once again fled up. these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. for asians are today.

these slides are very interesting. and this is this is an interesting slide with what you have here and one nine hundred eighty two dr ralph minster at university of pennsylvania said what if i can take me gene responsible for growth in human beings and put it into a mouse. and he did just that he actually was successful as you can see though the very large mouse here is the one that's successfully been engineer with human growth genes to make a huge and you see the sibling next to it and this made a huge fear it was on the front page of these magazines new york times and then a few months later people said well this is interesting what you can really do with a really huge amounts i mean you can scare people you know there's a few things you can do with it but it's not a very practical thing to have

a really huge amounts so then what happened is. you know this is the kind of agriculture said well what happens if we were to use the same experiment but to use it with pigs. and. so i went out to the u.s.d.a. here. and this is what they did they took the human growth gene dr vern purcell with taxpayer dollars and i know the many taxpayers knew this actually took taxpayer dollars and took human genes growth genes and put them into this pick as you can see there's a problem instead of like the mouse that with human genes it was so big that genes work differently that human growth genes were different in this pig it was cross-eyed bowl a good important musculature had overwhelmed it. and i can only photograph against a plywood board because that's the only only way it could stand up and you can imagine the suffering and how terrible this was for this particular animal and this

is another experiment is what would happen they were interested in taking the skin of a cow and see if they could genetically have a pig produce that skin apparently be more beneficial for slaughtering and so this is literally a pig. that has a cal's skin researchers are very proud of that. one of the. most important to understand about genetic engineering is that. it is really attempt to say listen no matter how unsustainable our technologies

we're not going to change the technology to fit the natural living systems we're going to change living systems so they fit the technology we all know how horrible factory farming is and one of the problems they have with egg laying chickens with hands is they have a motherly instinct they want to brute and here you see one of the brain experiments genetically engineer. chickens to take out the mothering instinct from these brooding chicken so they won't groom or they won't have the mothering instinct any more so the offset the factory farm system this is not only came near a birds they're working with the take away the mothering instinct so we don't change our factory farm system we actually take the mothering instinct out of animals so that they will fit the technology. in the mid eighty's once again a new supposedly golden age dawned for scientists genetic technology appeared to be the key to subordinating the earth and in particular its living creatures all of a sudden everything seemed possible they experimented with chickens without

feathers she put out pelts to alleviate work after slaughtering with cows producing more milk and goods making silk they even imagined animals in the role of living organ donors. yet most of the experiments ended in failure and never found their way out of the laboratories. not only did the animals fail to conform to the scientists visions they were also deformed and incapable of survival.

only research on fish made progress here scientists could put their knowledge into practice more quickly as the animals have shorter generation times and the hundreds of thousands of eggs developed by themselves outside the mother. the canadian. money by the name of aqua bounty is in the process of obtaining market approval for its genetically manipulated giant salmon it has developed a salmon that is six times larger than the other members of its species it needs only half the time to grow. organic farms is a small development stage research and development stage company we don't have a product on the market yet but we are researching of riding different applications of biotechnology to fish farming and we're pretty much the only company in the in the field today. this is a picture of three related fish brothers and sisters that we developed this is

a fish that inherited the transferrin and these are its siblings that did not this this fish is about a year old as these fish are as well and as you can see there is a incredible excel aeration in the early life stages these fish are are just barely ready to go into salt water as fish is almost ready to harvest after a year they want. to. go for. the one point three billion. dollars this is the same salmon that you know eighteen months ago here you see the enormous difference here and base this in the salmon as it exists is not big enough it's not profitable enough doesn't grow fast enough so will fundamentally change it with foreign genes so that we can make more money off it so they can be more profit on it but an extraordinary an extraordinary picture obviously there's a there's

a financial consideration for the farmer i mean it's much more profitable to grow the salmon in a shorter time but there's a significant environmental impact it reduces the amount of time they're using the site so you get less fecal material that builds up on the bottom less uneaten feed they're in the water for shorter period of time so they're exposed to native pathogens in the marine waters they're less exposed to disease less less likely for that to occur it's a technology that cannot exist with nature it's a technology that invades pollutes contaminates and ultimately destroys the natural species and this is fundamental to the crops or fish or animals and that's the fundamental nature of biological pollution it cannot co-exist and in basin destroys we need to understand that as we debate this issue but it's a real key here is not the salmon the salmon is just the first product what we're really interested in what we're. now back in the lab is happier and

a carp which are really important. fish in the third world in china in africa for food security we are going to have difficulty supplying quite a protein to people worldwide in not just the high end kind of products like trout and salmon but the really important products for food security like a lab here and carp and those are what we're working on we should have those on the market by the end of the decade. that is the real point of the whole matter the focus is on conquering the huge market in southeastern asia aqua bounty farms is getting ready to greet and sell eggs manipulated with growth genes in huge amounts. the company conducts the scanty tests required for approval itself and neither independent scientists nor consumers have insights into the approval process it is confidential.

occasional reports that the modified fish are more aggressive suffer from internal as well as external deformities and die earlier the same results reached in earlier experiments on pigs cows and sheep give due cause for skepticism. regardless of any fear harbored by consumers the genetically modified fish are soon to land in our pots and frying pans earlier than with genetically modified plants resistance is already building up among the populace genetically modified greens such as canola maison soya introduced eighty years ago continues to turn up on our plates unrecognized and i'm labelled which means that when shopping or eating in a restaurant we have no chance to identify these foods. ok well i'm going into this boycott because to be

a seafood restaurant in this time and age is is saying something because we've been here for six years we sell a hell of a lot of fish we do about twelve million dollars a year so when we make a decision and effects a lot of things and the decisions we make effect markets you know we buy a lot of fish so if we decide not to buy a particular fish or not to sell a fish that means a lot. genetically engineering fish it just seems frightening we don't know whole lot about it now but from what i understand from what i could. visit lot of questions we don't know what a fix it's going to have on the human population but we also don't know what it takes it's going to come on the ocean. when you ask whether transgenic fish is available in the marketplace as far as i

understand right now the f.d.a. is considering whether to approve it or not the food and drug administration they're having a great deal of difficulty because there is not a lot of science that says transgenic fish is unhealthy for people to consume which is what the food and drug administration looks at there's a lot of concern about the environmental impacts if the transgenic fish escapes and they all escape these animals are born to escape if this vicious caves what kind of horrible impact will it have on the rest of the fish population these fish are bred to grow faster the stronger and they have a tremendous advantage over the wild fish population. we don't know what this might do to us or our children or our children's children and the government needs to become more active and at the very least label it so we know what word. it's just so unfair for people to work in ignorance even though they care even though they

want to know that the government doesn't cooperate. we're all victims of a one of the major problems we see with labeling people labeling isn't just a right to know issue. labeling is the only way you get traceability of the health effects of genetically engineered foods so labeling isn't just a right to know it's absolutely critical and we want health professionals to be able to trace the health effects of genetic engineering and hold those corporations liable for those of apps so the corporations hate labeling because they don't want of consumers to know but they also know it saves them from liability and from anyone tracing potential health effects that's the triple importance of labeling. hardly any research has been done only effects of genetically modified foods on humans although at least in america these have been on supermarket shelves for the

past eighty years and are being consumed only a few researchers undertake the tedious and difficult task of conducting tests interims four hundred kilometers north of the arctic circle tell you traffic one of the few scientists worldwide who is not only industry payroll does research on the effects of genetically modified food on the health of humans and animals. when an organism like fish is eating nifty modified feet. then they don't know what happens then there's the next. consumer confidence that they have that the fish is eating their commodified bird you really eat a fish no provision extend that genetically modified food has changed the fish to both the rich extent there is still going at him all the d.n.a. present in a fish fish extent you will be exposed to this in the next instant there is no.

experimental data to indicate what happens in the case. we are no go into the experimental animal department very are doing feeding studies in rats video at the mall the five ingredients for. d.n.a. construct. this is a very unique experiment in the sense that it's a first experiment we know very you have these scientists told that you can detect any difference between these rats groups and then you can go backwards and find both what this difference means in terms of health or in terms of malfunctions of the organs or whatever. the background for this is.

an interest in the ruled people who. are already eating then it can all be for food or feed or originating internet to modify that. in addition to that the intended use in humans and the mystic also calls us to be no only survey from the soil and through the table. holes at lot of different species and animals in and consume all the plants i mean we don't know everything that both effects this feed on and the organism. know we're after the rats are second feist in the department of experimental animals the organs have been frozen don't i think very low temperature and then

will three want to do is to analyze the organs and see their own foreign d.n.a. has a right in those organs. d.n.a. can be found there in the organs. in experiments in german. nice. there are led by dr walter there for the. we're demonstrating that some types of foreign d.n.a. not clear far from the organisers. from the mice or. in the internal organs and where you insert it into you know all the lies if that is the case if that happens then it's a start of a high. regard to health. it seems like

a wide scale experiment on humans in view of the fact the genetically modified food has been on the market for eighty years and already eaten by millions of americans however it is an experiment being conducted without test groups and no knowledge can be gained as to whether and in what form our health is affected if one group eats genetically modified foods but the test group is lucky the entire population is simply subjected to the same potentially harmful substances. a few scientists suspect that there might be a connection to the increase of chronic illnesses in the weakening of the immune system and the consumer might wonder if you may not have any children if you eat sterile fish in the future. do we at least know what repercussions this has on our environment and purdue university in indiana. and rick how it up or forming tests and doing pioneer

research work to determine what actually happens when genetically modified fish soon to be introduced on the market and into the food chain lingle with wild fish for this purpose they are breeding their own transgenic fish to remain independent of the food industry. a number of animals have been major angelic including commercially important. one group that has been studied quite a bit in terms of making. ensure that. individuals are fish and fish for commercial purposes so fifteen twenty different species like salmon like to laugh the like carp have been made transgenic and so we have the facilities and also the expertise to investigate the problem in fish. but also through made our approach to answering those questions such that they could be used and pigs

could be used in cattle what can be used in any other type of organ or plants. any type of organism because they get all of general features of biology that is common to any organism. to make the transition a fish to get the recently fertilized eggs and the usually within five minutes of them being fertilized we bring them over to this room and go through a procedure called micro injection to literally inject into the egg thousands of copies of small segments of d.n.a. . those segments of d.n.a. include the gene that we're after in this case of salmon growth hormone gene as well as a promoter that turns a gene on. and we're started inserting that into a class that has just been fertilized. so what our student has here

is eggs on a small strip with a very last needle that contains the d.n.a. . and hope that needle right up to the a membrane and then with air pressure. shoot the d.n.a. into the bay. and from there on it's a matter of chance as to what happens if the. d.n.a. happens to be in the right place then it gets incorporated into the chromosomes of the organism and we're successful making it raise any fish but that may only have about ten percent or five percent of the time so you go through really looking for years processes of injecting. we have this extraordinary situation where we're taking human genes and putting in a fish and we're mixing and matching the genetic makeup of the entire living

kingdom in the community and who's deciding who you know we're changing the permanent genetic makeup permanently the entire animal kingdom and who's deciding you know in our congress here in the united states legislatures throughout the world we've got all these different laws tax laws and corporate laws which could be more important than deciding on the permanent genetic future of life on earth. but we don't vote on that very few scientists and regulators and corporations impose that on us there's no referendum and there's no elections and this is one of the fundamental issues i think we have democracy democracy is legislation. technologist is legislation technology actually is the basis for almost all major social change we don't vote on it when everything else whether the nuclear bomb or the automobile are now taking human genes and putting them in the other animals and mixing imagine all of you we don't vote on that i don't know that we let

a few corporations scientists and railways decide and there's a fundamental question we need to answer about technology today is that we no longer can lead just a few decide these questions that will last for millennia we need to say technology is legislation technology is a law that will determine our future and we need to vote on that we need to be able to decide we need to become informed and we need to make a choice. this is the heart of why. he is fighting for single handedly at the university of minnesota bothered by the fact that the approval process is so secretive she began to conduct her own experiments with grants for independent research she examines the behavior of the transgenic fish bred by bill muir and recovered. in an old farm building she tries to reproduce a simulated ecosystem in many tanks and aquariums in order to conduct experiments

resembling a real life situation oh reputation as an independent scientist reaches all the way to thailand the industry is especially anxious to capture the southeastern asian markets with genetically modified to love here a popular fish on asian menus for this reason it is pressing the government's applications for approval to be able to sell its transgenic fish earlier than in america and the government of thailand became quite worried because they felt that they were not well equipped to review an application and even know what questions to ask it how do we do a risk assessment and be able to make a good decision about whether they should allow the patient of a country so they told the researchers please don't even apply formally to introduce these fish because we don't know what to do. under great time pressure and is compiling a risk assessment report together with tyco leak concerning the possible dangers to the environment should transgenic fish be approved for commercial purposes for

justice with foodstuffs the potential consequences to the environment have so far not been thoroughly explored. one of the things we want to know is if in the future the tiger ever met a fruit genetically engineer to apia and if they were to escape from the fish farms and we know they will says the regular farm swap you have with that cause most more harm are would be equal to the possible harm that bet. foreign salafi you know that everybody skates are posing. to explore the possible risk factors and is working with a small fast reproducing fish species from japan many thousands of fish are measured photographed the eggs counted and the meeting behavior observed.

transgenic male wild female wild male wild female. to male one female. which one asserts itself which offspring a stronger. none of it sounds like create three more profits more like hard work at weekends over time. bringing you the latest in science and technology from the ground flushed. we've dumped the future.

a timer in here broadcasting live from washington d.c. coming up today on the big picture.